Stop Breaking Your Own Heart

Did you know that we break our own hearts more often than others do?

Like me, you probably have painful memories of when your heart was broken in the past and you immediately think of the person that broke it. That pain is unforgettable and stems primarily from experiencing rejection, from another not returning your love. It leaves an emotional wound. It hurts.

But it seems, that once we have sustained an emotional wounding to our heart, it doesn’t stop there, in some convoluted way we learn to perpetuate the act. We start to agree that we aren’t worthy of love, aren’t acceptable in some intrinsic way and the heartbreak continues. The other person is gone, but the pain continues…and we tend to still cast blame on them, rather than accepting our role in the continuing saga of our heart break.

A very wise woman once told me, “ Oh love, your broken heart is such a great gift, for now you have an opening…a crack from which you can better give and receive love.”

No one escapes having our hearts broken but how do you become aware that you might be the one that is causing most of the pain? AND how can you transform the pain into a willingness to let the love in and let your love out?

Awareness starts by “seeing” the habits and thoughts we use against ourselves that continue the “breaking” and prevent the flow of receiving and giving love.

These are some ways we break our own hearts. Are any of them familiar to you?

• We judge ourselves harshly and believe the judgment to be true and then the self- punishment begins.

• We compare ourselves to another and always come up less than.

• We believe our own limiting thoughts. We agree with old beliefs that keep us playing small and we fear taking the leaps of faith that move our lives and our love forward.

• We close our hearts to love, we fear love whether it’s self love, the love of others, or the love of Life. We just don’t want to be hurt again.
• We over think, we over do and assume that our value is derived from these self-negating, life-draining habits.
• The opportunity to forgive presents itself again and again, and is met with our mental resistance.

With awareness we can embrace our cracked-open and broken hearts and refrain from the choices that create more hurt. There is nothing quite like accessing the state of bitter-sweet vulnerability that is possible when the heart has broken open.