Relationships as a Mirror & EFT
Boundaries are an important part of all relationships, defining where we begin and end, and where our friends and loved ones begin and end. Almost all relationship problems are the result of one or both parties having their personal boundaries crossed either physically or emotionally. Setting limits on our own personal space while having natural consequences should those limits be crossed is a healthy way to relate in a relationship.
I suggest that there is an even better way to relate though. What if all relationships are a reflection of each of the individuals in a particular moment? What if instead of attempting to protect our boundaries physically and emotionally, we were able to set our boundaries energetically? That instead of blaming the people that are in our life for each misdeed done against us, we own our life, our boundaries, and the energy that we are sending out into the world?
In my opinion, there are three stages to our personal evolution:
1. I’m a victim
2. I have boundaries and enforce them (Natural Boundaries)
3. I don’t know, it doesn’t happen to me (Energetic Boundaries)
Confused yet? Let me explain. In the “relationships as a mirror” model, we are responsible for everything that happens in our lives. We are not random victims of anybody or anything, but we attract each event and person into our lives, whether positive or negative. This model is the ultimate in ownership and leaves no room for blaming others, not even from our childhood experiences. In order to get to stage three, “I don’t know, it doesn’t happen to me”, we must own and heal each aspect of our lives. However, we can also do this issue by issue, nickel and diming ourselves to emotional wholeness.
CHILDHOOD
The frontal lobes in our brain are not fully developed until we’re around seven or eight years old. So prior to this age, most of our sensory data is being written onto mirror neurons in the animal brain, which is the bottom half of the brain. Anything and everything gets written there, from traumas, religious beliefs, and the hidden messages our parent’s lifestyle and interactions send us.
Much like a computer’s operating system, this data becomes the programming through which we filter and view life, and from eight years old and on, we are busy repeating these learned patterns. It is our animal brain’s job to keep us safe and secure throughout the rest of our lives, however, these childhood patterns and beliefs often no longer serve us into adulthood. For simplicity sake, we’ll call this programming on the animal brain the “ego”.
Here is an example of how a seemingly small event can become a trauma to a child:
As a five year old child, Lucy is at dance class waiting for her mother to pick her up. However, there is a car accident and the associated traffic delays Lucy’s mother from picking her up on time. As a little girl without the capacity to reason as an adult would, Lucy feels panic, rejection, and abandonment. As an adult, Lucy may feel anxiety when her friends, family, or lover’s are running late and not understand why. She may then lash out in anger and blame these people for their cavalier attitude towards promptness and her feelings.
In the “relationships as a mirror” model though, Lucy would understand that the person who is running late is only reflecting a feeling and memory that she has within herself. She could then follow the message of the feeling, trace it back to her childhood memory (even if it is not immediately known), and heal it with EFT. This would help Lucy to graduate from step one directly to step three, without the need for confronting the perpetrator.
FEELINGS
In this model, each emotion that we feel, whether it is anger, inadequacy, fear, joy, powerfulness, and peace are always our own. If we feel angry (powerless) as a result of an argument with our lover, that is our feeling and they are not responsible for it. Likewise, if we are feeling powerful, it is not because our loved ones are causing that either. We are the true owners of our body, mind, and soul, and our feelings begin and end with us. As we own our lives, blame becomes a relic of the past.
RELATIONSHIPS
If we are really just repeating patterns from our early childhood, then each relationship that we engage in is a reflection of our early lives. Our romantic interests, friends, financial situation, pets, and surroundings reflect back to us our beliefs about life. If we feel anger or sadness in a particular relationship, they are only reflecting back to us our desire to heal a childhood trauma, pattern, and/or belief.
It is a well known idea within psychology that if one hundred people were placed in a room, and there was one perpetrator and one victim mixed among them, the two would almost always meet. This is because we send out energetic signals (along with body language) based on our family system of origin that people pick up on. In this model, instead of seeing this as sick and dysfunctional, it can be seen as a blessing in disguise, an opportunity to heal an old pattern that is no longer serving us as adults.
So then, in any relationship, we can see that each time we feel any of the three core feelings, anger, fear, or sadness, it is our feelings and nobody else is to blame. If we follow these steps, we can heal our interactions with all of our relationships easily:
1. Recognize the reflected feeling. Is it anger, fear, or sadness?
2. What does this incident and triggered feeling remind you of from your past prior to the age of eight?
3. What is the limiting belief (hidden message that causes powerlessness) that the childhood memory taught you?
4. Tap on the root memory, along with the associated feelings and limiting beliefs, using EFT.
I DON’T KNOW, IT DOESN’T HAPPEN TO ME (ENERGETIC BOUNDARIES)
When we heal a childhood trauma and the associated limiting belief, an immediate energetic boundary is created that tells the Universe (and everything in it) “this is the way that my life will be from now on”. Therefore, the situation will cease being a pattern in your life, and certain toxic individuals that resonate with the energy of the trauma will either disappear from your life or behave inline with your new energetic expectation. It is like graduation day, where we graduate from repeating the same patterns regularly, and get to move on to new challenges and patterns to heal. We get to say of the old pattern, “I don’t know, it doesn’t happen to me”.
And the amazing thing is, these changes are immediately reflected in your relationships. I personally have seen this in my practice and in my own life, as is the case of an issue I was having in an intimate relationship a while ago. My girlfriend and I were having problems, I felt angry and inadequate, and I traced my feelings to the root memory and healed some mother issues. Five minutes later, my girlfriend walked down the stairs and broke up with me. This sounds like a bad thing, but our only point of attraction was our sick dance based on my childhood trauma! With it healed, there was nothing keeping us together! It was an amicable and loving separation.
In another case, a woman who I was assisting with EFT healed some generational issues and memories regarding her parents. The next day when she saw them, her father offered his gratitude for her for the first time in her life! This completely stunned her, but it happened because she was sending out new energetic signals into the Universe.
I like to explain it as being similar to the butterfly effect found in time travel in science fiction books. If someone were to travel back in time and step on a butterfly, the entirety of human history could change from that point forward. After clearing the energy surrounding a childhood trauma, everyone reacts differently to us, leaving us to wonder why people are acting differently. Of course we know the secret, an energetic boundary was set just days, hours, or minutes prior!
CONCLUSION
So you see then, there is no longer any reason to blame others for things that have happened to you, you are now free to be in complete ownership of your life, feelings, and being! If you are triggered, it is your triggers alone, and the solution is found only in you as well. There is no need to confront, argue, or blame, there is only a need to own your feelings and to heal your past! Your boundaries are now solidified from an energetic level, in which the signals that you send out to the Universe are full of peace, joy, and a place of personal power.
What is your opinion? Have you tried this approach? How did it work for you? I look forward to your comments and feedback!
12 Responses to “Relationships as a Mirror & EFT”
Comments
Read below or add a comment...
Trackbacks
-
[...] Is “happily ever after” possible? Of course it is, however, I do not feel that it is an ideal way in which to judge the success of a relationship. What if instead we could learn to judge relationships by how much we learn, grow, and expand? What if the true success of a relationship can be found in how much karma we burn off together? Or by how much we lovingly accomplish in the world? If this is the case, I’ve had romantic relationships that only lasted two months that were easily as successful as the one that lasted eight years. (For more on the “how to” of burning off karma in a relationship, see the article “Relationships as a Mirror and EFT”.) [...]












Hi Nathan.. I had/have this boyfriend for two months and we get along very well.. every piece of the jigsaw fits and we had the most wonderful time together.. till he found out about EFT.. now he has doubts if he will continue our relationship. He says that he can’t understand that a smart woman like me believes such crap :-S
I opened my heart to him to the fullest.. I respect him for who he is, eventhough he is very rational (fear I guess). I tap on my grief because it hurts so much and I do proxy-tapping on his fear.. what more can I do? :s
Greets and thanks for this blog, Tinne
Hello Tinne, I appreciate your position. It may seem unfortunate that your healing is driving a wedge between you and your primary love interest, however, I have to say that what you are going through is very common. When one partner chooses to heal and the other doesn’t, their vibrational point of attraction disappears. If he is your “mirror”, then once your issues that he is reflecting are healed, you may find yourself single again. I hope that you can find the silver lining in this, that this really can be what is best for your emotional and spiritual health. Please let me know if there is any way that I can assist you Tinne, be well!
I’ve read this a couple times now but as I read it tonight a light just turned on in my head about mirroring and how relationships have turned out for me in the past.
As well as how my holding onto a certain someone could be linked to and assisting them in doing the same to someone else.
It’s really time to let go all the way!
To start believing that I can be attractive to women(amazing ones at that)! So instead of reflecting them out of my life I reflect them in abundantly!!!
Hi Nathan, Thank you so much for your reply. I’ve been tapping on the pain of loss.. on the unbelief I feel because we had a relationship of the thousands.. Now I tap on the anger because it is all I can feel right now.. but the pain is still there.. Probably because it’s all so fresh (this weekend)If you have any advice for me.. you are very welcome, Kind regards, Tinne
Of course, I am glad I can contribute. I recommend that you find the childhood memories that resonate with your current pain and anger. Without finding that, the patterns will repeat and the source of the anger can only be relieved, not healed permanently. Much love, Nathan
Nathan, this is a wonderful post! Thank you for sharing! This position of being powerful and creating the reality around us is a huge mind-shift for many, and the ego tends to resist shifts like this, but I know that this is true.
And it’s so wonderful because it is so empowering. I have seen this happen many times as I have used EFT, both with you, and on my own. Some examples that come to mind are when I had the limiting belief that men only liked me because they were sexually attracted to me. Because I had that limiting belief, I was attracting men into my life who appeared to only want to be my friend with the hopes it would lead to something sexual. After I tapped on that belief, several of my male friends just magically disappeared from my life and several others spontaneously told me all of the (non-sexual) reasons they enjoyed my friendship.
Another more recent example was that last week I tapped a lot on my limiting beliefs around prosperity and money. Yesterday I was informed that I was accepted to receive SSI, over a year after I applied for it!
I continue to tap every day, for 15-30 minutes, and am so excited to see where I will be over the coming year.
Thanks, Nathan, for sharing your wonderful gifts with the world! xoxo
Wow, thank YOU so much for the great comment Kristy! It is amazing to hear stories like yours, verifying how making small energetic changes in our being affects everyone around us! Thank you again for sharing!!!
Great article Nathan. I love these models but being new to all this I find I have difficulty getting my head around the concepts. Although this sounds like a great mindset, does this mean we don’t hold people accountable to their behaviour? Does it mean we just accept people’s poor behaviour towards us in our lives? This is the part I struggle with in this model but I do wat to get my head around it!
This is a VERY good question Kylie! Holding people accountable is a level #2 way of dealing with boundaries. When you graduate to level #3 and energetic boundaries, you don’t need to hold anybody accountable but yourself. When you heal your stuff on level #3, everyone else just falls into line or disappears from your life magically. The need to confront goes away and a new way of relating, a more powerful way of relating is learned. I have been doing this in my relationships, and it has been extremely profound; I am happier, more powerful, and more peaceful than ever before. It’s the law of attraction on steroids! Does this make sense? Give it a try, you’ll be pleasantly surprised I think!
Nathan,
I really appreciate this “Relationships as a Mirror and EFT”. It really gave a lot of answers to my questions. It brought a whole new understanding of the Mirror image to me. I really apprecaite you and all you do.
Thank you,
Betsy
Awwwww, I’m so happy to be able to assist YOU Betsy! Thank you for your kind words, let me know if you have any questions!