The Shocking Event That Quantum Leaped My Recovery From People Pleasing To A Healthy Sense Of Self.
How To Strive For Balance & Harmony In Relationships.
On October 27, 2023, I experienced multiple triggers within my friendships and romantic relationships that propelled me to respond in a way I had never imagined myself to respond.
And that psychological breakthrough initiated the inner standing of what you are about to read from me today.
A little background of old Joy in relationships;
I used to be a chronic people-pleaser. Always putting everyone’s needs above myself,
constantly wanting the best for friends and loved ones and in the bid to help them through their suffering I can see them creating for themselves giving unsolicited advice, getting rejected and nailed to the cross😂( I am sure all Projectors feel this way when their loved ones can’t see they are only trying to help)
Over explaining myself just to make the other person understand I don’t mean to hurt their feelings
Overly try to atone and apologize even when I know deep down I didn’t do anything wrong.
And guess what this manifests? Relationships and people who have no problem moving out on you or leaving you. People uninterested in cultivating deep heartfelt, and creatively committed relationships with you.
Then October 27th happened, it was a New noon and Lunar eclipse on a Libra/Scorpio axis. And an opportunity to release codependent and spiritually unhealthy relationships.
Series of relationship triggers and for the first time I choose me. I responded with silence rather than engaging in over-explaining or atoning. I completely ignored it and instead went inside to meet the pain with understanding.
I reclaimed my autonomy to choose who would be the most important in my life and I decided it was me.
My era of self-sacrificing in relationships to please the other over myself ended.
Today, I received the divine inner standing and culmination of this journey initiated 6 months ago under another Full moon and eclipse on an Aries/Libra axis.
In case you don’t know what an eclipse is, let’s digress into some professional educational moment, Ready?
Understanding The Powerful Influence of Eclipses
Eclipses are powerful energetic portals for release, endings, and rebirth. Eclipses are harbingers of change, they usher in evolution.
The good thing about eclipses is that generally you can trust the direction they are guiding you in. Eclipses may help to bring about events in your life that are part of the cosmic plan, but it is not that the eclipse makes something happen in your life, it is that you have the ability to see things more clearly then you have before. These are important times for reflection upon your life, what you need to let go of and move on from.
Eclipses are rare because they can only take place when the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon are all aligned. They always happen in groups of two or three. Total solar eclipses are called “ring of fire” because the light of the sun still radiates beyond the total eclipse and total lunar eclipses are sometimes called blood moons because of the reddish-orange glow the moon takes on during the eclipse.
There are four to seven eclipses every calendar year. Typically, there are two eclipse seasons, one after the start of the year and one toward the completion of the year. Year 2024 will have 4 eclipses, 2 solar eclipses and 2 lunar eclipses.
2024 Mar 25: Penumbral Lunar Eclipse
2024 Apr 08: Total Solar Eclipse
2024 Sep 18: Partial Lunar Eclipse
2024 Oct 02: Annular Solar Eclipse
You may look back to the ending of last year 2023, noticing the end of October through the new year cycle and try to realize themes or patterns that arose during that time. Can you see the arc of their progression through this year? In the coming months you will experience the full evolution of this arc or a completion of this cycle with the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.
Eclipses come in pairs, and so the energy of this year’s eclipse cycle begins before and around March 25, with a lunar eclipse on the full moon, resetting emotional patterns, and then is followed by a total solar eclipse April 8, resetting energetic patterns. Solar eclipses are resets in the energy field or archetypal configurations, where as, lunar eclipses are culminations of emotional cycles that have run their course. Both encourage us to let go of emotions and attachments that are no longer serving us and evolve into something new.
The first eclipse of the year is a penumbral lunar eclipse on March 25, 2024 occurring at the lunar orbit’s descending node in Virgo. This is a very deep penumbral eclipse with a penumbral magnitude 10 and an eclipse duration of 279.9 minutes.
Lunar Eclipses are viewed in astrology as being deeply transformative times that can bring abrupt and sudden change. While this is true, there is another side to eclipses that is important to remember. Eclipses are like the cosmic helping hand of the Universe, their energies help to break patterns or bring unresolved emotional issues to the surface.
* extracted from exploredeeply.com*
I will forever be a nurturer, an empath, a Projector who constantly sees how things and lives can be better, I will always love deeply and wholeheartedly and I will always care about the needs of others. But now I know better that the one to enjoy that grace first is me. I know to not sacrifice my voice for peace when I need to assert my needs, I know to choose silence over explanation and I know that I can manifest people who recognize me fully and don’t ask of me or expect what I can’t give.
We have been taught to self-sacrifice as the only way to build meaningful and lasting relationships. This lie has not only distorted our realities but caused a great deal of people to be in relationships where they can never be truly seen, heard, authentic, or fulfilled.
The Illusions of Sacrificing
Sacrificing is something conformist do.
The intention is always “good” but the outcome is never pleasant or self-affirming.
Sacrificing is a trauma response that subconsciously comes from being in a household or environment where people were criticized for not pleasing others or having boundaries and autonomy.
Kids who were constantly criticized or who watched their parents criticize others a lot for not getting their way are likely to become adults who grow up to be Self-sacrificing.
How do we know we are self-sacrificing?
when we expect others to obligatorily reciprocate your effort or please you without honor and respect for their capacity.
When we withdraw because others don’t meet your expectations
We judge other people’s way of giving unless it meets our way of sacrificing
We don’t feel good when our sacrifices are not reciprocated
We feel used, and taken advantage of when we do things for others and they don’t return it.
Self-sacrificing is an unhealthy pattern that ruins the energetic dynamics of a relationship by breeding resentment. When resentment enters a relationship, the connection begins to break. Everything is energy and energy is everything.
The spirit is no longer in the relationship, the mind has taken over. The mind being where all our learned files are stored begins to fuel our ego and insecurities stories that further reinforce its agenda to separate and make distinctions.
Self-sacrificing disrupts the purity and trueness of the spirit within our relationships. The spirit gives freely and fully without expectations. It never needs to measure the other’s love by effort. It never needs physical representation of affirmations for it can feel that it is real. It can feel the heart and it lives purely from this source consciousness.
The spirit loves all deeply and fully including itself. This is why it balances! It floods out and floods in fully.
Everything in nature is like this. The rain never needs to sacrifice its position to give mankind rain when the sun hits its highest expression of spirit and the sun never sacrifices its position to curb a flood when the waters get to its highest expression.
Nature has been designed in balance, to move out into others when the spirit must and to retreat into self when a refill is needed.
Nature is built on balance and balance is compromise!
The Living Truth Of Compromise
The trees know when to bear fruit and when not to, the ocean knows when to flood in and out without going overboard, (I think the only thing that always wants its way is fire 😂 and well, it’s manmade. A fire starts only when humans carelessly or intentionally start it). Oh Humans! We are a handful aren’t we?😂
Compromise is for non-conformists. People who have unlearnt their unhealthy patterns of criticism and people-pleasing.
Someone who compromises is usually a growing self-sacrificer. For he has learnt that you cannot give from an empty cup. And that when your cup is full or half full, giving is more pleasurable.
To compromise means to seek balance. To be resourceful, to make everyone win.
While a Self Sacrificer thrives on being good , the hero or right all the time, (a shadow response to subconsciously mask their inner criticism which is always evident in his interaction with others when they do not reciprocate to match his expectations)
A compromiser thrives on being balanced and finding a middle ground where everyone gets what they need to feel good. Not too overly tilting to their way and not too people pleasing either. To a compromiser, it’s not about being right or good, it’s about feeling alright and good.
Compromise feeds the self which in turn feeds the spirit and allows the spirit to shine in its highest light of giving.
Signs that you are compromising not sacrificing:
you feel good about your decision to move towards or do something for others
There are no expectations of others to reciprocate because you gave when you had it full without emptying yourself and desperately looking to be filled again.
You understand how energy works and so the energy matters before the matter in your relationships
You don’t feel resentment towards others when things don’t go your way, because you always make sure it goes both ways
You don’t feel obligated to do anything you don’t want to do to seek validation, you do everything because you “can”-
You have a strong awareness of capacity and you respect your capacity and that of others.
Relationships are built on efforts and giving, however, it must never come at the detriment of self. Even Jesus gets this. He was a perfect example of compromise. He valued his space for retreat, and he carved his time for giving.
His disciples trust his love and energy. They always eagerly met him wherever he was.
The trust supports compromise. The ability to trust that just because someone detaches physically from us, or doesn’t reciprocate our efforts doesn’t mean they don’t love us or care about us.
Just because someone doesn’t talk to us “all the time” doesn’t mean they are not connected to us. Humans “especially Highly sensitive people” need a lot of space, this is important for Self-preservation and energetic self-protection.
But if you grew up where there were zero boundaries or respect for space, it’s sometimes difficult to understand this.
Often expectations blind us from appreciating. It blinds us from seeing what is. We become unable to see how others are meeting our needs in their way because we are so stuck in our way. And oftentimes, what triggers us or what we criticize in others are fragments of our very own unconsciousnesses that we judge.
Cultivating a healthy co-committed relationship requires Compromising not Sacrificing, it supports everyone within the relationship to feel whole, happy, free, and safe.
Famous Example of Compromising
Jesus Christ
For a lot of people, we were taught Jesus sacrificed himself for mankind. But is this true? Or is this just one person’s interpretation of the truth?
Jesus was created way before mankind, and he knew exactly what his purpose was. He had a vision for his life already. He was already spirit. He understood his life’s assignment and every risk associated with it. (Including his death). He followed his desires, vision, and passion. So would we say Jesus sacrificed himself for others or that Jesus lived for himself?
Throughout his life as a human, Jesus never sacrificed his alone time, beliefs, or autonomy for anything else. He consciously understood the importance of his autonomy and cultivated only relationships where he was able to be his authentic self 100%. He could have given in to the pressure around him to be like everyone else just to conform, but that life was far beneath him. Instead, he focused only on being with the people who got him.
He shared his time, energy, and gifts freely, warmly, and openly for all “when he felt necessary to do so. And other times, he freely allowed himself to retreat to his own space to regroup and recharge.
Was there no one sick and in need of Jesus’s gifts while he was on a 40-day-and-night fast? Didn’t his disciples have need for their best friend? Why didn’t he sacrifice his time to go heal them?
I believe his disciples valued him, they had faith in his love for them, they understood their friend, his gifts and responsibilities and they inner-stood his needs too.
He understood he couldn’t give from an empty cup and filling himself up would allow him to fill others gracefully. He also understood he couldn’t please or save everyone neither could he make all like or accept him.
Jesus taught Balance in all of his experiences. He could have never mingled with the prostitutes, or thieves or considered low lives. But Compromise and balance taught him when to share his time with them and when to detach from their midst.
I guess the question now is:
“How do we create balance within our present or future relationships so that diplomacy and harmony exists freely?”
All of which are beautiful gifts from the Zodiac Libra (the sign of balance, fairness, harmony and partnerships).
For me Human Design has been such a potent tool for personal development. Now I am conscious about knowing and learning my partner’s or friend’s Human design because this allows me to engage, build, create and support them just as they have been designed to thrive instead of what I believe they should be or what I consider appropriate.
This Libra full moon also gives us the opportunity to cut energetic ties with people or relationships that tries to mold us in their own image rather than support us to be more of our highest expression from a place of love.
It’s also a potent time to look at ways in which we are sabotaging our ability to manifest fulfilling relationships. For example: Hyper-Independence is a trauma response that can cut us from love.
The idea is to find people who get us and from a balanced place invest in cultivating and building a solid foundation for those authentic relationships to thrive.
Thank you for reading this to the end. As always it’s such an honor to share my life’s reflection with you and I am always looking forward to reading your own take or perspective to these reflections if you feel drawn to share.
Until next time,
With Love.
Joy.❤️
I wish I had a response to this. Compromise or sacrifice in a relationship, I honestly don't know cos I have no experience with relationships