How do we respond to ‘rejection’? How do we respond to being pushed away? What is happening in our minds, brains, emotional bodies and physiology when we are perceiving to be rejected?

Are we compassionate, do we also shut down and avoid connecting in this space? The answer differs for all of us. We all come to relationship and to life with our own set of of woundings, pains and fears.

To reside in fear is to perpetuate distance, pain and disconnection. How do we trust those we care about, that we are building a life with when they are rejecting us?

But are they rejecting us or are they rejecting a pain that is being triggered by ‘perfect circumstances’? Interesting. This then becomes less about us and more about the ‘other’ who is in avoidance of his or her ‘stuff’.

Knowing this, alongside doing the work to free oneself from emotional baggage can liberate relationships to breakthrough in to the next phase of their growth and evolution.

It means we can support the other as they play our habitual, familiar and safe (albeit generally unhealthy) patters of relating that allow them to perpetuate an entrenched sense of mal-adjusted self.

When those we care for choose to hide amidst friction, conflict, pain or fear, if we notice that they are hiding, running, or being elusive in the demeanour, it is shouting loudly to us that they are suffering deeply and profoundly.

Should we meet them with more fear, distance, disparity and harshness? Or should we meet them with empathy, trust, compassion, care, verticality and a holding that shows them loudly, they are seen for ho they are judgement free.

Would this repetitively not break the cycle of pain body that they are continuing to relive? You may say: “But it is not for me to be responsible for their growth or willingness to change”.

Ah, you are correct… BUT… Through this posturing you also grow, you heal your wounding, your confusion, your suffering. By actively doing the work to release your psycho-emotional tension, you by default empower others to do the same.

You also gain additional insight in to others. By serving others, you are serving yourself. This is the interconnectedness of life and love. This is ‘Selfish Selflessness’.

This becomes a power transmuter of pain. Our pain transmutes in to power. Our chaos in to clarity and all because we chose to serve simultaneously the path of ourselves and that of others.

Your ‘problem’ is your beloved’s problem. Theirs is yours. It is a journeying we can choose to grow from… Wow. Imagine that for just one moment. Instead of running, we remained in stillness, we accepted the unknown for what it was – a simple puzzle waiting to be connected to or a mystery awaiting clarity.

The only way to move is through. Imagine you chose to serve with trust and care, instead of meeting tension with tension. When someone is in pain, they are usually running, they do not know how to express and so they revert to unhealthy paradigms of expression, often leaning a trail of disaster behind them.

But only if we waiver. If we remain solid, explore the inner chasms of our own being and allow others space, we by natural movement, create space for ourselves. Healing others is healing ourselves, healing ourselves is healing others.

One is always glad to be of service.

STEFANOS SIFANDOS

Relational Alchemist, Speaker & Author