Whether it is in a relationship or with a job position, or even the detachment of a way of living – we all have to face the pain of separation a few times in our lives. Struggling to keep yourself standing, to make sense of the world inside and around you, are one of the biggest challenges we all face when we’re dealing with separation.

Junkie

When I walked through my city one day, I saw a man in dirty clothes sitting on the corner of a building, begging for change. He had an almost empty bottle of wine next to him, and I caught myself having the same first automatic reaction like so many others had as well: he’s an alcohol addict, he’s not worthy of my money because I find it a waste of my generosity’.

Going through a hard time myself now though, I realize that I have been my own version of ‘junkie’, too. I’ve attached myself to something outside of myself and told myself over and over that this would make me happy. A belief of course that is based on a false identification with ourselves.

Yes, I might have become a dependent on some external factor while I kept telling myself that this would make me happy or fulfilled, and so the first step is to acknowledge that I too am a junkie. Even though I’m not depending on any drug or form of alcohol, but rather a deep need for a specific emotion, having to face the fact that without it I can’t function properly or be truly fulfilled is already a huge leap in consciousness that will make the road to recovery shorter and smoother.

Understanding that this need can only be fulfilled by myself is the next step. Whether we drink, smoke, use drugs or deal with any other kind of addiction – the realization that only you yourself can fulfill that need from a point of self-love, self-acceptance and self-worth will bring you back to the responsibility you carry for your life to change it.

Detachment and separation

When we go through the pain of separation and detachment, it is not strange we face withdrawal symptoms. Again, whether it’s a withdrawal from something or someone, the need to reconnect with the old but hurtful is often times so big, that we come back to that what provides us with the ‘quick fix’ – a temporary solution outside of ourselves that will cost us dearly in the end.

I know from my own experience that I was addicted to the love and connection from my partner. I idolized her, put her on a pedestal and worshiped her every move. This worship came from the underlaying need for connection, something that I had placed on her as an expectation, rather than something coming from myself.

This is the lesson I have to learn. To rely on myself for the needs that I feel need to be provided within me. Something like this can never be fulfilled outside of ourselves, and when we hold on to the belief it does, we make ourselves dependent on others to make us happy, draining both ourselves and the others in the process.

Whether it’s the search for approval or recognition, the need for love and connection, the longing to belong or to feel truly valued, all of the things we find outside of ourselves aren’t the things we truly need in order to heal ourselves from the pain we’ve stocked within and to find the self-love and appreciation we need to move forward in our own lives.

It’s by allowing that pain to come out and to move through it, that we can heal from our own inner hurts and wounds, and see each painful situation as a solid opportunity to grow in this life.

So feel the pain, it’s there to tell you something very valuable. It’s not a negative emotion, as so often is painted by others. It’s there to inform you something needs to be changed. And in order to change it, it needs to be felt. After all, you can’t fill a cup with anything new if there’s still something old inside of it.

Feel it, let it out. Breathe. Let it out some more. And see it for what it is – a stepping stone peeling away another layer of built-up concrete that has prevented you from being who you essentially are.

The only way to separate from pain is to engage with it. The pain of separation is no exclusion in this.

To your success,

Robert