UNRESOLVED PAIN
You might remember the skit by Abbott and Costello, “Who’s on First?” In this classic vaudeville comedy routine, Costello is trying to figure out the names of the players on a baseball team. The problem is that the players have names like Who, What, Where, and I Don’t Know. So when Costello asks the question “Who’s on first?” Abbott answers,
“Yes.” Costello’s frustration makes for a hilarious—but for Costello, frustrating—circular conversation.
In some ways, talking about the phenomenon of a broken picker is a little like the timeless Abbott and Costello skit:
You: Why do I have a broken picker?
Me: Because you have unresolved pain.
You: How do you know I have unresolved pain?
Me: Because you have a broken picker.
See what I mean? When we get into a relationship or are choosing people to date, and we have unresolved pain, the pain shows itself. Think back to a time when you had hurt a part of your body; a leg, for example. If you sat down to watch TV, taking the pressure off the leg, the pain subsided. You may have reached the point at which you forgot your leg was hurt. It is only when you try to get up and use the leg that you feel the pain, reminding you that you have an injury.
The same is true for your heart. The pain makes itself known when you try to use it. When you form a relationship you make yourself vulnerable; you expose your wounded area. Whom we choose and how we act in a relationship indicates the level of pain that we have.
The pain that we feel as a result of our poor choice of men can be called referred pain. Referred pain is a phenomenon that occurs in the body where the pain is felt in an area different from where the actual damage is. For example, pain felt in the left shoulder and arm could very well indicate a problem with your heart. Without the accurate knowledge of referred pain, a doctor may waste precious time treating the arm. A patient could suffer damage because of this delay. Many of us are improperly diagnosing our symptoms. We are looking at the arm when our real problem is with our heart.
Our attraction to the wrong men is an indicator that a part of us needs to be healed. It is a sign that there is internal damage that needs to be addressed. If you have ever bitten the inside of your mouth, you will understand how you are strangely attracted to the very thing that brings you pain. When we have a sore spot in our mouth, our tongue naturally is attracted to that area. It is an unconscious response of the body to the pain. Over and over again, we move our tongue away from the injury, only for it to return to the damaged area the moment we stop thinking about it. Our GPS (Guy Picking System) is like that. We can try different techniques that seem to keep us away from what we know causes us pain, but they only work as long as we’re concentrating on them. Then, as soon as we stop concentrating on the solution, we find ourselves unconsciously returning to the old sore spot again. It’s not the men you are choosing that are the problem. It’s the reason you’re choosing the men you’re choosing that’s the problem.
It is important to understand that it’s our pain that is doing the picking. It is like a child who wants attention. When children can’t get positive attention, they will accept negative attention. There is a part of you that is screaming for attention, a part of you that is screaming to be healed. The more you ignore it, the more it will try to get attention any way it can.
For whatever reason—childhood abuse or trauma, past experiences, sickness, addiction, whatever—we don’t trust our own deepest feelings. We usually don’t trust them because when we were children, our feelings were discounted. We may have been told not to cry, or we were shamed for being scared. In some way you were taught that your feelings were unacceptable. Whatever the emotion was, it has become frozen inside us. Those frozen emotions become a part of us, causing us to be attracted to men who cause us pain, often for one reason only—because it feels familiar. When we release these old feelings, we are freed up for real love. Love is truly our heart’s desire.
HUNGRY FOR LOVE
Love is one of our most basic needs. It is such a basic human requirement that an infant will die from the lack of it, the same as if it were denied food or water. (This was observed in Europe after World War II, when infants whose parents had been killed were placed in orphanages where they received clean clothing, food, and shelter, but no real love. Those who did live often grew up to exhibit extreme antisocial behaviors due to inability to love. Love is that important.)
When we grow up in a home that provides ample amounts of love, and we can assimilate that love into our being, we can learn to love ourselves. We have an inborn capacity and desire for love. Our experience with parental love prepares us to both give and receive love. If you come from a dysfunctional family or have a family trauma such as divorce or death, your ability to love may be affected. You may have become “love-starved,” feeling like something is missing, something is wrong and you don’t know what it is.
We search outside ourselves for ways to fill this love void. Besides looking for love in men, who may simply reopen the same wounds and deprivations of our early life, we may try other things, such as drugs, alcohol, shopping, and even careers. When we are love-starved, we are constantly looking for ways to fill the need; yet, paradoxically, because it’s the only way we know how due to our early “conditioning,” we often look for the love we crave in the same patterns of relationships that caused us to feel love-starved in the first place. We may temporarily find what passes for love in our minds, but it never seems to be either the right kind or the right amount. We need to find a source that doesn’t run out. By developing self-love and trust in the universe, you never have to feel empty again. This trust in the universe begins with reprogramming your thoughts and beliefs.
NEGATIVE PROGRAMMING—REPROGRAMMING YOUR PAST
Computer programmers have a saying: “Garbage in, garbage out.” It means that if initial data input is faulty, the resulting program will be faulty, too.
The same is true for us. You can’t expect to be serene, confident, and contented when you are walking around all day telling yourself that the world sucks or that you can’t expect any good to come from it. We may never put these feelings into actual words, or even allow ourselves to be very conscious of these thoughts. Unfortunately for many of us, the negative programming is very deep-seated, and we do an excellent job of hiding it from ourselves. It’s based on old experiences and beliefs, ones that are often antiquated, incorrect, and, maybe most importantly—unconscious.
Maybe this negative programming is even based on very early misunderstandings in our lives. But for some reason we just keep replaying these negative tapes over and over in our minds, using them as guidelines even when we know they cause us pain. These are the voices that you hear throughout your day, the words spoken by your mom, your dad, your third-grade teacher, the bully down the block, or even someone else whom you may have loved—or feared or hated—very deeply. These are the voices that trip us up.
These are the voices that have us quitting before we even try.
My self-defeating beliefs are based on the things I tell myself.