In all of my years of coaching, when it comes to relationship issues, few issues exceed emotional abuse. Most specifically, the client will ask, “I want to understand why I seem to choose the same partner, over and over.”
Good‑hearted women don’t choose an abusive partner consciously. No woman wakes up and says, “I want someone who will hurt me.” Yet many find themselves in a painful pattern: one harmful relationship followed by another, each one similar to the last. This repetition isn’t coincidence. It’s the selection of what feels familiar unconsciously, even when it isn’t healthy.
To understand this, we have to understand that in childhood we all develop coping and emotional patterns to persevere and survive our environment – and we do this perfectly, for that environment.
As we grow into adults, it is still those emotional patterns we use in every relationship. So, until changed, we never seek what is good for us; we seek what is familiar to our unconscious emotional mind because familiarity equals survivable; which is the sole goal of the unconscious emotional mind.
If a young girl perceives she’s in an environment where love’s inconsistent, affection is earned or to people-please, her emotional mind can build a blueprint: love is a reward. Sadly, that girl can even unconsciously adopt the sense that she’s not worth the love she seeks and can develop into a wonderful woman who is willing to love unconditionally, simply in hopes that someone will provide that love in return.
Unfortunately, there are many people who seek those who love unconditionally – and many of those are abusers. Good-hearted women represent the largest source of prey for these abusers because most good-hearted people have learned we are supposed to love unconditionally – which might sound great in a fairy tale but in reality, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Good-hearted women are needed in our world, now more than ever; that goodness needs protection. And that protection is the discovery of their true worth and value.
I developed a process to help clients understand how their Primary Occurrence Of Learning (POOL) created emotional patterns that can shape their perceived worth and value. In adulthood, they have the ability to create their own new and evaluated POOL rules, establishing healthier boundaries and conditions while recognizing the strength they have always had to enforce those new rules.
The patterns break when my client learns the difference between familiar and safe. When she understands that her emotional compass hasn’t been pointing toward love but toward what it has survived.
When she rewrites her POOL rules, her relationships change. She stops selecting people who match her wounds and starts choosing people who match her worth.
The result is freedom, peace, empowerment, and an amazing sense of self and purpose.
And that is the moment she becomes the she, she was always meant to be … not the one her past trained her to be.
