What do we do when we feel discarded? What is the rationale we use inside to deal with this harsh experience? We often tell ourselves that we are no longer valuable when a relationship changes shape or ends. Especially if they were the ones that changed or ended that relationship. We may feel discarded as we grow up when our caregivers change how they show us their love. We may feel discarded in our middle-age, thinking that we need to look and act a certain way to still be considered ‘valuable’. The story we often hear from our ego is that we are somehow not enough (loveable enough, young enough, rich enough, smart enough, connected enough, experienced enough, etc.), and this is why we have been ‘discarded’.
If we buy into this story of ‘not enough’, we open ourselves up to be judged and discarded by others based on this inner story we believe is true. We look to their response to us (did they discard us?) as the evidence of our limiting belief about our ‘enough-ness’. What if there is another way?
Most of us were taught that what others think of us is even more important than what we think of ourselves. We have been trained to look to another’s response and reaction to us, to see how we are doing. When we say, do, or think what we want, we monitor it’s ‘OKAY-ness’ in how others react – interested, bored, uncomfortable, engaged, satisfied, or disappointed. We make it all about us! As if we have the power to affect others in such a way. The reality is everyone is caught in the same game looking outside of themselves to get the validation, approval, love, support, and acceptance that they didn’t get as a child. Everyone looking outside to see if they are OK based on another’s response is at the heart of feeling discarded.
When we realize that we are creating our own experience both on the inside and outside, we start to move our attention away from how others are responding to us, and over to our inner response about them. We begin to honor what feels best to us and stop discarding our own needs and wants with the false hope of getting them met by others. Here is a wonderful 15 min meditation from Abraham Hicks to help you shift this old perspective.
Our inner child is terrified to fly free and share its authentic self when it believes the ego’s old story of how it’s not enough. The logic is, if it shares who we really are, then it will be discarded. It’s up to us to make sure that our inner child’s needs are never discarded by becoming the inner parent. You can honor your inner child’s needs by inviting it to share how it feels about other people. When you use how it feels as the context, you can make decisions that are most loving to you in each situation. Doing what is most loving for that inner child is that antidote to feeling discarded. No one can discard us –WE only turn away from our own needs and self-care.
How will you stop discarding yourself today?
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