One of the biggest questions around leading circle is how to create both safety and sacredness.
So this year, I’ve set out on a deep dive into safety.
And here’s what I’ve discovered …
There was a moment in time between birth and seven years old for every human being when you perceived a threat to your sense of belonging and significance, and you developed a strategy to keep yourself safe, all depending on the age of development.
Depending on the age of development, you developed both a primary and a secondary strategy.
Steven Kessler, in his brilliant book The 5 Personality Patterns, identified the 5 strategies.
Mine is the Aggressive. There was a point around 3 years old when I felt abandoned and betrayed and made a decision that nothing could hold me, that I couldn’t trust anyone or anything.
So my entire life has felt like a battlefield where I have had to fight.
Now what’s interesting is how this strategy has been passed down through the generations … my paternal grandfather was a boxer, literally fighting for a living.
And I’ll never forget during a past life regression when I experienced being dragged upside down on a battlefield after dying from an arrow to my neck.
The aggressive pattern has been strong for me over the past six weeks – because I had the intention of understanding safety – and has especially come up in a few relationships.
One with a dear soul sister, who is a Merger in the 5 Personality Patterns and a Projector in Human Design, which is the scariest personality for me and the one I attract the most.
Because I am the tough, go getting, producing, energizer bunny, Mergers love to tap into my energy.
We recognized our patterns playing off of each other about a month ago, and have been bringing our conscious awareness to it so we can both heal.
Merging for me feels like annihilation. To surrender into oneness with another being absolutely terrifies me.
As I stepped back to create space to see the pattern clearly, she feels lost and directionless without being able to merge into me. The disconnect has felt like an annihilation to her.
While she has chosen to be within herself for deep reflection and meditation, it has brought up a lot of discomfort.
Yesterday, I shared my insight with her that she’s in exactly the right place, and she shared with me how much she’s been judging the merger. Unable to accept this part of herself, she has felt shut down.
Perhaps you can relate.
You hate an aspect of yourself, the “weak” part that goes into pattern, that self-sabotages. It’s the ego’s strategy to keep you safe.
The truth is, there is nothing wrong with you.
And that’s what I told her.
She’s afraid that in being the Merger, she is needy, clingy and potentially draining on the other person. She wants to be a contribution and not an energy sucker (my words, not hers).
I reflected back that she’s my medicine. She creates a safe place for me to be intimate with another human being, to feel deeply seen and understood.
Because that’s what the aggressive wanted as a child. I wanted to merge with my mother but couldn’t. I craved a deeper soul level connection, that feeling of oneness, that unconditional love, being held by something so much greater than myself.
So as we are leaning into and accepting our patterns, we are also learning how to navigate healthy boundaries, express our needs, and have an co-creative, mutually beneficial partnership.
The judgment is what creates the separation.
The acceptance is what creates the deep healing.
No coincidence, I read this passage yesterday in Meggan Watterson’s book Mary Magdalene Revealed:
“This power to judge keeps us in our place. Keeps us small and bottled up. Keeps us contained, restricted to the same pathways that have existed before. This is what silences us from within us. This power to judge, if it remains unrecognized, is what keeps us from ever really expressing the truth of who we are.”
Within each pattern is your medicine and your gifts.
Acceptance is the path to being your authentic self, in full embodied presence.
Tree Mallott did a beautiful meditation to come back into the space of love within your heart on yesterday’s FB LIVE, which we’ve posted here on this blog post.
And I highly recommend getting Steven Kessler’s book to learn more about your personality pattern to create safety within yourself.
Here’s a quick way to figure out which one you are:
When uncomfortable or distressed, you are more likely to:
a) freeze or try to escape (this is the leaving pattern)
b) turn to others for connection and help (this is the merging pattern)
c) hunker down and resist action (this is the enduring pattern)
d) rev up and take over (this the aggressive pattern)
e) focus on details and try to perform perfectly (this is the rigid pattern)
Buy the book >> “The 5 Personality Patterns”
Watch the podcast interview >> “Episode 34”
This is ultimately how we create safe space in circle.
When you are able to recognize your pattern and bring yourself back to presence, you create safety within yourself and then have the capacity to hold that space for others.
Free of judgment. Full of acceptance and unconditional love.
We go deeper into this in all of our training programs including How to Lead Circle …. Which is open for enrollment in just a couple weeks so stay tuned.
I’d love to hear from you … what’s your Personality Pattern? Share that on the blog here.
Love,
Tanya
PS. Next Monday is my 40th birthday! WOO HOO! I have a special gift available for you ONLY on Monday so be sure to keep an eye on your inbox to receive it.
