The world works in mysterious ways. We will never find out how somebody else’s mind works. The only thing you can figure out is yourself, and even that is a very hard thing to do for most people.

When you are, or have been, in a relationship with somebody who is avoidant attached, you are probably searching everywhere for answers.

Why couldn’t they let your love in? Why were they so hard to get close to? Why did they just discard you like that?

The truth will be somewhere in the middle, but I am speaking from my own experience in this article. I am a former fearful-avoidant, and I know exactly what effect I used to have on people.

I hope to give you some insights into how our brains work through this post.

Attachment styles are not the enemy

Since I can remember, I have always believed in the One. I don’t believe the One is perfect, nor do I believe there is only one One. I think the right people enter your life at the right moment.

And also exit at the right moment.

This human life is meant to make our Souls grow, and we grow the most in the biggest pain. It’s unfortunate, but this is generally how it works.

When I was 21 years old, I tried to be with somebody who was dismissive-avoidant, and it was very hard. I had no idea about attachment styles back then, and all I did was blame that guy for having commitment issues. I didn’t look at myself and what my role in the relationship was. I behaved very anxiously during that experience.

Now, 17 years later, I know exactly what was going on, since I am on the other side of the spectrum now. I think the experience of trying to be with him made me more avoidant afterwards; I did not want to allow myself to get hurt so much again.

But the truth was: He was just not that into me. And he did me a favor by pushing me away.

The fear of being alone

Our society is built around finding a partner. We feel like we failed if we haven’t found somebody, and most of us are settling for less. Yes, relationships take work, but being with the wrong person is worse.

I was single for a long time and never understood the girls who dreamt of princess weddings. Of course, I also had the fantasy of meeting my forever partner, but I was never afraid to be alone. Lonely, yes — but alone, no.

I actually loved being independent. It made me able to travel the world from a young age, thrive alone as a woman, and not depend on anyone else for my happiness.

Was my attachment style part of this? Sure. There was a time I was actually grateful to be avoidantly attached. Nobody could come close enough to hurt me. I was 100% responsible for my own life.

My first committed relationship

Read more

My whole life, I have encountered so-called ‘spiritual people’ on my journey. I was intrigued by them and wondered what they knew that I didn’t. I couldn’t understand the paranormal experiences they went through.

Part of me found it all bullshit; they repelled me as much as they sparked my curiosity. No matter where I went in the world and which places I chose as my new home, I always got faced with these truth seekers and enlightened souls. I must have attracted them for some reason.

To be honest, they scared me. I didn’t want to believe that there is more in this world than what I could perceive with my own eyes. I never had mystical experiences or truth revelations; why are they the ‘chosen ones’ that get to go deeper than what lies on the surface?

Mystical experiences

Surely, I have tried psychedelics and felt ecstatic as well. Sometimes those substances gave me glimpses of what goes beyond our physical world, but I knew those were just the effects of the drugs. They couldn’t fool me.

Until six years ago, when I moved to Mexico. I have always been different from the rest. I always rebelled against society and couldn’t fit in the mold they designed for me.

I traveled for ten years, seeking a place where I belonged. I tried to work a normal job in Amsterdam for a while too, but it slowly ate away at my whole spirit until I could no longer pretend that I would ever fit in. So I left my country (The Netherlands) again in search of what I now know was inside of me all along.

What is a spiritual awakening?

I had never even heard of the term spiritual awakening until my brother pointed out to me: “I think you are going through an awakening”. I shrugged and didn’t pay much attention to it, knowing that he was keen on watching a lot of YouTube videos.

But something funny happened in the months to come. I was losing my backpacker identity completely and could not fit in with the travelers anymore either. I felt lost again and had the desire to really get to know myself. Who the hell was I?? I Googled ‘spiritual awakening‘, and everything became clear.

Fast forward two years later, after going through the Dark Night of the Soul, I am totally aware of the power of a spiritual awakening. And with that came awareness of why I previously got so repelled by most of the ‘spiritual people’. Many of them weren’t truly awakened; they were using it merely to make themselves feel better than others.

10 Signs Your Spiritual Awakening Is Real

So how do you know if you went through a true spiritual awakening or have just fallen victim to another identity escape?

1. You have a sincere desire to help others

Really helping others can only happen when you have first helped yourself. How can you give advice on going through a severe depression or dark night of the soul, if you haven’t been there yourself?

You have to first focus on your own self-love before you can help others. This means spending time NOT helping others. Many “awakened” people make it their duty to give others (unsolicited) advice, just because it gives them the identity of the healer.

This is not truly helping others; it just distracts you from healing your own wounds.

2. You feel the extreme need to protect Mother Earth

If you are truly awakened, you can feel the pain our nature is going through. Hurting her means hurting yourself.

So how can you be awakened if you still have the need to always buy things? Or to drive in huge cars that are super polluting? Or to take airplanes to every corner of the world every week or month? Or to cut down precious trees to build your massive home? Or to renew your wardrobe every season?

A real spiritual awakening would show you that these things directly link to damaging our Earth, and your Soul would hurt if you take part in it.

3. You trust your intuition

Trusting your intuition is not at all easy or straightforward, and it’s extremely hard to distinguish intuition from fear. But after a real awakening, you have learned that your intuition is always right if you learn to listen to its voice. Follow your own truth and don’t follow the common good, even though that would be a lot easier.

Being awakened means you will have to fight for your opinion, because most people will think the opposite. It’s so easy to doubt yourself and disappear in the masses, but your gut feeling will tell you if something is off. Trust that intuition and don’t let others convince you that it’s not right.

4. You can be happy alone

Our whole lives, we have been conditioned to find happiness outside of ourselves. First, you need to get your high school diploma, then study something that will give you a promising career, find the love of your life, get married, and have babies. And at the same time, you need your own beautiful house, be successful, and also have a lot of friends.

No wonder we get super anxious when we are completely alone with none of these external achievements. But exactly in that space of being alone, you will learn how to be happy with just yourself. The way you truly are, with everything else stripped away.

This will most likely feel like a complete and utter loneliness, and that is exactly what a true spiritual awakening teaches you. Sit with yourself and learn how to be completely happy alone. Not just for a few hours, but plan days or even weeks without the need to constantly connect to anyone.

5. You can reach your Higher Self

If you are somewhat familiar with meditation and other forms of inner work, you have probably encountered your higher self (or God/Spirit/Universe/Source) at some point. This is so addictive to most people that they will try to find that state of mind all the time.

Drinking potion after potion, focusing on ritual after ritual, spending 1000s of dollars on retreats, crystal healings, sound meditation, natural medicine, light work, spirit guide readings, energy cleansing… the list goes on and on.

And I am not saying they are not a facilitator. But after a true awakening, you don’t need these external things to reach your Higher Self anymore. You simply know that it is always there with you, ready to guide you in times that you really need it.

You realise that you can’t achieve a permanent higher state, as our lower days are also part of life. It would be better to spend your money on things that help the collective instead of throwing it at all those self-proclaimed “gurus”.

6. You don’t force your awakening on others

I get it, you see the light, and you want everybody to know what you have been through. You completely change your appearance and bombard your social media with energy updates and enlightened advice.

You go around and tell all your friends to drink ayahuasca and join you on your quest to heal the world. But with a true spiritual awakening, you will naturally inspire people to follow your advice.

People don’t recognise from the outside if someone is awakened or not, but they will feel it. They will be drawn to you.

Forcing your awakening and telling everybody how woke you are is just another form of ego satisfaction. It gives you an identity, and that is exactly what you were meant to lose during your spiritual awakening.

7. You respect everyone’s journey

Not everybody will go through a spiritual awakening, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some people don’t need to wake up to feel happy and to contribute to a better world. If you look down on people who are “not there yet”, your ego has won.

If you feel better than those around you, that is anything but woke. A true awakening will reveal the interconnectedness between all life on Earth, whether awake or not. You accept that everyone is on their own path and they might never need to be or get where you are. Their role is different on this planet, and that is totally fine too.

8. You embrace your shadows

Life is not all love and light and blessings. There will be dark days and feelings of loss and loneliness. We can’t escape it or meditate away from it. In fact, the darker days probably make you grow the most.

During a true awakening, you learn to face and embrace your shadows. You want to find out where they came from, how they have developed, and what they can teach you. We all have a shadow side, and nobody is perfect.

Accept your own shadows, and you won’t get triggered so much by other people’s darkness.

9. You always act out of love

It’s easy to hate someone or blame the situation if something bad happens to you. But if you make love your first language, you will understand that that approach will give you the most inner peace.

Try not to judge others before knowing what they have been through. Even if people have done you wrong, forgive them and send love their way. They are obviously lacking it in their life, so it doesn’t help them to make them into an enemy.

Maybe those bad things happened to you because you needed to wake up. Once you can see gratitude in all of the difficult situations that life is throwing your way, you are truly awakened.

10. You are able to let go of money, power, and ego

A lot of “awakened” people have the need to share their lessons with the world. They start YouTube channels, build websites, and sell courses on how to be enlightened. They fail to see that they are just building another legacy for their ego.

Will you still feel enlightened when you lose that whole new spiritual identity?

When nobody would listen to your words and follow your advice? A truly awakened person doesn’t have the desire to tell the world how enlightened they are. They will simply share their teachings without wanting to be acknowledged for it, for whoever wants to listen to it.

We all are the Chosen Ones

Once you have had one mystical experience or vision, it’s so easy and tempting to shape your life around spirituality and awakening. But don’t fall victim to the addiction that is called Enlightenment.

You are not the Chosen One; we all are.

You might also like this article:

Two years ago, I lost $2,000 USD in a scam. I had booked an apartment on an online booking platform (Booking), which turned out to be published by scammers. My card got charged in a foreign currency that I didn’t know the exchange rate for. And because I entered my PIN the moment I was charged, when I was physically in the apartment, the bank couldn’t help me get it back.

Two thousand dollars is a lot of money for me. I had saved that money to enjoy a month of remote working in the Dominican Republic. And it was gone in a second.

Money is a major theme in my life. I am afraid to spend it. I have always lived on a budget, and I am always losing hours of my time to find the best deals just to save a few bucks. A part of me believes I will end up poor if I spend money.

So, as soon as I realized my account had been charged such a high amount, the previous version of me would have panicked. But the current version of me — the one who has done a lot of inner work —  took a deep breath and took a step back from the situation.

I told myself everything happens for a reason. Did it suck? Yes, big time. Would my life be in danger by losing this? No.

Inviting gratefulness

I started to invite gratefulness into my mind. At least I had this money. Many people can’t even lose that amount, because they simply don’t even have it. Especially in a country like the Dominican Republic, where people make an average of $340 USD a month.

I felt very grateful that nothing worse happened. I could have been raped, brutally robbed, and even killed. After all, I had gotten into a strange pimped-up car with two young tattooed guys who were supposed to bring me to the apartment (I know, stupid move). I was at their full disposal the moment their car door closed with me in the backseat.

Maybe the Universe had done me a favor for letting them take just $2,000 USD, instead of my body or my life. I would never know what could have happened if my card hadn’t worked, or if my bank had blocked the transaction. It was something to be grateful for.

The life lesson that everyone should follow

This story is a simple example of a big life lesson that will make living a lot easier for everyone.

Stop trying to control things.

Controlling a situation will only make it worse. You cannot control anything in life. Whether that’s being dumped, losing money, not landing the job you wanted, getting fired, losing a loved one … you simply can’t control it.

Life slips out of your hands when you try to control things. Alan Watts called this ‘trying to grip water’. Instead, let it flow the way it wants to. There is a silver lining in every situation that comes your way. Maybe something incredible happens because your worst fear came true.

The Universe never takes something from you without replacing it with something better.

But as long as you try to control the situation, you won’t have space for that better thing to enter.

I have countless examples of people I know who can’t let go of control. They try everything in their power to achieve what they think they want. Some are chasing that dream job, some are jumping through countless medical hoops to get pregnant, some are spending thousands of dollars and hours trying to get their business off the ground.

And the only result is more anxiety. More desire for that thing they are trying to achieve. In the meantime, they don’t see that everything happens at the perfect time.

How often do you hear people getting pregnant the moment they gave up? How many times have you heard a story that during somebody's greatest misery, their biggest blessing entered their life?

Flow with life

My boss, who took his house off the market because he got so frustrated, sold it for more than he was asking for a few months later (and then regretted it). My coworker, who was told she could only get pregnant with IVF, naturally conceived her second child a year after the painful procedure for her firstborn. My friend, who got suddenly fired from her dream job, started her own business and is now making six figures.

It’s not easy to let go of control. After all, it makes you feel safe to think you are behind the steering wheel.

It made me feel safe not to spend money, but the anxiety of losing it was always present. And then I lost it all.

The Universe has a funny way of teaching us things that will make us grow. Whatever you desire outside yourself is a recipe for failure. Because the truth is, when you achieve that actual thing, you will realize that it isn’t bringing you the happiness you desired.

Instead, allow life to bring you everything you need at the exact right time. If you can’t find the perfect partner, stop the chase and use this time to work on yourself. If you get fired, take an honest look at why it happened and start to improve that part of yourself first. And if there is really nothing you did wrong, be grateful to not have that toxic job anymore.

If you get dumped, accept it and learn from the heartbreak. If your business keeps failing, maybe it’s time to try a completely different path or work for a company again for a while.

You don’t need what you think you need

My whole life, I’ve tried to control my spending. Losing so much money in a stupid scam made me take an honest look at my financial life. What was the real lesson behind this situation?

Of course, it goes deeper for me than just losing that money. For me, money equals freedom.

I’ve been traveling the world for the last 15 years and have never earned more than 15K a year. I am 38 years old, have seen 50+ countries, have lived on sailing yachts, spent nights in million-dollar homes, and never had a full-time job for more than one year since my mid-twenties.

Why did I think I needed to save all my money? The Universe was already gifting me all these incredible experiences without even having money in the first place.

Life has always provided me with whatever I wanted, naturally. When I started to get greedy and kept the money that I did have for myself, this lesson happened.

Money is energy and should flow. I stopped the flow by trying to keep it safe.

Embrace your biggest fear

So the Universe forced the money out of me. And I couldn’t have done anything to control it. In fact, control would have made the situation worse. I would have spent the rest of my vacation trying to get the money back. I would have been pissed at the Dominican Republic for ‘ruining’ my month away. I would have made angry phone calls to my bank to rectify the situation, making me feel even more out of control.

But instead, I made a conscious effort to be grateful. Grateful for even having the opportunity to spend a month in a beautiful country. Grateful for having had that money in my bank account in the first place. Grateful for still being alive and not traumatized by all the worse things that could have happened to me in that apartment.

And especially grateful for not trying to control the situation, like a previous version of me would have done. Who knows what good will come out of it eventually? Maybe that money saved a person’s life in the Dominican Republic.

But as long as I’m trying to control it, new doors can’t be opened.

Control is a protection mechanism

I’m not saying you should let go of all the reins and never take action anymore. Conscious effort is different than control.

But wanting to control situations that are out of your hands is an inner core wound. Probably, in your younger years, it didn’t feel safe to just let life happen. So you promised yourself you wouldn’t accept that as an adult. You never want to feel that insecurity anymore, and you want to protect yourself from things happening to you.

But what if everything happens for you?

My money fear doesn’t come from being poor. My fear stems from an emotional money wound that I had deep inside of me, from the way my family handled money and how my mum was completely financially dependent on my dad. I wanted to save all my money so that I didn’t have to depend on anyone ever.

That is where more inner work needs to be done for me.

How to let things flow?

It’s easier said than done to let things flow. But I promise you that life will get so much easier when you do. Many surprises will come your way that you wouldn’t have dreamt of.

It might not be the thing you wanted so badly, but it’s the thing you needed. Try to see a lesson in every situation, and don’t force things. Practice letting go with meditation and mindfulness, and be present in the current moment.

Nothing in the future will make you happy. Life happens right now. Breathe in, breathe out, and let go of control.

If you’re craving a deeper connection with yourself and feel ready to begin again, I highly recommend this course*. If you’re longing for a reset, this might be just what you need.

This article might also inspire you:

*I earn a percentage if you purchase this course, which makes me keep doing what I love: to write more articles! I don’t recommend anything that I don’t genuinely believe in. Thanks so much in advance for supporting me :)

I believe that before we come to Earth, significant moments that will happen in our lives are already planned. If this sounds crazy to you, bear with me. I also believed for a very long time that everything is a coincidence and there is no ‘higher power’ orchestrating our lives.

But too many unexplainable things happened to me to keep believing that thought. And, to be honest, believing that there is a Universe guiding us made my life so much easier and more pleasant.

Now I know that everything happens for a reason. Everything that has an impact on us is meant to make us grow.

Relationships are our ultimate mirrors

As soon as we are born, we are part of a relationship. If it’s not with your own parents, it’s with the people who take care of us. These early relationship experiences shape how we will love as adults.

If our childhood relationships were chaotic, we will subconsciously search for that in our romantic partners as well. These types of relationships can be extremely challenging because they are meant to make us grow.

They are meant to expose us to our early attachment wounds, so we can heal our own patterns. Often, those relationships are karmic and come to help us release old stuff.

The key is to learn from them and to let go when the time is right.

When the old Self dies

Those relationships are no coincidence. You signed a contract with that Soul before you came to Earth. You were going to meet them at some point, no matter what. The Universe made your paths cross, and all your previous decisions led up to that (the ‘Butterfly Effect’).

And when you meet, there is an incredible force at play that can’t keep you away from them. That is because we attract the same people as the frequency we send out.

When you are meant to learn some lessons, those lessons will come with those challenging relationships.

The result is that your old Self starts to die.

This is a sacred process. Everything you thought you once knew starts to fade away. You are being stripped of the old version of you to let the new one come in.

Your soul is preparing you

Read more

I believe that we choose to come to Earth to learn some lessons, and this might include becoming (or being in love with someone who is) avoidant-attached.

Attachment styles are rooted in childhood, and whether you are anxious or avoidant, these are powerful lessons that are tough to overcome. But there is a lot of growth in having an insecure attachment style.

You probably feel everything much more deeply, which could be a blessing or a curse.

The sensitivity of avoidants

Avoidants were usually very sensitive children and felt everything profoundly. But their circumstances made them have to retreat into themselves, because their sensitivity was not appreciated.

I speak from personal experience here, as I was a very sensitive girl with a parent who was often extremely angry. I learned that feeling everything so deeply was hurting me even more, so I figured out a way to protect myself.

But this came with a cost. I had built thick walls around myself to protect myself from any emotion, but that also included the good ones.

It turned me into an adult with a Fearful Avoidant attachment style: I was craving deep love, but also very afraid of it.

Subscribe now

When the avoidant starts healing

When I was 32 years old and with a trail of broken hearts behind me (my own as well as those of others), I met someone whom I call one of my soulmates. He was the ultimate mirror to the parts of myself I didn’t want to face.

I believe the Universe brings certain souls together to help each other grow, and that is why those connections are so intense. These types of soulmates often stir up emotions we didn’t even know existed, and bring out a pain that’s almost unbearable to face.

But it’s exactly in that pain where we can meet ourselves. And when that happens to an avoidant, that is often the start of their healing journey.

When is the avoidant ready for love?

As a former avoidant myself, I know how hard it is to love people like us. We push people with good intentions away and attract the hard ones who represent our childhood wounds.

This is because there is something unhealed in us. When a secure partner is standing in front of us and we haven’t worked on ourselves yet, we don’t know how to receive that love.

But an avoidant who is aware of their own patterns can actively heal themselves. It’s all a matter of recognizing their triggers and the will to change them.

Signs the avoidant is changing

It all starts with awareness. It’s when the ego softens, and the soul starts to take over.

Here are 6 signs the avoidant is healing:

1. They stop needing to control the connection

The ego releases the need for control when it starts trusting the unconscious. An aware avoidant knows that the soul is the ultimate guide, and their need for control is just the ego trying to protect them.

They have learned to create emotional safety for themselves, and they no longer need distance to feel safe.

You can recognize this because they will stay with the discomfort instead of withdrawing. Emotional closeness still feels scary, but at least they don’t walk away from it.

2. They acknowledge their fear of love

It’s very hard for an avoidant to change when they are not even aware they are avoidant. But once they are, they will also acknowledge that there is deep-rooted fear for love in them.

They start to recognize that their distance stems from this fear, and not because they are not interested. And by admitting the fear, it becomes lighter instantly. Their shadow is ready to be taken to the light, and you can tell because they become more vulnerable and open up to their partner.

However, their partner still needs to be aligned, and sometimes disinterest signals unalignment.

3. Feeling becomes more present than thinking

When the avoidant is healing, they shift from analyzing emotions to feeling them. Avoidants are experts in dissecting their own emotions and putting everything in neat boxes.

But when they are aware, these emotions start running through the body. They might cry more or become more sensitive again.

They start to share more about their inner world and express tenderness without feeling shame. This marks the reactivation of the heart chakra.

4. They take accountability

Avoidants are master deflectors. They often blame others for having feelings or being too sensitive. But deep inside, the avoidant feels the same sensitivity; they were just always punished for it.

An aware avoidant takes responsibility for their actions and apologizes when they react out of line.

They actively take a look at their own patterns and want to heal. Self-responsibility is a massive marker that someone is healing (not just for avoidants, by the way).

You can recognize this because they bring up issues again and don’t try to hide them. And they stay emotionally available after talking through it.

5. They choose connection over independence

Independence is the avoidant’s middle name, and they often wear it proudly. Many avoidants don’t let anybody change that because it’s where they feel the safest.

But an avoidant who is healing knows that connection ultimately is more important than independence. They no longer idolize isolation as safety.

There comes a moment in the avoidant’s life when they see everybody around them building connections, except them. That’s when they often start questioning their own behavior and want to change.

6. Love wins even when it feels risky

Carl Jung says that the greatest act of courage is loving despite the possibility of loss. And all insecure attachment styles are actually a fear of abandonment or rejection.

Avoidants are secretly afraid to lose somebody when they finally choose to love them. So to avoid that, they avoid love altogether.

A healing avoidant knows that real love isn’t risk-free, but they still choose to try it. We never know what is going to happen to the people we love, but the fact that we are allowed to love them is already a gift.

You know that an avoidant is changing when they choose love instead of retreating into defense mechanisms.

The vibration of an avoidant who is on a healing journey

It’s not easy to heal your attachment style, but the first step is awareness. If we are not aware of why we avoid love, we can never address it either. For me, shadow work was the ultimate tool to become aware of my own patterns. I even created my own shadow journal now, based on all the things that really helped me.

An avoidant probably heals in small doses and often feels the need to retreat again. But little by little, they send a signal to the Universe: “I am ready now.”

And the Universe always responds to vibration. Nobody will feel safe for an avoidant if they don’t feel safe in themselves first.

You simply cannot love somebody out of their traumas.

What happens after an avoidant heals themselves?

It may take years for an avoidant to truly heal, but it is possible. I have been avoidant for 32 years of my life without realizing it, and now, at age 38, my attachment tests finally come back as secure.

But the true test comes when you are in a relationship with someone. However, the avoidant who has healed now attracts a different type of partner. Whereas before they magnetized towards anxious people, now they realize that that dynamic is probably very toxic.

If you are anxious and you read this, please be aware that it’s very unlikely that a healed avoidant stays with you, simply because they attract secure partners now.

Are you anxiously attached?

All you can do when you are anxious is also heal yourself. Don’t wait for somebody else to change. Healing together with your avoidant partner creates a very strong bond. It’s not all on them; you also have an insecure attachment style for a reason.

My shadow work journal is a great tool for anxious people as well because it exposes both sides of the story.

It is available as a digital download or as a print journal, in case you are interested in checking it out.

I am a big fan of self-awareness, and that awareness brought me back to the sensitive girl I have been hiding all this time. After all, we can only heal ourselves, never the other person.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”
 — Eden Ahbez

This article might resonate with you as well:

The “Particle Theory” is something that has been sitting in my mind since I can remember. Maybe it was put there by the Universe, as information that I had to share with the world at some point.

I never felt called to write about it, though, as I don’t consider myself spiritually advanced or enlightened by any means. I have a lot of things to learn on the spiritual path, and the more I read/watch/consume, the more I realize I know nothing.

It overwhelms me sometimes. Will there ever be a moment when I have learned enough to understand life? Will humans ever be able to truly understand life? There are so many great teachers and spiritual leaders out there, some who have spent years and years in silent meditation, or a lifetime of research about consciousness and how the mind works.

Every day since my own spiritual transformation, I am in awe of the number of things we just don’t know. I am in awe of the teachings that plant medicine has given me so far. I am in awe of the thousands of secrets that ancient constructions and indigenous cultures hold for us.

Is all religion the same?

The more I learn about different religions, the more I realize how incredibly similar they are. It all comes down to putting the things we can’t understand into a compelling story. A story that can provide a guide to many people on how to navigate this complicated thing called Life.

Religions are born between people but exist on a much higher plane. It is no coincidence that many religions have a prophet (whether that be a person or a spirit) and an ascension. Is this information that has been shared from a place outside of ourselves?

Or are we all holding that same prophet inside our mind, body, and Soul? Are we trying to explain something with external reasoning, while the answers are inside each of us all along?

The Spiritual Particle Theory

First things first: The Particle Theory I am about to share already exists in scientific models, called “Particle Theory of Matter”. I don’t know if the “spiritual” Particle Theory I am writing here is my personal theory or somebody else’s, or maybe even Universal’s. It might have been written by somebody else already that I did not know about (if so, please let me know in the comments!).

The Particle Theory is some piece of information that has been inside my brain since I can remember. I’ve shared it with some close friends before, and they all said it could make total sense to explain the purpose of life. I don’t know what is moving me to share it now, since I consider myself a complete novice on these types of things.

But if this is information that was put in my mind by something greater than myself, who am I to keep it hidden? I am not writing this because I think I am enlightened or want recognition or something like that; to the contrary, actually. But it might resonate with just one reader and give meaning to their life.

So let’s get to it.

Our Souls consist of many different particles

The Particle Theory is based on the idea that every Soul living on this planet is made up of an X amount of particles. Let’s say for humans this is 1000 particles, just for the sake of illustrating how it works.

The moment the Soul is born into a human body is the moment that these 1000 particles metabolize. These pieces come from different realms, previous lives, their parents, animals, and plants.

So one newborn baby could, for example, have 300 particles given by their parents. Then another 300 particles from previous humans who lived on Earth over different centuries. Plus 100 particles from spirits and other ‘beings’ in Universes we don’t even know about. And then 100 particles from a specific sort of animal or plant, and finally 200 empty particles that serve as a blank slate.

The actual amount of the various particles varies for each living being. A mouse might have only 100 particles in total, for example.

The percentages of each type of particle are different for each human as well. For example, if one particular baby has 100 “dog” particles, it means he received these 100 particles from different dogs that lived before him. There is a high chance he will love dogs and resonate a lot with them. Somebody with only 20 dog particles might not be interested in dogs at all.

If the baby has been given very traumatic particles from previous lives (whether from humans, animals, or plants), this person might have to deal with a lot of diseases and mental health issues. If their parents have a lot of unprocessed emotions, this will show up in the baby too as they receive some of their parents’ particles.

Maybe some babies are born with a lot of “previous life” particles, which could explain why some people remember their past lives.

Or if the baby has a high amount of “plant” particles, they might feel called to protect nature and could be more introverted.

Our human purpose explained with the Particle Theory

Humans have always been trying to understand life.

What is the purpose of it all? Why are we born and then die? What happens before and after living? There must be a reason for being alive, right?

The Particle Theory can explain this. Since every human is born with those (imaginary) 1000 particles, a lot of these particles are out of sync. I like to call them red and green particles. Red means there is trauma stored in them that wants to be resolved (negative particles),  and green means they are healthy particles and positive. Of course, it’s not so black-and-white, but just to give an example.

Green particles are compassionate, empathetic, generous, caring, and generally loving. Red particles are anxious, greedy, toxic, destructive, and egocentric.

This could explain why there are positive and negative humans. We all know those people who just suck the energy out of you, and their only goal is to take, take, take. These people might have a lot of red particles stored in them.

And then there are positive people  who are giving, protecting the Earth, holding space for others, and feel really nice to be around. They have a big amount of green particles.

So what then is our purpose with all this?

As humans, our purpose is to transform our red particles into green.

We can do this because every human can be an alchemist. We hold the power to understand our red (traumatized) particles, give them love and attention, and make them better.

The red particles inside ourselves are not always ours to begin with, but it’s our duty to transform them. And sometimes even our original green particles can turn red because of things happening to us throughout our lives. Things that traumatize us.

It’s our purpose to alchemize them  because if we don’t, the moment we die, these particles get released again. If we have 80% red particles at that moment, this would mean that those particles all come back onto our planet being red. Meaning more trauma and more work to transform for the next person.

If we release 80% green particles, we directly give tools to the next person (who could be our own personal incarnation again) to make the remaining red particles better.

The Ascension of humanity

If you are somewhat spiritual, you probably heard of the notion that We Are All One. How does this work with the Particle Theory?

What if humanity in itself is just one entity? We could be all separate humans but part of that bigger entity. Maybe only humanity as a whole can ascend. And Ascension only happens when there are 100% green particles.

This might be the same ascension that nearly every religion speaks about. Whether you call it Heaven, Nirvana, Samadhi, Jannah, Zion, Valhalla, Paradise, or Garden of Eden — it’s all the same.

However, we never reach that state if not all of humanity ascends. Our particles just keep coming back over and over again, until we alchemize them into green and thus positive.

Our only job as humans is to transform our given particles. To give love to everyone and everything around us. To not damage the Earth (she is part of the Ascension!). To not hurt other living things, like animals and plants.

Love can heal everything.

During all my psychedelic healing ceremonies, there was always one answer: LOVE. With a lack of love, we spiral into negativity and do bad things. With an abundance of love, we thrive, shine, and feel happy.

So if love is so powerful, it also has the power to transform our red particles. You just have to acknowledge them, embrace them, and heal them. Healing can be done with therapy, plant medicine, inner child work, shadow work, psychedelics, etc.

There comes a moment when the majority of your particles tip over the edge from red to green, and that is the moment you start to feel amazing. That is that blissful state so many ‘enlightened’ people talk about.

Because that might be the reward for following your purpose. As long as you keep your red particles red, or worse, make your green particles red (by lying, deceiving, stealing, and hurting others/yourself), you will feel bad about yourself.

The duality in our humanness

No amount of money, status, or power will make you feel good if your red particles overrule, meaning you will never reach that state of bliss.

But the sad truth is that humans with an overload of red particles don’t recognize this. They are so lost in achieving external things that they fail to follow their purpose. Many of them die unhappy, releasing 1000s of red particles into the atmosphere again.

The next person who receives those particles has even more work to do to transform them. Could this be the reason that our planet is slowly dying? Is it harder for every generation to transform its red particles? Resulting in the destruction of all the beauty around us?

The paradox of duality

Some might say that duality needs to exist in our world. That we need dark in order to see light. That we need murderers, psychopaths, and rapists in order to see the good that exists on the other side.

I am not sure how to answer this. All I see is that we as humanity are living further and further away from what really matters. We take more from the Earth than she can handle, and eventually we will kill ourselves with this mentality.

We don’t live in sync with nature like indigenous tribes used to do. We don’t listen to our wise elderly anymore;  instead, we put them into nursing homes to let them fade away.

If you ask me, there is something significantly wrong with the way we live our lives. Maybe it’s because we as humans generally have more red particles nowadays.

How can we transform?

All the hurt on this planet is caused by others doing harm to others. People with a lot of trauma might become narcissists, hurting many around them. And most trauma is caused by people around you. You don’t inflict trauma on yourself; it happened to you at some point. Or you incarnated it from all those red particles that were released before you were born. Whatever the reason for your amount of red particles, you only have one job: transform them.

I personally think that we just have to live by one principle: respect yourself and those around you. If you lie, steal, kill, cheat, or manipulate…  that is not respect. That will eventually come back to you. You might even come back as that exact same person you hurt in your next life (or at least, receive their particles).

Instead, if we give love and respect to those around us (even the ones who hurt us), we slowly transform our red particles into the green. This includes respecting yourself: if you hate yourself for whatever reason, your red particles cannot transform.

Hating yourself can manifest itself in excessive drinking/drugs, lack of physical activity, eating bad foods, and not giving attention to your mental health. Your body is your closest ally — start by respecting that first. Love yourself before you try to heal others. Understand your trauma and triggers and go back to them.

That is how we can heal. That is alchemy.

If you liked this post, this article might resonate with you as well:

I have lived most of my life trying to escape. When I was 16 years old, I knew: I was never going to stay in the Netherlands (my home country). When I turned 19, I packed my bags and moved to the USA. What followed were 15 years of going in and out of multiple countries. Sometimes back home, sometimes to the other side of the world.

I was always ready to move on, to start somewhere new. I made friends easily, and I said goodbye just as easily (hello, avoidant attachment style!).

What I didn’t know back then was that I was running away from myself. The pain that had gripped me in the Netherlands just ran with me.

So, of course, I had to meet somebody who would make me face myself.

You are calling certain experiences into your life

I wish I knew back then that everything that caused me harm was not to punish me. It was to hold up a mirror. Once you realize that every experience is a way to make you grow, everything starts making so much more sense.

Read more

Imagine this: you meet somebody who ticks all your boxes. Their energy is magnetic, and around them you feel like you are home. All you want is to be with them, and thinking of a life without them is almost unbearable.

You light up around them, your nervous system relaxes, and you think they are the most wonderful person ever.

There is just one little detail: they don’t want to receive your love. They keep pushing you away, keep telling you reasons why you are not compatible.

This is a painful dynamic to be in because you are sure they would be so wonderful if they just opened up.

But there is a reason they don’t.

Love is a frequency

Love is a living energy stream that comes from a higher source. You feel it flow through you, but it blocks at the receiver you are sending it to. This might be because their heart center is closed. Maybe they have unhealed trauma they need to conquer before allowing love in.

Or maybe their love frequency is simply different from yours. You can see all the potential, but if the frequencies don’t match, it cannot come into fruition.

The Universe has a reason for this. When love is present on both sides, it naturally flows between both parties. The fact that it is blocked in one of them means it’s not resonating right now.

The frequency of love always attracts the same frequency. When somebody is sending out a different signal than yours, there will be a mismatch.

Soul contracts and pre-birth agreements

I believe our souls sign contracts before we come to Earth. This is to make us grow and to learn lessons. Sometimes we meet somebody who is only here to teach us that. Not to receive our love.

When this happens to you, there is a karmic imbalance in your own life. After all, if your love frequency were pure, it would attract the same pureness. But your vibration is most likely overwhelming…  too giving, or too attached.

The response of the other person has to be to push you away. There is no other way. You need to discover the parts of yourself that make somebody reject you (and you not listening to that rejection).

Rejection is not bad. It’s redirection. The person who rejects you does not vibrate on your love level, whatever that is right now.

Why somebody might not be ready for your love

There are a million reasons why somebody is not ready to let love in. One might be because they are still in preparation mode. The Universe is still preparing them to receive love, and you are interfering with that process.

Or maybe their life on Earth has caused them significant damage. They might have learned that love isn’t safe, and they need to feel that safety inside first. Trust that inner healing will also come to them, without your help.

If you force them to love you, that’s the opposite of safety. No matter how well you mean it.

I know it’s very hard to let somebody go, especially when you see clearly where their wounds are. But it’s not your responsibility. In fact, you are taking their autonomy away, which allows them to heal themselves.

You are basically saying: “You are not capable of helping yourself, so I will step in and be your savior.”

Do you see why this is not going to work?

The higher plane is preventing love

The Universe helps everyone at their own pace. Don’t force that process upon somebody. You are literally manifesting for them not to heal, because you believe your love is enough.

But it will never be enough. They need to love themselves first. Trust that the Universe will help them with that. If they constantly lean on you for validation, you are taking it away to let it come from within.

If somebody is not ready for love with you, there is a reason for that. There is an energetic misalignment between you, and you cannot change that.

Maybe this person is not meant to have a partner right now, because they are working on a business project that is going to change the planet.

Or maybe they need to bring children into the world that you cannot give them (or the other way around).

Perhaps you are not the right one for them, and the Universe is preventing it from working out between you.

Please stop interfering with somebody’s soul plan. You are not part of it right now for a reason.

The mirror principle

Nothing is random. The fact that you fell in love with somebody who does not want your love is a mirror. You attracted that mirror for a reason. Their inability to love you reflects your own hidden blocks to receiving.

Do you love yourself enough to accept that? Or do you need somebody to constantly validate your love? Why is it so hard to accept that somebody does not want you? That is where you need to search for love, not in the other person.

Carl Jung says the same:

“Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena… Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly.” — Carl Jung

When love works, it works. The mirror is reflecting back the same love you are sending out. Their rejection means you are rejecting yourself, especially if you try to convince them otherwise.

The illusion of rejection

The paradox here is that rejection is an illusion. The energy of love is never lost. Love doesn’t diminish when it’s unreturned; it just changes form.

If you give love to somebody who is bouncing it away, it bounces back to you. You are the one ready for that love, not them.

Because if they were ready, it would flow through them and magnify in partnership. That type of love is what you should strive for. Not an endless stream of love directed at them without reciprocation.

Open yourself to your own love… your soul is apparently screaming for it. They are just the mirror showing you that.

Maybe you are manipulating your own purpose by pursuing them, and something much better is waiting for you. But it will never come when you don’t close this door first.

The Universe is constantly giving you signs

I have a friend who believes love can heal everything, and she keeps the door open for her “partner” (who has been rejecting her on and off for many years already).

But the healing starts with trusting the Universe. If there are constant blockages, there is a reason for it.

Maybe the best love you can give them is to let them go. If you lose yourself in loving someone, that is not love. That is martyrdom. You are suffocating them with your love.

You didn’t come into this world to sacrifice yourself. You came here to embody love, not deplete yourself completely. Because when love is healthy and reciprocated, it will grow both people.

Love is abundant between a healthy couple, not a constant drain out of your own cup.

Redirect your love to what is ready

Some people just have an incredible amount of love to give (and I admire them greatly). But I see them crumble under the closed doors of the receiver.

Your love is meant to be welcomed. Redirect it to something else. Maybe towards a pet or by starting a community project. If you are one of those people who just love endlessly, don’t waste it on somebody who pushes you away.

Take this chance to upgrade your own love frequency. Where love is received, it will be amplified. And the Universe will reward you.

Remember that you are love, not just a giver of love. When your whole being radiates love, the right people will be attracted to that. You literally call them into your frequency.

You are not here to save somebody

When you see someone’s potential, it’s very hard to walk away. But this is exactly what it is: potential. You are not here to make them see that potential.

Actually, it’s quite entitled to think that way. They subconsciously feel that you are sorry for them and want to save them. But they don’t need you to get saved. They can save themselves if both of you trust the Universe.

By thinking of them in that way, you are contributing to the cycle of needing to be saved. Your thoughts affect them directly because everything is energy.

Instead, think about how they will know themselves what is good for them. And trust their decisions. When that doesn’t include you, accept that. Praise them for listening to their intuition, instead of trying to change it.

The Universe will reward you as well; all you need to do is surrender.

If you need some help after being rejected, this article could be your next read:

A spiritual awakening is a real phenomenon: you suddenly see through the veil of society and can’t continue living your old life any longer. You realize that our present humanity is very far removed from what really matters: to love and let love.

But if you think that a spiritual awakening is all love and light, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

If you enter into this stage of your life, nothing will ever be the same again. Is this good? After all, according to most ‘awakened’ people, a spiritual awakening is the best thing that could ever happen to you.

But a real spiritual awakening wakes you up to the harsh reality that most people are living very far removed from their authentic Soul, including yourself.

It makes you aware that many of us are always looking for something better and can never really be at peace. That a lot of people hurt each other, whether consciously or unconsciously.

A real spiritual awakening is hard work. You have to dedicate a lot of time to get to know yourself and your shadows. It’s really easy to close your eyes again and fall back into your old (toxic) patterns.

It’s actually not fun at all to see how everybody around you is mostly living on autopilot. How we are all mainly chasing money and power.

Why did the Universe want to show you this?

The good news is that it is indeed all worth it in the end. You entered into this awakening to grow as a human being and to be a better person to others.

That said, a spiritual awakening can also make you really confused.

Subscribe now

The negative side effects of a spiritual awakening

Nobody really talks about the bad side effects of a spiritual awakening, but they are as real as the whole process of waking up itself. Having entered into a spiritual awakening myself six years ago, I encountered (and still do) the following bad side effects during my process:

1. You become boring

This might be the most persistent negative part of being spiritually awakened: people perceive you as boring. Whereas before you used to love going out and socializing, now you prefer to meditate in nature and learn about the secrets of life.

You still try to have fun and let loose sometimes, but it just doesn’t resonate with you anymore. You find the conversations shallow, and you drift further and further away from your friends.

They comment on how boring you became; you never want to do anything fun anymore! And now that you think about it yourself, you are actually pretty boring.

What happened to the extroverted, funny person you once were?

A spiritual awakening makes you listen to your soul and your purpose in life. And for most people, that is not partying and getting drunk all the time. You might resist this fact in the beginning, but at some point, you conclude that you’ve lost that part of yourself.

It’s up to you to see that as a good or a bad thing.

2. You doubt yourself even more

When you first start learning about your spiritual awakening, everything is amazing. You feel so lucky that you could get out of the matrix, and that you are growing so much. You seek other spiritual friends and make wonderful connections.

But it wouldn’t be a spiritual awakening if you start doubting yourself again at some point.

Who are you? Why are you here? What is the meaning of life?

This might make you lose trust in your progress, and you try to be your old self again. You’ll soon find out, though, that you don’t resonate with either version of yourself anymore— not your old one, but not your new one either.

An awakening is notorious for making you always doubt everything over and over again.

3. You get confused about real spirituality

What is being spiritual anyway? Is it to believe in God? To become Buddhist? To dedicate yourself to yoga and meditation? To endlessly pursue inner healing?

Real spirituality can’t be put into a box.

Being spiritual is different for everybody. You might get confused about what the ultimate truth is. Who holds the real secrets of the Universe?

You compare religions with each other. You might become obsessed with Taoism, follow Alan Watts’ words, or become a monk for a while. You buy ‘spiritual’ items, like tarot cards, crystals, or incense sticks.

But it all ends up making you more confused. What if it’s all made up, and we are just a bunch of sheep trying to make sense of it all? Never coming to any conclusion?

Being confused is a not-so-fun part of going through a spiritual awakening.

4. You lose friends

If you enter into a spiritual awakening, you will get more and more removed from the people that you call your friends. You want to stay away from gossip, and only deep conversations get you excited.

Especially if you are the only one in your circle who sees how toxic our society really is, it might be very hard to explain that to them. They are still convinced that they should make a lot of money and that a powerful career reflects success in their life. Or they are conditioned to follow the general fear mentality we mostly live in right now.

It’s very hard to stay friends with people who you don’t resonate with anymore.

And they probably think that you are into some woo-woo shit and it’s just a phase in your life.

It’s a sad side effect that you will lose some of your lifelong friends after you get more spiritual. It’s okay though; people come and go into our lives, and sometimes you just have to say goodbye if your friends are not good for your personal growth anymore.

5. You follow the wrong gurus

This is a trap that many spiritual seekers fall into:  you follow the wrong gurus. Many “enlightened” people claim to have special healing powers, and can’t wait to show you how it’s done.

As a newly-made spiritual person, you believe everything. These people are so radiant! And their life is like a dream! They have so many followers; they must do something good with their lives, right?

You get obsessed with their YouTube channels and buy every course they recommend. After all, you are the one who needs guidance, and you feel like everybody around you knows more than you. Even the wrong people.

However, the sad truth is that there are many sharks in the spiritual world. They might actually have some sort of wisdom, but this doesn’t mean that they are better than you.

Be aware of any guru or healer who claims they can heal you. They are probably the ones who need the most healing themselves. Spiritual narcissism is a real thing, and you should know about this.

6. You lose a lot of money

Following the previous bad side effect of an awakening: you most likely lose a lot of money when you reluctantly set foot into the spiritual world.

This is because you probably believe all the crap that people try to sell you at first.

Whether it is their “blessed” tarot deck, or that mega-expensive online course that promises you'll get enlightened. Or maybe because you get obsessed with spiritual healing events, like breathwork sessions, cacao ceremonies, or plant medicine/psychedelics retreats.

Don’t get me wrong, though — these ceremonies could be really helpful. In fact, I am a big fan myself of this type of healing.

But there is a difference between paying a fair price for these things to cover the costs, or having to put down thousands of dollars to attend a retreat with a ‘Channeler’ who claims he/she should get paid top-dollar for their services since “money is energy that should flow”.

7. You think you have arrived

Another bad side effect of a spiritual awakening is falling into the trap of new-age spirituality. New age spirituality is using your new status as a spiritual person to not face your issues.

You think you have seen the light, and you have arrived. You entered the 5D, saw some visions, became enlightened, and now the work is done.

But this is actually where the real work begins. How “enlightened” are you to realize that enlightenment was always inside of you?

There is always more to learn about yourself and your shadows. You will never ever stop growing and evolving.

8. You become entitled

This is a dangerous side effect of being spiritually awakened: you feel better than others. You think you have gifts that others don’t have. Or that you deserve to get what belongs to you.

You look down on people who “are not there yet”. You and your new friends are so awake! You use the Law of Attraction to manifest all you feel entitled to. You tell people that they create their own reality, and all they need to do is change their thoughts. After all, they chose their own life, right?

It’s very common to fall into this negative side effect of a spiritual awakening (and it happened to me as well!). But despite the fact that you have woken up to the toxicity of our matrix society, that doesn’t mean that you deserve more than others.

Or that you should close your eyes to a lot of misery that people have to endure. They didn’t choose to be born into a war-ridden country or be locked up in a basement to be sexually abused.

To really realize you became entitled is a true sign of growth.

Nobody chooses to have bad things happen to them. If anything, you should feel heightened compassion for everybody around you. Especially the people who are less lucky than you.

Because ultimately, a spiritual awakening teaches you that We are all One.

9. You think you need to heal others

This is a bad trait of many spiritual people that I have encountered so many times. And truth be told, I also fell into this trap.

I thought I learned so many lessons about life and the Universe that others would want to learn the same. I diagnosed people with which problem they had and thought it would help them to know about this.

You feel the urge to make it your mission to wake others up as well.

After all, you do feel different. And maybe you really do see what the issue with somebody else is, and how they could improve their lives. But who are you to knock them off their feet with your truth if they are not ready for it?

Everybody is on their own journey at their own pace. You cannot heal anybody else but yourself.

People will naturally come to you if they feel like they want help and if you inspire them.

10. You wish you never entered this stage in your life

After getting aware of all these negative side effects, what the hell is the purpose of getting into a spiritual awakening anyway?

Especially if you have been a victim of the toxic spirituality circles, you might want to turn your back on spirituality completely. Why did you have to enter this journey that is so full of fake people?

If everybody is so awakened as they claim to be, why is there still so much misery in the world? If only you could go back to the fun times you had before, where you didn’t have to navigate this confusing awakening bullshit.

The good thing about a spiritual awakening

Fortunately, there is also a silver lining in entering into an awakening. It’s true that you get more peaceful and happier in general. You stop searching for external validation, and you just trust the pace of life. You learn that your intuition is always guiding you.

You feel more secure about who you are, and you can genuinely enjoy the beautiful things on this amazing planet. You learn to trust in your skills, and might completely change your career around into something that really fulfills you.

A spiritual awakening definitely isn’t all unicorns and yoga, but if you are genuine about your process and your intentions, you do reach a state of higher consciousness that can inspire and truly help others.

And that, I think, is the real purpose of a spiritual awakening: let everyone be on their own journey, and have empathy for the thousands of people who fight every day for their lives.

If you’re craving a deeper connection with yourself and feel ready to begin again, I highly recommend this course. If you’re longing for a reset, this might be just what you need.

Have you ever heard about ayahuasca, the psychedelic plant that brings you straight to your core wounds? If you have not, let me give you a bit of an introduction.

Ayahuasca (called Yage in Colombia) is a psychoactive plant used by indigenous tribes in the Amazon for centuries. This powerful plant medicine was originally only used by shamans (or Taitas in Colombia) to heal members of their tribe. Healing can be on a physical, spiritual, or mental level.

The shamans also used it to predict the future or get information from the past during visions.

Ayahuasca is a brew that consists of two different plants: the ayahuasca vine and the chacruna leaves. These plants only grow in the jungles of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Only the combination of the two plants will allow your brain to materialize the DMT, which is one of the main psychedelic compounds of ayahuasca.

Both DMT and beta-carbolines (which are the other psychoactive ingredient in the brew) are supposed to increase brain health and reduce stress.

Modern-day use of ayahuasca

Ayahuasca retreats nowadays are gaining popularity all over the world because they’re known to be a fast-track method for mental healing. It can act as ten years of therapy in a single session. Ayahuasca can cure addictions, depression, anxiety, stress, traumas, and generally improve mental health.

According to a study, as explained by VeryWellMind:

The findings show that ayahuasca users tend to eat healthier, engage in more physical activity, suffer from fewer chronic diseases, and experience better overall well-being.

Nearly all (99.8%) of the participants who used ayahuasca during the study reported being happier and healthier after the ceremony.

Hearing the ayahuasca call

I had been intrigued by ayahuasca for a while already. I have used other psychedelics before (like peyote, magic mushrooms, and DMT) to get a better insight into who I am and how I can improve myself. They have certainly helped, but none of them were as profound as my 6-day ayahuasca experience in the jungle of Colombia.

Traditionally, you are supposed to be ‘called’ by ayahuasca. She (ayahuasca is feminine) has different ways to do this. For example, reading this article just might be your call!

I heard my call when more and more people started telling me about their experiences. In the beginning, it sounded crazy to me — who the heck signs up voluntarily to get catapulted deep inside all your mental issues?! But the more I researched it, the more curious I got.

At some point, I couldn’t resist anymore and tried a one-night ceremony in Mexico, which turned out to be nothing compared to what I was about to experience in Colombia.

Traveling to the Amazon in Colombia

I always knew I wanted to do ayahuasca in the place where it grows, the Amazon. I chose Colombia as my destination because that country had been on my bucket list for a while already, and it was easy to reach from Mexico, where I lived at that time.

And sure enough, after my experience, I am so happy I did. I really understand now how vital it is to choose a real shaman for your ayahuasca retreat, and also to preferably do it where it comes from.

So I flew to Bogota and took a 17-hour bus ride to Mocoa, a small city in the heart of Putumayo. Mocoa is the entry point to this part of the Colombian Amazon.

Note: in Colombia, a shaman is called a Taita, and ayahuasca is called Yage, so I will interchangeably use the different terms throughout this article.

What you need to know before drinking ayahuasca

Yage is no joke. It is incredibly important to use it in a ceremonial way with a Taita who has years of experience with this plant medicine. After all, you are going deep inside your mind and potentially your traumas;  you need someone to look after you.

It is common to vomit or have diarrhea during ceremonies, which they call purging. It sounds horrible, but it actually feels like you are releasing a lot of bad energy out of you. And this is exactly what Yage does: it helps you to release things that are stuck inside of you.

Yage is different for everybody; some people experience pure bliss and happiness, and others have a very dark and deep journey. It all depends on where your issues are and what needs your current attention.

You normally set an intention before a ceremony, but ultimately, Yage will choose what she wants to show you. No matter what happens to you during your trip,  it will be what you need to know at that moment.

Three ayahuasca ceremonies in six days

I chose to do three ceremonies because I heard that only one is normally not that profound. The first time you drink ayahuasca, it travels through your body and uses this first night to get to know you. It’s not uncommon to have quite a shallow experience for newbies.

A Yage ceremony should take place in nature around a fire where everybody who participates gathers. In my group, there were about five foreigners and the rest were Colombians who came to the Taita’s house for healing. The ceremony was held on the land of the shaman under a thatched roof, which is called a maloca. We also had an area with hammocks to chill if you needed a break from the others.

A Taita is deeply respected by the whole village, and all the Taitas in that area know each other as well. They help each other with their rituals, so during my ceremonies, we always had three shamans in total.

I won’t go into all the details here after I drank my first cup since it’s quite personal. But I basically got put back into my mum’s uterus a few weeks before I was supposed to be born. It felt incredibly safe and warm, and I did not want to come out. I felt the unconditional love from a mother towards her child, which made me think about how special it is that this type of love exists.

I told my baby-self that I should never doubt my decisions and my lifestyle, and that the world can be scary but also immensely beautiful. We as humans are put on this Earth to experience it to the fullest. It is quite a miracle that we have feelings and touch and emotions and can fall in love with each other!

Read more

Nearly my whole life, I have been dealing with a fearful-avoidant attachment style, in myself as well as in others. It was always hard for me to truly connect with others or let love in. And once I got into a relationship, I pushed it away and was longing for my freedom.

I had done numerous assessments, talked to past partners, and recognized myself completely as being avoidantly attached.

But what exactly is an avoidant attachment style? And is it always connected to a certain upbringing or childhood? Do you need to heal your attachment wounds? Or perhaps your body is just trying to warn you about something that is not aligned with you?

Avoidant attachment develops in children who do not experience sensitive responses from a parent or caregiver to their needs or distress. Children with avoidant attachment may become very independent, both physically and emotionally. — Medical News today

According to the main narrative, your attachment style is configured in your childhood years. If your parent was absent, did not emotionally engage, or was overly critical, you most likely developed an avoidant attachment style. There are other attachment styles too, but for the sake of this article, I will only discuss the avoidant one.

The role of spirituality in attachment styles

If you are somewhat spiritual (like me), you probably believe in the idea that everything happens for a reason and everything is perfect the way it is. That means that you developed this avoidant attachment style with a deeper meaning behind it.

After all, nothing happens by coincidence. What if your avoidance actually means you can sense on a deeper level that somebody is not aligned with you? That is a superpower!

With all the partners I was avoidant with, I subconsciously knew that they were not the ones I was looking for. However, I was conditioned to believe it was my attachment style that I needed to heal, not change my partner.

Because at some point, I met somebody who felt completely aligned with me, and my attachment issues were suddenly not so important anymore. Of course, I still felt those avoidant tendencies, but I wanted to be with this person so deeply that I actively tried to address my attachment wounds.

I believe that the Universe brought me and him together at the right time, and despite it being incredibly painful, it was also incredibly healing. We didn’t stay together, but I knew that this person was the right one for me at that particular time in my life.

And I was not avoiding anything.

Compatibility and avoidance

Since that relationship, I have learned a lot about myself and even consider myself safely attached now. When I do online attachment tests, ‘secure’ is what comes out. After all, I am able to open up, show emotional vulnerability, and attach in a normal way to people. That is to say… to friends.

With friends, there is a much broader window to make it easier to attach to (however, if you are completely avoidant, you also won’t attach to friends). You don’t need to build your life around a friend and most likely won’t spend most of your time with them either. Your friend doesn’t expect things from you that a partner would.

But if you are with the wrong partner, this would have significant implications for your daily life. No wonder your body is signaling to avoid this person — you are just not compatible enough.

I believe, however, that if you are with the right partner, you will want to actively work on your avoidance. Simply because now you are ready for it.

The conditioning of finding love

Our society is glorifying a certain way of life. We need to find our mate at a fairly young age, get married, buy a house, and have children. Have a steady income, pay your taxes, and contribute to the greater good by simply complying with this narrative.

No wonder we get anxious when our lives don’t follow this path. We think we miss out on finding a life partner and ultimately settle for less when time seems to be running out. We ignore the signals of our bodies that this person is not right for us, and then blame it on attachment style.

What if you are just not ready yet to meet your forever partner? Maybe your life has all these amazing things in store for you, but you are so focused on partnering up that you completely miss the bigger picture.

In the meantime, you are getting constantly triggered and re-traumatized by the partners you settled for, and are being told you have to heal your (or their) attachment style.

And even though I do believe that your attachment should be secure in the end, maybe the person who is triggering your avoidant behavior is simply not the right one for you at this moment.

Opening up to the right people

Since I can remember, I have always walked a different path than what society demanded of me. I solo traveled the world since I was 19, never had a stable job or income, don’t have big savings, and don’t own a house or have a partner or kids.

And somehow, I always knew I was going to find the right person at the right time. I am 38 years old now — a reason for many people to start panicking if they are still single.

But this panic is just another form of conditioning to what society wants and not letting the Universe decide what’s meant (or not) for you.

Maybe people with insecure attachment styles are just not ready yet for that forever partnership, no matter how much they want it. Because I believe when you are ready, you will work on your attachment automatically, because that partner is right for you. That person provokes opening up to and helps you uncover things about yourself that will make you grow.

A person who is constantly triggering you is not going to give you that secure feeling. It’s simply not an energetic match, and your body knows that before you do. It’s sending you all sorts of signs, and yet you keep thinking you need to heal your attachment style (or heal your partner if you are on the other side).

Avoidance or intuition?

Two years ago, I met somebody who was annoying me a lot. He was a great guy, wanted to be with me, and gave me a lot of secure love signals.

At first, I thought it was my avoidant attachment style again kicking in. As soon as somebody comes emotionally close, I tend to push them away, and I thought that was exactly what I was doing with him, too.

What is wrong with me? I thought I had healed enough to not let my avoidance bother me again and was ready to securely attach to somebody.

But the truth is, this person was irritating me more than they should have. Not because I have unresolved issues, but simply because my intuition knows better. The triggers came from a certain behavior he had that was not aligned with me. However, it wasn’t his behavior towards me; it was his behavior in general.

My body signaled to me that this person was not okay to be with, and boom, the doubts about myself came flooding in. Was this something I needed to heal within me, or just simply an acceptance that we were not right for each other?

I think the latter.

Healing by trusting yourself

When you are in a situation like this, you can choose to get help to work through your triggers, or you can simply trust yourself. Maybe real healing takes place when you honor your body when something does not feel right.

I am fully aware that triggers can also be a trauma response, and you need to address those at some point. But when you’ve done a significant amount of healing already and you are still getting triggered all the time … maybe invest in trusting yourself first.

Perhaps you are not in the right environment with this person to heal your attachment issues. Maybe by staying with them, things only get worse. After all, you are actively ignoring your body’s signs that something is not right. That doesn’t mean they are a bad person; it just means you need to focus on yourself in a different setting. Maybe even with a different person.

It’s probably the fear of not wanting to be alone that you don’t listen to your triggers. But if there is one thing I learned on my journey, it is that everything always works out exactly the way it’s supposed to.

Triggers are teachers?

The internet is so full nowadays of opinions about all sorts of things, including being avoidant or anxiously attached, and those things are all valid. I spent a big part of my adulthood deciphering my attachment style and trying to heal it. Those articles and resources were a big help.

I agree that most of the time, a trigger can be a great teacher, showing you exactly where you need more healing. An emotional trigger is often a projection of something you need to see (or don’t see) in yourself.

But, as I move through my love life and watch those of my friends, maybe there is nothing we need to heal right now. We just need to trust that the Universe knows what’s best for us, and that includes sending us signals through, perhaps, triggers.

Don’t choose to stay with a partner who is constantly irritating you and puts your nervous system in a permanent state of fight, flight, or freeze. Be okay with being alone and not knowing what will happen.

Maybe now you need to step away from this partner to give yourself time in solitude, and when the timing is right, you will meet again. Then both of you are different people and probably won’t trigger each other so much. And then the relationship can finally flourish and will feel right on all levels.

Or maybe you need to make space for a different partner that’s waiting out there for you and won’t annoy you in all these ways. By forcing yourself to stay in situations that are not meant for you, you are delaying what is.

What if you are not meant to find a partner at all and will live your best life being single? Perhaps your freedom will fulfill you in all the ways a partner never can.

Heal yourself

I am not a psychologist; I just speak from my own experience. I also believe that you can heal your attachment wounds within your current relationship container, as long as you really want to.

And as long as the relationship feels safe.

However, I believe as well that you will know it when you meet the right person, and the triggers won’t be so severe. Simply because you are ready to heal at that time.

That said, whatever happens or whatever you believe, just keep trusting your intuition, always.

My Anxious & Avoidant Shadow Work Journal is a great first step to becoming aware of your own attachment issues, so you can start healing.

It is available as a digital download or as a print journal, in case you are interested in learning about yourself through shadow work, which was the only thing that actually worked for me.

If you had asked me five years ago if I believed in destiny, I would have laughed at you. I was very down-to-earth, did not believe in any otherworldly forces, and thought everything was just a coincidence.

How arrogant to think that we, humans, mean something in our massive Universe! I thought we were just a grain of sand in the desert, not having any impact or predestined plan. Our whole existence, according to me, was just a funny play of evolution and the Big Bang that caused some cells to interact with each other and create life.

Nothing to feel special about, right? But I couldn’t be more wrong.

Big life events are meant to happen to you

Six years ago, I met someone who completely changed my life around. I feel like everything leading up to that made me meet him.

Read more

The world nowadays is full of self-help advice, gurus, spiritual retreats, immersive mental health programs, you name it. It might make you think something is wrong with you when you don’t embark on some kind of healing path.

Or, if you are on a healing path already, all these options might overwhelm you. When is it ever going to be enough? Will there be a time when the inner work is done, and you can just be?

Learning the lessons

I have been walking the self-discovery path for six years now, and it has completely changed me. People who know me from the outside might not see this, but my inner landscape has turned around 180 degrees.

The truth, however, is that I didn’t even realize how unhappy I was before embarking on this journey. I thought I had my life together, was traveling the world, and living in freedom.

But I kept getting into relationships that weren’t healthy, kept running away from my responsibilities, and was always chasing the next thing. When I reached that next thing, though, the new next thing was already waiting.

I was looking for external happiness because I couldn’t find it within. The lessons kept presenting themselves to me, but I was blind to them. I told myself I had no reason to feel unhappy, especially since I was living such a perfect life.

But inside my mind, something was dying. My Soul was screaming at me to do something,  and yet I kept silencing it. Looking back on it now, I had been unhappy for a long time already because I had lost the connection to my Soul.

Entering the Dark Night of the Soul

The biggest catalyst for embarking on my healing path was another failed relationship. Not just any relationship, though; he was the ultimate mirror.

Our break-up brought me to my knees in getting to know myself. I had no idea how much I could get shattered by this experience. It made me realize how incredibly vulnerable I was. How nothing was left of myself to lean on.

It catapulted me into a Dark Night of the Soul, which is pretty much a spiritual depression. The curtains suddenly open, and nothing makes sense anymore.

This stage stripped me of all my beliefs and conditioning about myself, and it brought me into a deep desire for solitude. I started doing inner child work and shadow work, which were paramount for my change.

Embrace the calling

I’ll be honest with you: embarking on this path is far from easy. In fact, it’s probably the hardest thing you will ever do. I know tons of people who scratched the surface of healing work and think it’s enough. Or they are just too afraid to let themselves fall into the depths, which is totally understandable.

But there is a reason why the lessons keep presenting themselves to you.

You need to start learning.

Feeling lonely, rejected, anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, like you are never good enough, abandoned, constantly triggered… all these emotions are there to be seen.

And they will keep showing up in your life if you don’t address them. You can distract yourself as much as you want, but these feelings will always resurface again.

Live the life you are meant to live

You might think something is wrong with you for constantly having all these emotions. But the truth is, you don’t need to change who you are at all. You are good enough exactly the way you are. The problem is that you don’t know who you are.

You don’t know how to regulate your emotions. You don’t know how to choose for yourself or set healthy boundaries. You don’t know how to make choices that are good for you. And that is why the lessons keep coming back to you.

The good news is that you can learn all these things. You can learn how to deal with your triggers and what kind of growth they bring. You can learn to self-soothe and be in your body.

You can befriend your authentic Self and be at peace with who you truly are. The core of your suffering is your Soul being severed from your Self. But it will always keep trying to make its way back to you.

Embarking on the journey

Once you are ready to go deep into your psyche, be aware of the many traps out there. You are going to be extremely vulnerable, which makes you a target for fake gurus who just want your money.

Your intuition is your biggest friend here. When something feels off, acknowledge it. Your gut feeling is a powerful tool; don’t ignore it.

If you don’t know where to begin, I would suggest finding ways to practice self-love first. And simply acknowledging that something needs to change within is a powerful first step. You will find what resonates with you at some point.

You are never done learning

You might wonder when you’ll ever be done learning. But the beauty of embarking on an inner-self journey is that you get excited about never being done.

A whole new consciousness is waiting to be discovered, and there will never be a time when you know enough. Because the more you know, the more you realize you know nothing.

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” — Confucius

And that’s the best part about learning your lessons: your life suddenly starts to get meaning, and you couldn’t be more excited about it.

Share The Soul Visions

I used to be the most skeptical person ever towards spiritual practices. I laughed at crystal healers and people picking up and reading energies. I used to believe everything in life is a coincidence, and we’re just a grain of salt in the vastness of things.

Why would a single human even matter?

The funny thing, though, was that I kept meeting ‘spiritual beings’ on my path. They wanted to do Reiki on me, heal my chakras, and clear my aura. But I pushed them all away. I did not want to believe that there was anything more to life than what I could see with my naked eye.

Until I started to feel those energies myself.

‘Spirituality’ nowadays is almost a dirty word in our current society. We put this label on the boho hippies who spread love and light wherever they go. Or the meditation teachers who weave a soft-spoken channeling into all of their classes. Or the plant medicine advocates who believe magic mushrooms can heal everyone.

Maybe for you, a spiritual person means anybody who believes in God, Buddha, Allah — you name it.

But spirituality is so much more than would ever fit on a label. Yes, it’s all those things mentioned above. And it’s also none of those listed above.

I think spirituality mainly means knowing that something greater outside of us exists to guide us.

How did my shift happen?

Honestly, I can’t mention one particular event that made me ‘spiritual’. It was a journey of pushing and pulling against spirituality for over four years. My mind tried to hold on to my old beliefs that we as humans don’t matter. That we just happen to be alive, and you’re either lucky to have a good life or unlucky to be miserable.

Now I know, however, that everything happens for a reason. Your misery happened to make you grow. It’s up to you to rise out of it.

No matter how bad something is for you, there is an innate power and wisdom inside of you to overcome it.

You can always change your life around and start living on your own terms. There is a secret button you can press in your mind to shift. And once you find it, everything changes.

Stop rejecting the signs

To find your True Self, you first have to let go of all your old beliefs and conditioning. We’re not out here on Earth to suffer endlessly. We’re here to experience all of life, the sadness and the happiness.

But if you’re sad most of the time, happiness might seem far away from you. However, anybody can experience the happiness that’s waiting for them on the other side.

If you’re currently walking in the wrong direction, here are some signs that the Universe is trying to shift your path:

1. Your body is trying to tell you something

Your body keeps the score. Whatever our minds won’t process will show up in our bodies. This can manifest itself in autoimmune disorders, cancers, skin problems, chronic fatigue, gut problems, or generally feeling unwell.

Our bodies hold so much wisdom — listen to it when something is off. It’s not normal to feel sick all the time. It’s not part of who you are. It’s your body trying to get rid of unhealed emotions and trauma.

Look into somatic practices when your body displays all sorts of weird diseases. Those bad energies need to get out before they actually kill you.

2. Bad luck keeps happening to you

If you’re walking in the right direction, you won’t experience bad luck any longer. Not because nothing bad happens to you anymore, but because you learn to deal with whatever comes.

Bad luck doesn’t exist when you’re in alignment with your life. This is one of the most liberating mindsets that comes after accepting the spiritual healing journey.

Life always flows with you.

But if you keep having bad luck, it’s a sign that you’re rejecting something. It’s the Universe trying to put you in the right direction. Pay attention and change your course. Deep inside, you know exactly what to do.

File for that divorce, quit that job, cut that friendship, travel the world. Do the thing that scares you the most and let it liberate you from bad luck.

3. You are often triggered

Triggers are teachers. If you’re on the spiritual healing journey, you’ll learn to recognize them and let them pass through you.

We all get triggered; it’s undeniable. But if you are constantly triggered - feeling like you want to fight or run away at any given moment- this is a sign that you can’t handle yourself.

After all, a trigger shows up because you were hurt by a similar situation before. And if you learn to process that particular event, it won’t trigger you anymore. Or even when it does still trigger you, you’ll take a step back and sit with it.

Living in a constant fight-or-flight mode is a sign that you’re rejecting the lesson that’s trying to knock on your door.

4. Your relationships keep failing

Another big one: your relationships in general are not healthy. Whether it’s with a partner, friends, or family … relationships are mirrors.

Once you see yourself reflected in every person you meet, that’s where conscious relating comes in. We are all One in the big scheme of things. Everybody can teach you a lesson to grow.

And the best thing about going through a spiritual healing journey is that you start to attract what you send out. If your own toxicity is gone, so will the toxic people around you magically disappear.

You simply don’t have time for their drama anymore and walk away.

5. You’re (secretly) deeply insecure

If you’ve truly walked the awakening path and learned the lessons as they were presented to you, your insecurities vanish.

This might seem hard to believe, but it’s true. Not because you’re suddenly a superhuman, but because you accept yourself fully as you are right now.

You don’t need to achieve anything or become anyone. You don’t need to drive that big car, and you don’t need to buy that villa on the wealthy side of town. You don’t need a better job title or a higher salary. Those are all signs of insecurity that you’re unconsciously trying to cover up.

I’ll even bring it one step further: you don’t need anything that is in the future. Because the future is always tomorrow.

That big car now will be a yacht tomorrow. That manager title now will be CEO tomorrow. There will always be something better tomorrow.

But true happiness hides in experiencing fully where you’re at right now. Without the house, the car, or the relationship of your dreams.

We are all spiritual beings

You might think that you don’t have it in you to be spiritual. But the truth is that we are all spiritual beings experiencing life through our humanness.

When you find yourself in these signs, it’s time to look beyond the physical. Life is trying to tell you something:  listen. The Universe is here to guide us all, not just the “Chosen Ones”.

You might have felt for a long time already that you need to change courses, but you think you don’t have the tools to do it. I think the first step is to trust that change is okay.

For example, if you are unhappy in your marriage, acknowledge it. It’s okay that it’s not working. It’s not okay that you keep staying because you’re afraid of what happens afterwards.

Stop making excuses for staying in a situation you don’t want to be in. Walk in the direction of your fears and do that big thing. You will soon see that the Universe supports you after changing courses. Because you finally made a step in the right direction.

Challenge yourself, and you’ll see that your life is not coated with a dark cloud. The first step is believing.

You can get out.

The rest will come along the way.

If you’re craving a deeper connection with yourself and feel ready to begin again, I highly recommend this course. If you’re longing for a reset, this might be just what you need.

I am reluctant to write this article, but I feel it needs to be put out there. I have been fearful-avoidant attached most of my life, and I am very aware of the stress I have caused to some of my partners.

Avoidants are often pictured as the evil force in an otherwise beautiful relationship. They are the reason that things don’t work out and take most of the blame, according to a lot of online content.

And that is often the case; avoidants are very hard partners to be with. I have been avoidant, and I have dated avoidants, and the push-pull is exhausting.

Meeting the right One

The truth is, avoidants crave love as much as anyone else; they are just terrified of it. But when somebody with an avoidant attachment style partners up with a person who is not right for them, their avoidance gets even worse.

I can personally attest to this because it happened to me as well. I always knew there was somebody out there who would not feel like I was being tricked into a partnership.

And there was.

I met him six years ago, after a 3-year relationship where I had been extremely avoidant.

Why do we have certain attachment styles?

We develop our attachment style mostly in childhood, where our parents/caretakers should be the example of unconditional love. But when love gets conditional, the child learns to behave a certain way to receive that love.

For avoidant people, this means they created a defense mechanism to protect their heart. They learned that love is not safe and that they can only rely on themselves.

So when a partner shows up in their adult life, they still feel the need to protect themselves for love. It’s their inner shadow saying: “Love will be painful, don’t let yourself get hurt”.

It’s a long and hard journey to understand those patterns in yourself, but the right partner will make you face all your fears.

What does ‘the right one’ mean?

When I am talking about the right partner, I don’t mean it’s some magical person who suddenly heals the avoidant. Quite the opposite.

Read more

I believe there’s a new understanding in our collective consciousness about love. I start seeing it all around me: we are done with shallow relationships and toxic connections.

We are learning about our shadows and those of others. We are aware of our childhood wounds, our attachment styles, and our nervous systems.

All around me, I see people getting more conscious and opening their eyes to a new form of partnership. A form that is rooted in mutual understanding and growth, not just chemistry.

More than physical attraction

I used to think that chemistry was the number one starter for a good relationship. I was always looking for that spark and intense attraction. The rest I would figure out later, but that initial spark was mandatory for me.

And in a way, I still want that, but I also know there should be so much more than that.

I might even conclude now that that intense physical attraction is actually a red flag, especially if you have childhood trauma. After all, we often fall in love with partners who represent our parents, and especially the validation that they never gave us as kids.

Subconsciously, we are looking to reproduce that type of love. So that this time we can finally be seen and we can heal what we were missing as children.

Relationships are catalysts for growth

I’ve learned a great deal from my previous relationships. I used to fall for wounded men because I thought I could heal them with my love.

My fearful-avoidant attachment style played a huge role in this. Deep down, I wanted real love and true connection, but I was also terrified of it.

Terrified to lose it when it would finally show up.

So I sabotaged good relationships before I became too attached (my avoidant side), and fell in love with guys who would never commit to me (my anxious side).

Because deep in my shadows, I didn’t want to commit to them either. Falling for unavailable men was a ‘safe’ exit strategy, and it took me a long time to admit that to myself.

The healthy relationship

I think the point of any (especially hard) relationship is to help you grow. To help you see the inner child in you that was never seen, and give them that hug they so desperately need.

Once we realize that our relationships are a projection of ourselves, we can finally choose to heal from within first. Never put that burden on a partner; you are only responsible for yourself.

And once you’ve healed that wounded part of you, you will also understand what a healthy relationship looks like. And it has nothing to do with that intense chemistry and everything with being compatible and showing up for each other.

Green flags that somebody is ready for a healthy relationship

Most people have to go through an inner journey before they can be a good long-term partner. Some do that with current partners by their side, but most have a period of solitude before reaching that version of themselves.

And once they are ready, here are 8 undeniable green flags:

1. They take responsibility for their inner world

According to Jung, each Soul goes through a process of Individuation. It’s where you find your repressed shadows and let them come to the light. Your fragmented parts have to integrate into one whole being.

An Individuated person doesn’t blame their past, their exes, or their parents, but accepts that everything was needed to become their authentic Self.

They also understand their own projections and triggers and how they affect their partner. They take responsibility for their actions and reactions.

2. They can tolerate emotional discomfort

Nothing is more frustrating than a partner who constantly shuts down and runs away when things become uncomfortable. You cannot build a sustainable relationship with somebody who always wants to escape.

A healthy partner stays present when you share your feelings, even if they don’t like to hear them. They don’t ghost you after a hard conversation and can stay with you through the tension.

They are willing to repair and take a look inside themselves as well when there is conflict.

3. They are aware of their shadows

We all have shadows, and nobody is perfect. A person who understands their shadows can recognize them when they come up and work on them.

They don’t pretend to be ‘all light’ and are aware their partner has shadows as well. The goal is not to punish our dark side, but to integrate it.

A healthy partner has worked on themselves and admits insecurity, jealousy, or envy without becoming defensive. They also understand that their partner sometimes slips and doesn’t punish them for that.

4. They don’t need you to complete them

This is a hard one, especially in anxious-avoidant relationships. Many people are very codependent on their partner. They feel like they wouldn’t be complete without them and do everything to make the other one stay.

Or, on the opposite side of that spectrum is the avoidant who thinks they don’t need anybody and they can do everything alone.

The truth is in the middle: we need interdependence. We should be whole by ourselves with our own lives and passions, so we can share that with a partner and build something bigger together.

5. They choose love over their ego

Jung stated we all have four core archetypes: The Persona (the mask you wear for social approval), The Self (the authentic you), The Shadow (the suppressed parts of you), and the Anima/Animus (the inner feminine and masculine).

Many people in this world operate from the Persona, just because we need external validation so much.

But a healthy partner operates from the Self and is not attached to the other masks. They don’t care about preserving their ego or pride, but always choose love instead.

6. They can regulate their nervous system

Most of our triggers and conflicts come from an unregulated nervous system. One partner feels inadequate or fearful and lashes out. Their nervous system is trying to protect them from perceived danger.

But a healthy partner found ways to regulate their nervous system and knows that all triggers are teachers. They are aware of their body before they react and know how to calm down.

They also have compassion for their partner’s nervous system, but don’t become martyrs in the meantime. They choose regulated partners for themselves as well.

7. They celebrate you

A healthy long-term partner celebrates your successes and your path to becoming whole. They don’t make you dependent on them and encourage you to work on yourself, even if that’s uncomfortable.

They see a relationship as an expansion of themselves and are genuinely happy to see you thrive. Your happiness is their happiness.

A healthy partner doesn’t compete with you and encourages you to become the best version of yourself (without becoming controlling).

8. They are willing to repair

No relationship can be healthy if one partner is not willing to repair. Every relationship will have conflict and discussions, but it becomes toxic if there is constant fighting and no improvement in communication.

A healthy partner wants to resolve conflict and understand the other one deeply, not just get their way.

This means they can apologize and don’t weaponize vulnerability later. They will change their behavior if that is necessary for the relationship to grow.

You attract what you send out

If you read this list and are wondering where you will find people like that, the first step is to look within. The Universe responds to vibration, not to what you want.

If you become a healthy partner, you will attract a healthy partner. That doesn’t mean you will never meet toxic people again. But if you are aware of what safe love should feel like, you will walk away earlier from a person who is not good for you.

And safe love feels like a warm bath. It nourishes you and calms you and makes you feel safe and secure. It doesn’t put your nervous system on edge, but regulates it.

Physical attraction is also important

There is no mention of physical attraction in these 8 signs, but I think that is also an important factor in a long-term relationship. We need that bodily connection, and conscious sex is the best form of sex (I personally think).

A healthy partner worships your body and treats it like something sacred. There is so much beauty in having a fully aware physical attraction to someone and devoting yourself to that.

We often dismiss this desire in long-term relationships, but without it, you will just become best friends.

Take care of your own body before you give it to somebody else. The relationship with yourself is as important.

The ultimate green flag

No relationship will work if there is no commitment to growth. All the other green flags can be achieved, but the first requirement is conscious awareness.

If somebody doesn’t want to grow in and for the relationship, they won’t be a healthy partner. Love cannot be stagnant; it’s a moving energy in constant search for deepening.

And remember, nobody is perfect — we are all learning in this life. But if they are committed to becoming whole with you (not through you), then you can grow into a healthy, long-term partnership.

Has this article helped you, and want to support my writing? I would be super grateful if you could Buy Me a Coffee. Thank you so much!

You might also like this article:

Call me naive, but I don’t just think that soulmates are real. I know they are. In fact, I already met a few in my lifetime.

I believe several people can be our soulmates, and they are not only romantic ones. They all come at different times in our lives to help us evolve. And when you are meant to meet each other, nothing stops that from happening.

Soulmates are not just lovely fantasies, though; they often reflect something hidden deep inside of you. According to Carl Jung, soulmates are mirrors of your subconsciousness and often carry archetypal energy.

Soulmates have a purpose

I think everybody we meet who causes us to deeply transform is pre-destined. We don’t just cross their paths by accident; there is a higher reason behind it. These souls come to change you, whether through deep pain or through deep love.

Some soul connections carry karma from the past. If that is the case, the relationship will not be easy. The goal is to forgive the karma and move on in gratitude. A lot of triggers will come to the surface here, and your only job is to go inward to heal yourself.

Other souls come to show you what true love feels like. This is like coming home; you feel truly seen and appreciated by someone. It’s like you finally get rewarded for what you’ve always known to be true: soulmates are real.

How to recognize soulmate connections?

In a certain sense, everybody in your life makes you grow. But with soulmates, this growth is so transformational that it’s hard to think it was all a coincidence. And it wasn’t.

Here are 9 signs of a soulmate:

1. You feel the recognition immediately

There is a reason why, with some people, you feel this inner sense of recognition, like you have met them before. You look into their eyes, and something sparks.

This happened to me with a guy whom I saw at the intro party of my new university when I was 20 years old. I was standing in front of the DJ booth when I suddenly felt the urge to turn around and look backwards. He stood there, quite far away, and I felt a jolt of recognition.

I had to pinch my eyes to really look at him, wondering where I’d met him before. However, I had never seen him, and he turned out to be a hard lesson in my life.

Some would say this is because of a shared trauma, and maybe it is. But if that is the case, these people show up to heal that trauma.

2. Inner shadow activation

According to Jung, a soulmate reflects your shadow back at you. Whatever you love or hate about them is also in you. Here comes the Anima/Animus archetype at play: you are projecting your suppressed inner masculine or feminine onto them.

That is why it feels like coming home, you suddenly come face to face with the part that you tried to hide for so long. The shadow longs to be seen, and if you are with a soulmate, that is what is going to happen.

3. Your gifts will come out

Having them in your life will activate hidden gifts and talents. Maybe they support you in following your dreams. Or they make you believe you are actually good enough to bring out your creativity. Or pursue that writing career.

One of my soulmates always praised me for being so entrepreneurial, a side of me that I absolutely did not see in myself. But his view of me made me believe in that too, and now I make enough money with my business to support myself full-time.

4. Your consciousness expands

If you never believed in anything supernatural or magical, a soulmate will make you question all your beliefs. The connection you feel with them is beyond explanation.

You will have moments of pure Oneness with them, where everything in the world falls away, and it’s just you two. The Earth will feel more welcoming in general, and you will start seeing beyond the veil.

A true soulmate wakes you up and takes the ordinary out of everyday life. Because life is not ordinary …  it’s pure magic.

5. Challenges that push you to grow

Not all soulmate connections are easy. Some shake you at the core and make your whole foundation crumble. If that happens, that was exactly the purpose.

They came to bring you back to yourself. They disrupt your comfort zone and make you grow immensely. Don’t think you can escape this; they will keep coming back until you finally learn the lesson.

A soulmate signed a contract with you before your birth. They enter into your life to make you evolve, and sometimes this comes with very hard lessons. This is not to punish you, but to help you come home to yourself.

6. A calling toward a shared purpose

When you have a soulmate in your life, you most likely get pushed into a shared mission. Maybe it’s to heal one another, or to be of service to others.

A soulmate will make you see that we are all One, and the desire to help your community will get activated. We are not on this Earth to just live our own lives. We are here to expand the collective consciousness.

Soulmates will help you with that mission.

7. Time starts to bend

Moments spent with a true soulmate are timeless. When you are together, it sometimes feels like time does not exist. It becomes spacious and light, as if you can even travel to other Universes.

Time is only a given on our planet and is a concept of the human mind. When you are with a soulmate, you start feeling those moments of timeless presence. This is how it is when two souls are truly together, and not only their bodies.

8. Energetic communication

When a soulmate has entered your life, you will feel their energy even if they are not around. For example, you might feel their sadness and their happiness at any random moment.

At first, this is very hard to recognize. You might think it comes from inside of you, and in a certain way it does. But when your mood suddenly changes out of nowhere, it could be their energy you are feeling.

According to quantum physics, atoms that have a connection with each other can be affected by one another even when apart. There are even scientific researches now that molecules that have been completely separated still act in the same way as the other one does.

This just shows our energetic resonance goes way beyond our initial understanding, and that energy is real.

9. They bring you into inner union

While the idea of a soulmate might sound romantic, it’s often not. They come into your life to bring you into inner union. Jung calls this individuation: when you embody all your repressed energies in a balanced way.

This means your higher Self vs. your ego, your masculine vs. your feminine, the different archetypes, and your shadow and your light.

A soulmate might feel like they complete you in all of these aspects, but a real soulmate makes you feel whole within yourself. You don’t need them to feel that way.

Subscribe now

What is the purpose of soulmates?

Not all soulmates come to stay forever, but that doesn’t make them less valuable. Some people stay with us for exactly the right amount of time we need to find ourselves.

I know how hard this is to accept. I’ve met two soulmates in my life, and they were both incredibly hard to let go of. There might always be a sort of longing to them, because this life is not your first rodeo with them. Maybe in the next life, you have both evolved enough for a forever partnership.

I believe that some soulmates make you grow so much that the next one you will meet will finally stay. After all, you can’t have a fully conscious relationship if you are not whole in yourself.

Sometimes, you are still acting from your past traumas, so a soulmate will show up to help you overcome that. But they might not last forever.

How to know if your soulmate is meant to stay?

I think the Universe guides us to meet people, but also guides us to let go. You will start seeing cracks in the relationship. Your body will show signs. Things stop aligning. You stop growing.

Soulmates are powerful catalysts, but you have to do the work to make yourself grow. One way to do this is with shadow work, which I published a guided journal about.

After the inner work, you will start sending out a frequency that is healthy and conscious, so you will also attract that in your life. The right people will always come into your life at the right time.

Believe that what is meant for you will show up. Simply because they are also ready for you.

Has this article helped you, and want to support my writing? I would be super grateful if you could Buy Me a Coffee. Thank you so much!

You might also like this article:

It’s been almost six years now since I entered into a spiritual awakening. I have been through the Dark Night of the Soul phase , and got to know my inner child and her core traumas. I did a lot of inner work these past years and discovered a lot of things about my conditioning.

I experienced many positive and negative side effects from my spiritual awakening. Being the best effect that I learned to always go with the flow and appreciate all things life throws at me, even the negative parts. I feel generally very at peace on a day-to-day basis.

But one negative side effect that I have a hard time dealing with is how boring it made me.

Of course, boring is a subjective feeling and maybe should not be perceived as such. But the truth is that it’s hard for me to just have fun since my spiritual awakening.

From extrovert to introvert

I used to travel a lot — to 45 countries to be precise. I loved this part of my life because I loved meeting new people and going on spontaneous adventures. I was always up for a last-minute party and would hardly say ‘no’ to any new experiences that could make my life more interesting.

I would consider myself quite an extrovert before my spiritual awakening.

Most of the time, I was easy to talk to and didn’t have a hard time engaging in conversations. I didn’t often speak about serious things and was generally just easy to be around.

But after my spiritual awakening, I turned into a complete introvert. The people I used to hang out with bore me with their shallow conversations. I didn’t want to engage in gossip anymore, and I realized that a lot of my interactions with people were based on that.

Parties also didn’t interest me anymore. I was very aware of the damage I was doing to my body by consuming alcohol and/or drugs. And going sober to a party turned out to be not nearly as fun for me.

No more parties

Looking back at it now, I used to love partying because it gave me a reason to escape my ‘real life’. The weekend was the moment to unwind, dance, and let go of everything. This often involved getting drunk and/or high and partying till the crack of dawn.

The next day, I would be useless because my hangovers would prevent me from doing anything active the day after. I didn’t really care, though — I had nothing better to do anyway. Sunday was ‘Netflix and food order day’ during my party years.

But when I discovered spirituality in my life, I wanted to absorb all the things I could learn about it. A whole new world opened up to me;  from trance-like meditations to lucid dreaming and Kundalini activations.

My Saturdays now consisted of going to healing ceremonies or taking plant medicine.

The Shadow Side of an Awakening

But a real spiritual awakening eventually forces you into the Dark Night of the Soul. After all, the entire reason you entered into an awakening is to get to know the real you.

For me, this meant going deep inside my childhood wounds and the reasons why I was always traveling,  or actually running away. I discovered a lot about my toxic patterns and shadow sides.

During that time, I completely isolated myself.

I had so much going on in my mind that I could not bear being around others. Let alone hearing their gossip, or dancing the night away.

I spent complete weekends alone in my house ,  going deeper and deeper into the shadows of my being. Some might have called it depression, and in hindsight, it might have been close to that.

All I wanted was to spend time in nature and with myself. I had no motivation to work or spend my time with people who were not open to anything spiritual.

Boredom and spiritual awakenings

Being bored and feeling boring is a part of the awakening process. It’s hard to let go of the person you once thought you were, and sometimes you miss them. I sometimes wish I could go back to being that carefree, happy backpacker that I used to be, not questioning every little thing that happens in my life.

I guess that feeling boring around others is a natural reaction if you compare your life with your previous friends. Looking at their Instagram stories might even worsen that effect ; it seems like the whole world is having fun except you.

And I think this is exactly where the lesson lies: you cannot compare your life to somebody else’s anymore.

Your life is unique and so are you.

Everything always happens at the exact right moment ,  and that includes your spiritual awakening and being boring for a while.

It doesn’t help to dwell on the past and the person you used to be,  they no longer exist. And that is actually a good thing. If you learn to fully accept yourself at this very moment, you will also attract the right situations in your life.

High sensitivity

I discovered that one of the reasons that I became boring is because I got hyper-sensitive to a lot of things around me. One of them are cities. I feel the chaos and intense sounds and lights deep inside my body, and it overwhelms me.

I am very aware of the environment I place myself in, and if that emits a lot of negative energy, it directly affects me. Nightclubs also tend to have a lot of bad energy often, many people there just want to escape their lives (no judgment here, I was one of them for almost all my life!).

Being around negative people also impacts my personal energy. I tend to take on and feel their problems inside myself. My spiritual awakening made me a lot more empathetic, and absorbing energies is a direct result of that.

I now prefer to spend time alone and not be influenced by so many energies around me.

Boring and happy alone

I think that one of the main reasons why awakened people tend to feel boring is because they learned to be happy alone. Our whole lives, we have learned to distract ourselves with external things. We always strive for the next best thing, and it’s very hard to enjoy the moment right now.

But if you have passed through the Dark Night of the Soul, you have learned to be happy with just yourself. You no longer need all those distractions, and you can genuinely enjoy your own company.

In the beginning, it was really hard for me to have nothing to do on the weekends. I felt shame when people asked me what my plans were for Saturday night — I literally had none.

Being alone in my house on a Saturday night amplified my feeling of being boring. I knew all my friends were having fun and getting drunk, and I was just sitting on my couch with a self-help book or watching a spiritual documentary.

It was only when I forced myself to go to some parties that I realized: This is not me anymore. I can’t pretend that I like to party any longer ,  it just makes me feel further removed from the people around me. And with that, further removed from myself.

Being boring helped me discover my gifts

There is one beautiful silver lining in feeling boring after your awakening: you have more time to discover your unique talents.

Imagine all that time you used to spend chasing happiness (in alcohol/drugs, sex, or money), material things, and achievements. And once you reached it, the next thing was already waiting in line.

But after your spiritual awakening, you know you don’t need to chase any of those things anymore . You are simply whole as you are right now. This leaves you with so much more time to discover your gifts.

Maybe you are a great musician, love painting/drawing, or unmask the hidden writer in yourself. Being boring helps you to really develop that side of yourself.

In my case, I realized I can express myself in written words better than with speech. I discovered that my body and my health are my best allies, and allow me to practice all the outdoor sports that I love.

Becoming friends with my body and my mind gave me so much gratitude for the boring parts in my life. Because in exactly those boring moments, I forced myself to do something just for me, whether that be meditation, yoga, or journaling.

Trusting my intuiton

Of course, I still think about those fun, carefree moments that used to define my life when I was traveling a lot. And yes, I do still miss that person as well.

But one result of my spiritual awakening is that I learned to trust in my intuition. And my intuition tells me now that I am just happier right now while being boring. It might be an extended version of the ‘cocoon stage’ of the spiritual awakening process, and I am not sure if this is going to last forever.

I still have hope that at some point I’ve done enough inner work to be able to simply just have fun again,  but until then, there is nothing wrong with being boring.

If you’re craving a deeper connection with yourself and feel ready to begin again, I highly recommend this course. If you’re longing for a reset, this might be just what you need.

DMT (N, N-Dimethyltryptamine) is known as the world’s most powerful hallucinogen. It gained popularity since the general rise of interest in psychedelics, like LSD, mescaline, and magic mushrooms.

DMT is a compound that naturally exists in our bodies and gets released when you actually die, but can also be awakened during deep breathwork sessions. Besides that, DMT can be found in ayahuasca, a toad in the Amazon, or in other types of plants.

It is so powerful because many people experience ‘ego-death’. You basically die, enter into a different Universe, and come back again reborn. Many people are not afraid of real death anymore after using this psychedelic, since they realize that there is much more life after dying.

My own DMT experience didn’t involve ego-death, but it did reveal some other interesting insights.

Read more

Most of us have been conditioned since an early age that we need to live a certain way. This path generally includes getting a well-paid job, finding a partner, buying a house, and having children. This way, we are most valuable to society.

We will pay our taxes, are stuck with a mortgage for life, and work our way into depth for our kids, who are waiting for the same predicament.

We put so much emphasis on finding a partner at a young age to complete this narrative that we think we are failing if we don’t encounter one.

To be honest, I also believe that for many of us it’s important to have a romantic partner. There’s a reason why all our movies, books, and songs revolve around love.

But why rush it so much?

You’re not a failure for waiting for the One

Even though there is a certain time limit on finding your partner (if you are a woman and want kids), our society makes us believe that you have failed in life when you’re single for a long time.

There’s a lot of pressure on us to find somebody at an early age, because “all the good ones will be taken if you wait too long”.

This creates a romantic pool of people desperate to find their forever love. But we haven’t even learned any life lessons yet when we’re young. We’re operating from a total lack of awareness.

We probably get attracted to partners that subconsciously remind us of our childhood. There’s nothing wrong with that, but these types of attraction often resemble a toxic pattern.

We get addicted to the serotonin and dopamine our partners provide, and actively ignore red flags because of that.

Subscribe now

Believe in divine timing

One result of our society is that we have lost touch with our own intuition. We don’t believe in higher forces guiding us from within anymore.

We are very pragmatic and are told that magic does not exist. But if you are totally quiet and just observe around you… You will see that magic is everywhere.

I believe the Universe sends us signals and synchronicities all the time. But we learned not to pay attention to them. After all, a person believing in their own intuition is useless to society.

That person wouldn’t buy into the fears they are telling us, nor be on the chase for always wanting more (more money, more status, more women, more power, more clothes, more jewelry — the list is endless).

And if you stop being a consumer, you stop being valuable to the system.

Recognizing synchronicities

Divine timing exists. If there is one thing I learned after my spiritual awakening, it is that all you can do is surrender. Believe there is a plan for you. Believe everything happens for a reason — it’s all to make your soul grow.

The Universe (or God, Allah, Source, Buddha, Krishna, or whatever you want to call it) sends us signs all the time.

You probably had those typical moments when you were thinking about someone, and they suddenly reached out. Or your plans failed, but the detour caused a necessary shift in your life. Maybe you had a very strong feeling you had to take another route to work, and therefore missed a big accident.

Perhaps, you keep seeing the phrase “Let go” in songs, books, and conversations, signaling you need to release control.

Those are all signs from the Universe, and they are not coincidences.

Maybe you were dreaming of an ex just before they contact you, or receive an insight in a dream that helps solve a problem. What about premonitions that turned out to actually happen?

Even déjà vu can be a sign from the Universe about another life you were living, and you suddenly remembered something. Sudden feelings are also signs: you walk into a house and feel a deep peace (or discomfort) without a logical explanation.

When you pay attention to these signals, you will notice that the Universe shows you when you’re not aligned with someone.

Signs the Universe Sends When You Are Not Meant to Be With Someone

Since we’re so focused on partnership, it’s hard to walk away when the time is right. We try to change the other person, blame it on attachment styles, or pay an expensive therapist to help us out.

But our souls already know. Here are some signs you should learn to recognize:

1. You feel drained after spending time with them

Energy is real. We constantly react to each other’s soul energy — it’s the reason why you are drawn to certain people and want to stay far away from others.

If your partner makes you feel empty all the time, this is a big sign that you are not aligned. Maybe you get a headache after talking to them. Or fatigue kicks in when you spend time with them.

Don’t ignore these signs. After all, the body keeps the score.

2. You’re getting a lot of setbacks

Synchronicities are not just coincidences. They are signs that things are (not) aligning. Or you’ll get signs about things that constantly fall apart.

Missed appointments, canceled plans, traffic jams that prevent you from getting to your partner; pay attention.

If there is a constant disruption of flow, this is a sign you’re not aligned. This can also manifest in the form of having endless discussions or constantly being misunderstood by your partner.

3. Your intuition is trying to reach you

This is an important sign you shouldn’t ignore. It can be an inner knowing, a gut feeling, an upset stomach, or anything that just feels “off”.

This is a sign trying to grab your attention. Maybe you have heavy dreams about your partner, or instantly become irritated when they are around you.

Your intuition knows it before you do and is making your body respond. Don’t push it away.

4. You don’t grow with them

We all walk certain paths in life. Some people never overcome their traumas. Some people will always project their pain onto others. Some will have addictions that they keep for the rest of their lives.

But if you are healing and doing the inner work, and they are not, your paths are separating. If they constantly fall back into old patterns and don’t want to change anything, it’s time to let them go.

Your values are (becoming) different from theirs, and this cannot create a harmonious relationship.

5. The lessons keep repeating

You always get into the same discussion. Always have a fight about the same thing. Keep stumbling on miscommunication with them. Your growth is not growing with them anymore, and you are stuck in the same patterns.

This is a big sign that you are not aligned anymore. The lesson keeps repeating itself until you learn it. When one of you doesn’t learn, your paths are separating, and something much better is waiting for you.

6. It feels like an addiction

Any sort of addiction is bad. This includes an addiction to your partner. If you feel you can’t live without them, that your whole day revolves around them, and every little thing they do affects you immensely — that’s not healthy.

You are not aligned with your partner; you’re acting from trauma. You need them to not feel lonely and would do anything to make them stay. These types of patterns are big lessons about your childhood and have nothing to do with real love.

7. You don’t like who you are around them

This is a massive sign often overlooked. You realize you don’t like yourself when you are with them. Maybe you are mean to them, get very controlling, and want them to constantly change something.

When you are a genuinely nice person to others, but your partner brings out the worst in you, don’t take this lightly. They might trigger your deepest shadows and wounds, and even though this is a sign you need to work on yourself as well, it can mean your partner is so unaligned with you that you dislike yourself completely.

8. You are waiting for them to change

The Universe wants us to accept what is, not what could be. True love is loving someone for who they are right now, not for their potential they could be in the future.

If you only stay with someone because you think they will change at some point, don’t. Only you are the one who can change yourself — don’t wait for them to do the work.

Walk away when you don’t like who they are right now. It’s not your responsibility to change them or heal them.

Know when it’s time to walk away

Some people come for a reason, others for a season, and a few rare ones for a lifetime. Our general approach to relationships is not to just give up. Keep loving your partner, and they will eventually change.

But it doesn’t work like that. You need to change. If the Universe is constantly sending you signals, it’s time to recognize them and move on.

It’s no crime to give up on someone. Actually, it’s the only right thing to do sometimes. You are preventing their growth, plus your own, by staying with somebody who is not aligned.

The Universe has all these amazing things for you in mind, but if you fail to listen to the first signs, you will never get it.

Eventually, you just settle for less and blame it on the situation. But the only one to blame is yourself for staying. We can only work on ourselves; no one else causes our problems. It’s all about how you perceive them.

Trust that by closing one door, another one will open for you.

My Anxious & Avoidant Shadow Work Journal is a great first step to becoming aware of your own attachment issues, so you can start healing.

It is available as a digital download or as a print journal, in case you are interested in learning about yourself through shadow work.