DailyOM: How does someone know if they are in an emotionally abusive relationship?
Jumana: Well, we are definitely dealing with a spectrum when talking about emotional abuse. It can be very subtle, like a quiet but persistent criticism, or it can be as overt as outright contempt. We all have shadow aspects and our less-than-kind moments, so the line can seem vague between what is abusive and what is the kind of growing edge that can be expected in any relationship. That said, the best way to tell if you are in an emotionally abusive relationship is to make sure that you are able to actually feel your state of being and be honest with yourself about it. If you consistently feel wobbly, somehow fundamentally wrong, or secretly anxious around another person, those are all clues that the relationship is taking more than it gives, and poisonous rather than medicinal for you.
I think one of the simplest ways to get clear about whether or not you are in an emotionally abusive relationship is to stop asking the question, "Is this person toxic?" and to start asking, "Is this person toxic to me?" When you shift out of trying to define and analyze and create narratives about another person, you are shifting your attention back to where it has the most power: to your own truth. What matters is what is for you, what is not for you, what nourishes you, not what depletes or diminishes you. So, if you want to free yourself from entrapment, all you have to do is ask, "Is this toxic for me?" and if the answer is yes, move away from whatever or whoever it is.
DailyOM: Why do we stay stuck in an emotionally abusive relationship? What makes it so hard to leave one?
Jumana: To answer this question, I think it is first important to acknowledge that sometimes we stay in harmful relationships for reasons that are circumstantially entrapping: financial dependency, the safety of shared children, and other circumstantial hardships. In the course, we look more toward the inner game: what is it that we do have agency over and choice around, based on our own sense of self-authority or lack thereof. One predominant reason is simply that we have never experienced a relationship that wasn't harmful on some level.
The idea that a relationship can and should be fortifying and honoring can simply seem out of reach; we are not patterned to even expect that. So, we have work to do in simply growing ourselves up and believing in what we know to be true (love strengthens us, doesn't weaken us), even if we have not yet experienced it.
Without support and practices that help us to find ourselves and to get strong inside of the relationship, it can be very difficult to actually leave it. For instance, in this course, my invitation is that students press pause on any needs to make external changes, to fix the situation. We focus on first clarifying and strengthening ourselves on a fundamental level so that the choices or changes we make by the end of the course will be wiser, more sourced in a sense of inner emotional safety, and much less likely to regress or cause further unnecessary chaos.
DailyOM: You teach about the "dark mother." Tell us more about this concept and its significance.
Jumana: Dark mother is that deep feminine presence that embraces us inside of the unknown, inside of our apparent aloneness. Afraid to be alone. Afraid of change. Afraid of letting go of what we have and being plunged into the unknown, even if what we have is hurting or diminishing us. A true connection with our dark mother shifts that fear at its most fundamental level. She is a loving presence that remains with us regardless of any circumstance.
Cultivating a connection with her is the difference between being in a dark unknown place and feeling isolated and alone, versus being in a dark unknown place but feeling surrounded by a presence, a knowing, a comfort, a guide, and a protection. Because we work with deep feminine sensibilities in the course, we approach a connection with our dark mother that is felt and real, not conceptual. When we have a sense of a true connection to a presence that never leaves us, we have the courage and resources to make good choices for ourselves even if they involve loss, change, and the unknown.
DailyOM: What types of empowering practices do you teach in this course?
Jumana: There are a few types of practice in this course. We work with guided meditations, some guided written inquiries, and also concise, powerful articulation of natural laws. I have found that practices need to be potent but also simple, especially when working within the complex and tender terrain of emotional abuse. So, most of the meditation practices work via entrainment: entraining you into a certain state of being or into contact with deeper resources in your own being. It's like stepping into a boat that will take you to the ocean, rather than exhausting yourself trying to swim there on your own.
The practices are also sourced in deep feminine sensibilities, which means they lead students into a felt, embodied, and very personal, authentic experience, rather than a conceptual one. True empowerment can be supported from the outside, but it is always self-sourced. I guide practices in a way that returns students to the depths of their own Knowing, so that what they gather from this course is fully theirs, and with them forever.
DailyOM: By the end of this journey, what will students have achieved?
Jumana: This course is designed to support fundamental realignment and healing within the student, regardless of what circumstances they find themselves in. By taking a break from trying to figure it all out, or make big decisions or changes in their external lives and relationships, students will turn fully toward their own inner terrain. What this means then is that they are turning their personal power and intention toward the place where they have the most agency and ultimately the greatest capacity to free themselves from emotional abuse patterns.
We do not want to just shift one relationship. We want to shift the entire pattern from the inside so that the dynamics of that relationship will not just repeat themselves in others. The course also provides both important validation and some fundamental deep feminine sensibilities that really change the game when approaching the terrain of relationship and healing. We work with principles of nourishment, fortification, clarification, and gentle-but-potent reorientation to personal power that is experiential and permanent, not just imagined or hoped for, or achieved for one moment and then lost again.
Most importantly, by the end of this journey, students will experience their own revelations, their own deeper wisdom, and therefore, a much more powerful sense of their own resiliency and capacity for change. Ultimately, everything that is elicited through this course is a part of the student's own deep wisdom, not merely knowledge or an idea, from me or anyone else. In other words, students will leave this course filled up with more of who they were always meant to be. They will have a fortified commitment to self-advocacy and self-respect that rests on a foundation of unassailable inner resources and a restored trust in life. This is the place from which they can truly leave harmful relationships behind and move into ones that are based on mutual respect, harmony, and ever-deepening love.
DailyOM: This course takes you on a mystical, feminine journey within. With encouragement and compassion, Jumana will help you rediscover how to experience relationships that are nourishing, harmonious, and aligned with your highest self. Until next time, be well.
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