You Know This Ache

Maybe you know the feeling. Your heart opens wide with your partner, and then something closes it. 

Perhaps their words make you afraid or unsafe. Or they do something that causes you to feel shame, worry, guilt, or anxiety. Maybe you become instantly angry, arms crossed. You’re so done with being hurt or disappointed that you get tough in the face of it.

It’s often the people we love most—dear friends, family, and lovers—who find the buttons we don’t even know we have.

If any of this sounds familiar, please know that when you shut down or react, your nervous system is doing something entirely natural. It’s trying to protect you from what it perceives as a threat, based on old information.

This eBook + Quiz bundle exists to help you begin to welcome your protective parts and heal the places in you where love brings up fear or any of its cousins.

Your System Isn’t Faulty

We’ve all been hurt through abandonment, neglect, criticism, shame, betrayal, and more. In response, we built protective layers to keep us from wandering into situations where we would feel the brunt of that old pain again. And it works. Our triggers send us running from good, decent relationships; we say no to invitations and opportunities that could forward our career; we shudder at the thought of doing a public talk or singing for an audience because we feel too exposed.

But once we learn to notice these layers of protection, welcome them, and offer compassion instead of resisting them or being at their mercy, they can soften and heal. When we do, our world opens.

What’s Inside

The eBook: When Love Brings Up Fear

• Why old wounds surface even after years of personal work

• The effects of old, unconscious triggers on our current life

• Typical triggers many of us must work through

• Three simple practices for meeting a triggered or protective part

The Quiz for When Love Brings Up Fear: Are You Ready to Stop Coping and Start Healing?

• Eight questions that help you see where you stand right now

• Three distinct profiles that your answers might fall into

• Clear next steps for each profile

Is This You?

You might recognize some of these protective parts.

• Feedback feels like an attack, even when you wish it didn’t

• You pick fights when you start to get close to someone

• If dating, you’ve begun to believe there are “no good men (or women) out there” 

• You’ve done healing work, but you notice triggers that still run you

• You find yourself walking on eggshells

• You’re ready for less coping and more healing

There are plenty of other examples, too. Maybe the sum of it is simply that you have a sense you’re ready to look closer at your reactions and see how you could feel freer and more confident. That’s a perfectly good reason to begin.

A Personal Note from Terri

I wrote this from my own experience. It all started when, even with years of training, I found myself in a relationship that brought up old wounds I didn’t know I had.

My knowledge and experience have made me aware that these wound buttons come from upbringing and ancestry. I knew they were mine. Instead of blaming him for triggering me, I got curious about how to heal. The work I did changed how I participated in that relationship, and every relationship since then.

My favorite part of this work is how clearing old wounds brought Eddie into my life, the person I had always hoped for but hadn’t yet found. He’s my favorite human. We’re together now, in a delightful, deep, and ever-evolving partnership.

This eBook + Quiz bundle were written so you don’t have to do this work alone, or from scratch. What a good thing!

With love,

Terri