About Creating Love workshops

Much of the focus of our work involves the transforming of our relationships from a state of co-dependency to a more functional, balanced and mature state of relating. The term co-dependency describes a condition in which our lack of trust and self-esteem create an inability to have true love, intimacy and a deep connected sexuality in our lives. As co-dependents we either look to another person to fill our feelings of emptiness or we simply avoid relationships altogether, or intimacy while in them. There are many ways that our co-dependency can manifest in our lives. Some of these include:

- Basing our sense of inner well being on someone, or something else.
- Losing our sense of self in the other, or conversely, not allowing ourself to emotionally attach to another.
- Habitually putting the needs of others before our own. Minimizing or not even knowing our needs, and being unable to articulate them.
- Blaming the other for the way we feel (making them responsible for our feelings).
- Trying to change or control our partner.
- Being unable to set appropriate boundaries in relationships.

Co-dependency arises from our unhealed wounds of the past. These wounds invoke deep feelings of shame, unlovability and fear and lead us to a state of great inner discomfort, and ultimately disconnection, from ourselves. We often find ourselves sabotaging or avoiding the love and intimacy we want in our lives, because it exposes these uncomfortable feelings. This state of inner ‘dis-ease’ often drives us to lives of cover-ups and compensation or to escaping in to various addictions.

Before we can enter into, and sustain intimacy with another, we have to know ourselves and what makes us afraid or reactive. Our defences and protections that we needed to endure and survive our childhoods, now operate in us habitually, and have made us defensive, shut down, and out of touch. While we might feel some sense of safety behind our walls of protection it also stops us having any true intimacy. More often our protective behaviour actually significantly harms our relationships. For example, a person who protects themselves by withdrawing and shutting down emotionally, will probably end up creating great frustration in their partner and will often trigger the partner into their own style of protection.

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