Heather Catherine Carter, San Francisco, CA (2026)

02/27/2024

A co-committed relationship rests on several intentions agreed on by both persons. If you are willing to make the following commitments but your partner is not, you might be in a codependent relationship.

1. Each of you commits to complete closeness and to clear up anything that stands in the way. The intimacy begins when two people agree they desire closeness and are willing to clean up and heal their barriers.

2. You must commit to yourself healing and development as an individual. You cannot have ultimate closeness without being entirely separate. The more fully developed and healed you are, the more easily you can give and receive healthy love. In a healthy, co-committed relationship, space is as crucial as closeness.

3. Commit to revealing yourself fully in the relationships, not concealing yourself. A major shift happens when we reveal who we are and stop concealing.

4. Commit yourself to the empowerment of people around you. In codependence, you enable other people to be ineffective. In co-commitment, you enable them to be powerful. So much can be accomplished when you and your partner commit to mutual growth.

5. Commit to yourself that you are 100% responsible and the source of your reality. You are not a victim if you participate. Unconscious loving feeds on victimhood, which can only exist when people are not taking responsibility for what is happening to them.

We can be victims of abuse, gaslighting, and people taking advantage of us. But as long as we keep going along with it, nothing changes.

Ask yourself why you keep going along with the abuse, the disrespect, and being taken advantage of.

Are you willing to risk being alone?

In unhealthy relationships, people are firmly committed to...

*Power struggles: who is right/wrong, whose problem is it, who's having a harder time...

*Caretaking-doing everything for a partner and getting little in return

*Cleaning up the other's messes, financial, and internal, conflicts with others

*Cooking three meals a day, massaging the partner's feet...acting as their mother, and wondering why they take no responsibility

02/25/2024

Should I stay or should I go? You're thinking about leaving your relationship.

You've hoped love would be enough.

You believe you have worked to resolve the issues in your relationship, have you?

You may have tried to accept things as they are.

You keep agonizing over the possibility of leaving.

The choices are:⁣
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1. 𝙏𝙤 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙮 𝙞𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙥, and seek help. Recommitting to it free of doubt, free of holding back, free at last to pour your love and energy into the relationship, and find and sustain the love and connection you desire and deserve.⁣
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2. 𝙏𝙤 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙥, finally liberating yourself from it, free from confusion pain, free at last to get on with a new and better life. ⁣
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You sit in relationship ambivalence when you're stuck, not knowing which choice to make. I deal with this all the time. ⁣
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The problem isn't that you don't know what's happening; you are having trouble sorting it all out. ⁣
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People see more than one difficulty in every problem.

They're trying to find solutions for ten things instead of the actual problem.⁣
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There is only 𝙤𝙣𝙚 problem, not many.
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People come at me with, "he does this, she does this, oh, and that too, and her family, and his friends, and we don't agree on this..."⁣
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While all those things are true, they keep you stuck in ambivalence—𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙥 𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙮 𝙤𝙧 𝙜𝙤.⁣⁣
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We live in an age that promotes self-awareness but fails to show us how to use self-awareness to make good decisions. ⁣
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My goal is to help you rediscover the value of your own experience.
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The choice you discover will be one you feel good about after you make it and better and better about as time passes. It will be a choice that leaves you free of regret. ⁣
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I tell my clients that we will either come to a reconciliation or a successful separation. ⁣

When you start planning to leave, the thoughts start creeping up, "Will I be able to afford my life? Will I find love again?"

It's not helping.

Asking friends and family does not help.

The pros and cons list is good if you're buying a car or making a career change, not determining your marriage status.

I ask my client/s 15-20 questions when they need clarification on whether they want to save the relationship.

The answer to the first question, "When things were at their best between you and your partner, would you say they were really good?"

I have had people tell me the only time it was good was on the honeymoon, and they didn't want to marry this person in the first place.

One person told me they knew they made the wrong choice when their husband pulled out a tarp on their wedding night and put it on the bed.

I can't make this up!

Not much here to work with.

Most of the time, it's not so cut and dry. But their answers point me in the right direction.

I can fix what's broken, but I can't fix what never worked!

02/24/2024

Divorce can be hell. It is confusing and tiring; most people think they're divorcing for one reason, but in reality, they're divorcing for a totally different reason.

People cannot understand why people stay married for 10, 15, or 20 + years and then divorce.

I see why, over and over, a true divorce is against our false self.

When we married, for many, the contract was made by their needy and dependent inner child.

One person grows, the other stays stagnant, and the person who grew sheds the mask they wore when they said, "I do."

When one person heals and grows, they cannot live as their inauthentic self a moment longer.

They finally find their true identity, uncover who they really are, and are no longer operating from the inner child but as the adult.

The only way a relationship works is when there are two adults.

Two inner children make most marriage contracts.

If one heals and begins to operate out of their adult self, but their partner still operates from their inner child, the healed partner becomes the parent.

The parent/child relationship is nearly as reactionary as the duo of inner children.

The reactions create the disconnect.

To stop the reactions, you must get to the root of the problem.

In our 20s, we are just learning who we are.

We will change; hopefully, we will grow, heal, and become wise.

When neither partner grows, it will be a disastrous, mediocre marriage where the fights will escalate, or you will end up living with your roommate.

To make it work, you and your partner need to grow together.

The partner stuck in their reactionary patterns and comfort zones feel betrayed.

We cannot feel betrayed because another person has transformed and found themselves.

The choice becomes for the other partner to heal, or they will separate and divorce.

The narcissist hates when their partner heals and finally says, "No more."

I have helped many people walk through a divorce with a narcissist. It gets ugly.

When we are not taught to self-regulate, understand, and process our emotions, we will eat, drink, gamble, shop, or sexualize them away.

When one partner decides they will no longer use coping mechanisms or are sick of the unrest, the other partner will try to sabotage their efforts.

Suddenly, the partner that is not growing is feeling threatened.

They no longer feel safe or like they belong and will do whatever they can to pull their partner back into the drama.

The hardest thing for the healing partner is to stay the course and not get sucked back in while gently guiding their partner to healing themselves.

Instead of saying to their partner, "Can we talk? I am feeling left out and disconnected?"

They become critical and put down their partner and efforts.

During this time, I have to guide my client on dealing with the attacks that will surely come while staying on course and doing my best to save the marriage and help the partner who is not participating in healing.

11/27/2022

If you find yourself jealous of other people ask yourself, “what makes me feel less than others? When did this start?”

•Parental abandonment wreaks havoc on the inner child.

•Being criticized over and over as a child makes one very insecure.

•Growing up with parents that don’t tell the truth harms the child and makes them feel less trusting which creates insecurity

•Having a parent or parents preoccupied with making sure the child behaves a certain way, or not letting anyone know what is really going on because it would reflect badly on them creates low self-esteem.

•Having an overly controlling parent creates deep insecurity and lack of self-love in a child.

Humans act awful when motivated by insecurity! ⁣
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Arrogance is characterized by having an exaggerated sense of importance or abilities.⁣
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Arrogance is almost always a form of overcompensating for what the individual sees as a personal flaw or lack in his own character. Usually, this starts in childhood. ⁣
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Insecurities are also built when you see that somebody else has “something” that you don’t. ⁣
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Instead of having the ability to be happy for that person, you become jealous, and feel sorry for yourself for NOT having that certain “something”. ⁣
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It could be material, it could be a quality, or it could be as tangible as not looking as good as someone else.⁣
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Your defense mechanism becomes ARROGANCE.⁣
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Arrogance feeds off of the feeling of failure, envy, or frustration of not having that one thing that someone else has.

You believe you don't have the ability to get it. You feel you're not good enough or worthy.

So you hide the feelings of shame behind arrogance.⁣
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If people you love and care about insult you or make you feel inadequate, realize they're operating out of arrogance and ignorance.⁣
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Arrogance is not only a sign of insecurity, it's a sign of immaturity.⁣
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Mature and fully-realized persons can get their points across, even emphatically without demeaning or intimidating others. ⁣

Mature and healthy individuals are truly happy for others when good things happen or their dreams come to fruition.

Guess who is the most arrogant of all?

Address

San Francisco, CA

Website

http://www.heathercatherinecarter.com/link-in-bio

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