Am I Speaking English?
Or Are They Actually Deaf? Insights April 2007
When you find yourself saying the same things, without any apparent result, you might wonder if you’ve somehow slipped into a dream where no one understands what you are saying. If it was a dream, at least you’d know you would wake up. Maybe you’d wake up in a world where people would hear what you say and take notice of it.
Often, the most obvious place to experience this phenomenon is in your own home, where members of your family seem to be oblivious to your words. Sometimes they’ll respond, and act like they hear you, then their behavior proves that you’re being ignored. It’s maddening. After all, how hard is it to remember to load a dishwasher, or to pick up milk on the way home, or to move their footwear from the doorway to the closet? You might wonder why they need to be told – no one ever told you to do these things.
If you feel like an invisible person, or a person whose words are ignored, it may comfort you to know there is a reason these things happen. In fact, you can change it. The key is to change the subliminal signals your subconscious mind uses to communicate with other people. Those signals are occurring below the level of consciousness, far below the domain of your rational mind. Those signals are carrying messages that contradict your words! And worse, they tell the people around you to ignore you.
The people around you receive those messages at the level of their subconscious. Since the subconscious mind typically has more control over your behavior than your conscious mind, they will obey the subliminal signals instead of your words.
I will warn you that changing this kind of subconscious programming also requires a change in behavior. You're used to repeating yourself.
My teenage sons are quick to let me know that I’m repeating myself. “Mom, I heard you and I answered you. Why are you telling me again?” Or “Mom, I’m already doing it. Why do you keep saying the same thing?”
I’m probably telling them again because for so many years I said everything a hundred times, in the feeble hope that one of those repetitions would actually sink into their brain. Now, I have to find something else to do with my attention. Maybe I’ll read a novel. That’s an option because they actually do what I’m asking them to do – I still get surprised. They find my surprise offensive, because they really don’t remember ignoring me in the past.
It’s true, they don’t remember ignoring me because that behavior wasn’t happening at the conscious level. It was a function of their subconscious brain, in response to those nasty subliminal signals from my subconscious telling them to ignore me.
Why would your subconscious do that? There could be several reasons. One common reason is that your subconscious is recreating an emotional program from your childhood. If your childhood contained experiences of feeling invisible or ignored, those experiences trained your subconscious to expect that behavior from people. It will tell people to behave that way because it’s familiar. Not comfortable, not pleasant, but familiar.
Likewise, if one of your parents was sometimes ignored, your subconscious would absorb that pattern during childhood and reproduce it. In recognizing how such patterns are reproduced, it’s vital to understand that the circumstances are not recreated: only the emotional dynamic is recreated.
The challenge here is that your subconscious recreates these emotional dynamics because they feel safe. To change the dynamics occurring in your relationships, you must teach your subconscious to feel safe with new dynamics. There are a lot of methods to do this work, but in the context of this column I’ll keep it simple. Consider an Intention Ball of Light.
Start by imaging a ball of light, about the size of a beach ball, spinning in front of you. Spin the ball either clockwise or counterclockwise. Do not spin the ball towards you or away from you.
Imagine you can expand the ball so that your whole body and all your energies are inside the ball. Now the light is passing through all your tissues and energies. Relax with the ball spinning through you to prepare your body and your mind for the change you wish to make.
Imagine you can put an intention in your ball of light simply by thinking about that intention. As the light passes through your being, it melts away anything that is not congruent with your intention. It changes you to be a person for whom your intention is true.
To correct your subliminal messages, as mentioned above, try these intentions:
I am safe with new patterns of interaction in my relationships.
I am safe when people value my words and my requests.
I am safe when people honor my words and requests.
I am safe being valued and honored in all my relationships.
Healing works in layers, so continue using your Intention Ball of Light and watch the behavior of other people change. It’s amazing what happens when your subliminal messages match what you are saying. Enjoy.
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