The power of not being 'chosen'...

What happens when the follower and the friendship count become a measure of how much you've masked your authentic self?

I remember early conversations in the midst of a developing Facebook centring on how many 'friends' you had... your worth established, even in the friendship group you had on the playground, by this new measure of your popularity: the follower count.

I remember, actually, not paying it much heed. But the less I cared, the more detached and different I became from my friendship group. Their popularity and their sense of identity grew every time a friend of a friend's cousin chose to follow their profile... and I stayed the same. Later on, it won't be a surprise that I am not longer in the same friendship group as I was back then. Probably neither is it a surprise that I don't use Facebook as a surveillance tool to keep tabs on the people I went to school with, play the comparison game or that I don't accept friend requests from people I don't know or, incidentally, people I don't like.

But the desire to be liked is a strong one in society. The need to be validated by friends (and strangers) twists us into rivalrous relationships not just with each other, but more dangerously perhaps, with ourself. The algorithm doesn't help change this. In fact, social media operates on likeability bias and we quickly learn how to look, how to act, how to perform if we want to be 'popular'. And when you're trying to build a soul-business, this idea of being 'chosen' can be a massive pitfall.

Where we don't expect it to be problematic, is in the friendships we form, the ones in which we take for granted that we are chosen and accepted.

As I approach 40, it is becoming clearer to me that some people and the relationships we have with them are temporary; purposeful and meaningful for the moment that they are needed and then, not. This hasn't been an easy thing to accept and definitely not an easy thing to live through. And I appreciate it likely makes me sound like a narcissist. But hear me out.

The last twelve months have been transformative in my personal journey. And I have realised that when you begin to step into your power as a woman (or a man, for that matter) and own your whole self and your sensual energetic frequency, that it can create tensions with the people around you. Even if those people are friends. Especially when those people are family.

When I spoke to a friend about training in yoni massage, she called me 'weird'. She rejected any conversation about the path and shut down any more contact with me around my spirituality and sensuality. It stung. I thought she knew completely who I was and yet, this rejection of an aspect of me had me then questionning the path I'd believed in not two hours earlier... Maybe it was too much. Perhaps it was a little bit weird. What did it say about me that I wanted to work with women's bodies in tantric massage...?

Thankfully, the conversation with this friend did not take me from the path.

But it could have. I could have desired to fit in so deeply that I would have sacrificed an aspect of me that I wanted to express and continued with the friendship that had become superficial and obligatory, rather than the experience that would provide soulful development. Following the initial conversation was a period when I felt I had to apologise. But then also, was a calculation of what this person and I had added to eachother's lives over the last 12 months - why was it a surprise that I was pursuing the spiritual path into deeper sensuality? Even though I had been a shoulder for them as they developed their career and battled some intense personal experiences, would I call them first if I were having my own dilemma... these were difficult realisations. But useful ones.

In not being chosen, I came to realise that the rejection of that aspect of me wasn't about me at all. It was about them. They weren't in that space. And so we had sort of stopped aligning. That doesn't mean they are not a beautiful person and it does not stop me wanting them to have the most magical life. But it does mean that in any conversation we might have, there is so much of me that I cannot discuss. And why should I have to feel like I cannot celebrate and share who I am with someone I had chosen to be a friend?

I shouldn't. And neither should any of us, really.

And perhaps that is the mistake that we can make when we take not being chosen as a mirror of ourselves rather than a reflection of someone else. We mutate our desires and we reject a part of ourselves; shroud it in darkness and hide it, using the follower count as a barometer of how acceptable we are, even thought that acceptability is a lie.

The work that I do with women centres on the aspects of the self that we shroud, knowingly and unknowingly: to fit in, to avoid shame, as a trauma response... when we are not chosen, we read the rejection as our own and we often store it deeply within us. Until we don't know what we want to feel, how we want to dress, what we do to enjoy ourselves...

So where we can, perhaps we 'let them' (to coin a phrase and powerful psychology in the self-development world)... Let them not choose us. Let them step away. And see what part of ourselves can develop in the gap - the gap where we are not performing for likes or shadowing and shaming our authenticity. What power there could be in that.

If you are interested in shadow work or the yoni massage mentioned in the blog above, then send an email to devotion@divinemamarising.com or take a look around the rest of the site and see what speaks to you