By Cacey-Jane Blackburn Dip. Couns. Priestess of Alexandrian Witchcraft.
Let’s explore the energy of competition amoung women.
I went to an all girls’ school, where achievement, both academic and sporting was held as the ultimate prize and afforded a large amount of approval and praise, a currency a lot of young women both need and lack in their family environments. (Martin Prechtel’s Grief and Praise is a great education on this topic).
A sad control method sometimes comes into play, ‘keep them hungry for love and approval and they’re easier to manipulate’. Love as a currency is a common topic among counsellors and psychologists if you’re not already aware, it’s a conditioning technique that goes down from one generation to the next (often unconsciously). Making it easier for parents to manage head strong children in daily tasks, and sadly as a way of ‘toughening them up’. (Insert tears and tough love here). Also, there are deeper roots to the nature of competition amoung women and why it is one of the major shadow sides to peer groups in later life, especially among ambitious and confident women. If you haven’t read ‘The Red Tent’ by Anita Diamant, I suggest you do. (Thank you Lyndal Greenslade). It will give you an interesting insight into the historical programming of the female mind from days gone by, and guess what? It’s still in your unconscious mind.
Humans are creatures with deep memory. We are animals and as much as we prefer not to think about, we are strongly driven by survival mechanisms. Working together in some cases was not a good idea if the people with the most attractive genetics were the ones chosen to live. Have you ever thought that you might be competing to survive? ‘(Excuse me darling that’s my award/handbag/job/man)’.
Often what we do with shadow behaviours is make them ‘wrong, bad and shameful’. We are now receiving the message from society that women who compete with each other are not enlightened and not ‘helping the sisterhood to rise together’. So many will be posting beautiful collaborations on Instagram while still having a deep need to be chosen as ‘the best!’. This splits our psyche and creates confusion internally. This can actually make you feel physically tired and weird. It can make you feel like a fraud (but you’ll suppress that too).
Go easy on your transition from ‘fighting to survive’, to ‘let’s work together because it makes sense to’. And we aren’t fighting for survival (in a privileged, modern day life) anymore! So yes, it is time to evolve. But demonising your old self is a pretty mean girl thing to do, when she is only trying to get the things you needed to eat for you and your baby, avoid getting cast out of the tribe (which meant death) and keep herself alive in a pretty scary environment.
Here’s two things which help me in this area of authentic female empowerment that I learned while studying Counselling.
1. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
This is simple stuff, but it takes commitment. You treat your brain like a computer and repeat a new thought regularly until it feels more normal. I like the phrase (I’m awesome, she’s awesome, I’m doing great work, she’s also doing great work). And I like Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy even more. Which means when you get sad or pissy about this stuff, you sit down and cry it out or write/vent in your journal until the charge dissipates, or in my case, a combination of both of these techniques. Emotions are real energies and need to be acknowledged, even if they’re dysfunctional by modern day standards.
2. A perspective shift on shadow energies.
A very wise woman once said to me, as I was asking for help to remove some ‘old shit’ stuck around my heart in a therapy session…’You have a very powerful and well trained guard dog protecting your heart, instead of telling that guard dog it’s shit and demanding it goes away, wouldn’t it be kinder to say to your guard dog who has protected you for so long, you can now go and sit by the fire and lick your paws, rest now, your work is done?’.
Kindness is what it’s all about. That woman changed my life, I don’t know her name, but she was kind. We can evolve, and we will, with kindness.
Supportive flower essences for this work would be Pink Cattleya Orchid and Magnolia Soulangeana, available in ‘shop’ at www.seahorseoracle.com
