This week’s card asks us to examine our relationship to “withdrawal” and, because there is always positive and negative expression of any energy, there’s a balanced way to be in withdrawal and an imbalanced one. As we learned from last week’s card “Drop it” — there’s a benefit to withdrawal and it’s a handy emotional tool to have as Mercury goes retrograde.
Balanced withdrawal allows you to move into safety and to withdraw your efforts so that you can regenerate, gather resources, retain well-being, research and plan solutions. It allows you to have a retreat, but it also allows you to ACT and connect to life when the time is right. Balanced withdrawal is always in your empowerment and active choice and it’s designed to help you MOVE forward with success. It helps you know when and how to get what you need safely.
Imbalanced withdrawal, on the other hand, keeps you feeling stuck. Forever trying to avoid some situation of conflict or pain instead of dealing with things head-on. Imbalanced withdrawal has the character of disempowerment, avoidance, fear, isolation, and is a continuous loop of anxiety. Imbalanced withdrawal keeps you from life and from the next steps that would bring you success. It might seek to “prevent” worse pain, but isolation or avoidance only increases whatever problems there are and makes them worse, compounding them with guilt, pain and feelings of worthlessness.
Withdrawal, applied with the right intention can be a positive, balancing, productive and active tool to restore success. In the same way you can’t make a nice cake and beat the batter for 20 hours, or cook the cake for 5 days, there are times when withdrawing your effort is important!
How to spot Imbalanced Withdrawal :
- “I want to be alone.” A breather from social engagements, me-time and downtime is essential to wellbeing, but your “downtime” is constant and you find yourself avoiding others on a continuing basis. You’re no longer taking a breather; you’re avoiding and you don’t feel confident in yourself.
- “I need to figure everything out.” Thinking things over is often necessary, but your urge to pull away or self-examine has taken over your life and inhibited you in connecting to life in a way that causes you to feel stuck and un-satisfied.
- “I don’t want to deal with it.” You find that you are withdrawing instead of dealing with issues or problems more than the time it takes for calmer-heads to prevail and for logical steps to emerge. Instead of dealing, you dump it and “later” never comes.
- “I need to do it on my own.” In a relationship, imbalanced withdrawal is any persisting, chronic habit where you want to isolate and work on your own in situations where honesty, communication, listening or compassion could bring both healing and progress.
GET BACK IN BALANCE
This week, consider the role of withdrawal has in your life. Are you withdrawing or avoiding too much? In what areas are you out of balance? Are you waiting for something to step in or are you willing to take steps for yourself? Are you not withdrawing when you need to? Is there some situation that requires you to step back into safety and assess your next moves? Is there a dynamic in your life that is not healthy or good for you?
This is a perfect week to be reflective, to think twice before reacting and to go into “planning” mode – but it’s just as important to intend to get into the swing of things, to open that stack of mail and to make the decision to get on with life. A stunningly filmed, and gorgeously acted recent movie examines “withdrawal” (both positive and negative forms) in a very clever way: lost-in-space thriller GRAVITY starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Can you think of the different examples of ‘withdrawal’ in that film?
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Imbalanced withdrawal, fear or avoidance is something every person experiences from time to time. However, if your system of withdrawal is persistent, severe or interferes with your life and you have other qualities of sadness, loss-of-interest, hopelessness, or physical/emotional symptoms, you may be suffering from depression. There is help and balance out there for you, please talk to your doctor or seek help.
About this deck: This week’s deck is the “DREAMING in COLOUR: LUMAN DECK” by and self-published by Mindy Hope Sommers. This 60 card deck, illustrated with colourful, digital, fractal images, while seemingly all about colour, is anything but. Many clients and friends love this intuitive, meditative deck, and use it to encourage their own intuitive response. I admit it’s not one of my personal favourites yet (some of the colours are muted in the deck I received and some of the tones and shapes fail to relate to the keyword on the card for me either literally or intuitively) – still, I’m glad to have gotten it in a trade and it has many teaching possibilities.
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