When Your Resistance Isn’t Yours

My definition of resistance is anything, in us or in our life, that pushes back when we try to move forward.

When it happens, it’s so easy to feel like resistance is “your fault” no matter where it’s coming from. But there’s a very subtle category of resistance that LOOKS like it coming from inside you, but it’s NOT actually yours.

It’s what I’ve come to call “ancestral resistance” or “ancestral programming”.

And it’s VERY hard to spot until you know to look for it.

A dear friend of mine called in distress a few days ago and she’s given me permission to share a bit of her story to illustrate this . (I’m often the one my friends call when the SH*T hits the fan, because I can see through it to what’s going on underneath and help them navigate a path out of it.)

When we first spoke, it looked like she was days from being evicted from her home and it seemed like her worst fear was coming true -
“It’ll all be taken away from me”.

When I heard her say that, it rang a little bell inside me, and I said “Do you think that’s your fear or does it go back farther than you?”

Suddenly, she realized it was her grandmother’s fear.

In a flash, so many things about her grandmother AND her mother made sense to her. Why they held on to things so tightly; why they were so protective; their constant vigilance even in good times, etc.

And then she saw it all in herself.

How tightly she was holding on to a run down house she knew wasn’t her right place to be.

How, every night when she went to work, she was afraid she would find out that they didn’t need her the next day.

How this fear running through her life and her mother’s family was about to become a self-fulfilling prophecy in her eviction.

That’s how “ancestral” programming works.

By influencing our thoughts, feeling, words and actions, this type of internal programming eventually causes us to repeat the very pattern that our ancestors lived out.

But how do we acquire them?

We don’t carry family fears in our DNA, do we?

No, they’re not hanging around in your genetic material – although having similar genes to your ancestors makes it easier for you to follow in the footsteps of their thoughts, emotions and actions.

You can think of ancestral resistance or programming as something we pick up almost by osmosis – meaning it’s as though it’s in the very air we breathe around the dinner table as children.

Later in life, we find ourselves saying the things our parents and grandparents said; expecting the same kinds of things they expected; reacting to situations in the same ways – EVEN WHEN WE TRY NOT TO!

That’s the real kicker here!

These programs operate unconsciously and that’s why they’re SO hard to spot…we think they’re US.

That’s what makes my friend’s realization so important.

FINALLY, she saw through this fear and knew that it wasn’t hers…in fact, it wasn’t even ABOUT her.

That’s the first BIG relief people experience, when we’re working together and we uncover an ancestral program that’s creating resistance in their life.

Oh, thank GOD, it’s not ME!

That realization immediately ends the criticism and “wondering what’s wrong with me” cycle.

Then, we took a moment to breathe together in this new understanding and the knowing that it wasn’t her truth. That allowed her to take a few steps back from the whole experience and see it in a more objective way.

I also did a little energy work with her to take the stress off the situation and get her out of her fear brain and back into her heart again.

Then she remembered the LOVE.

She remembered that she’d always wished her mother and grandmother could’ve had an easier life and could’ve had the freedom to pursue their dreams the way she is now.

Together, we remembered that we have the power to end these ancestral programs and in doing so, redeem the lives of our ancestors and their un-lived possibilities by fully living into our own.

She said could feel her grandmother and great-grandmother cheering.

She could also feel the fierce love in her own heart. A love that was willing to stand in a new truth and end the old cycle – as much for them as for herself.

I left her with some homework to do to clear the last remains of the old beliefs and the fear she’d been feeling and then we hung up.

The next day she called to tell me how it went.

Once she’d done her homework, she said that when she sat down and calculated everything, it turned out she had most of the money she needed to keep from being evicted after all!

She just couldn’t see it before, because the old  family fear was so overwhelming.

That’s what happens when we get out from under old family fears and programs. We can finally live the truth of our own hearts instead of just repeating the cycle without even realizing it.

So if you’re up against a big fear or resistance that you think is yours…it might not be after all.

Can you see any places in your own life where ancestral resistance or programming has been running the show? Or is this pure hogwash? Join the discussion in the comments below.