To be whole is to be complete and not lacking or leaving out any part. If someone were to ask you what makes you whole, what would you say? Would you answer something like:
- my partner makes me whole
my career/business makes me whole
my family or my children make me whole
my friends or my belongings make me whole
In reality, as much as we need others in our lives to feel happy and as much as we may need our work to give us a purpose to strive for each day, these are not the things that make us whole.
A whole person can be described as someone made of mind, body, and spirit. Another way to view being whole is to acknowledge that we are all made up of our experiences, our thoughts, our feelings, our bodily sensations, and our behaviors.
This topic of being whole comes up a lot in group due to many people who are suffering because of a failed relationship that at one point or another became unhealthy or dysfunctional. Often times, dysfunction (also known as malfunction) occurs when one person in a relationship starts to become completely dependent on the other to meet his/her needs. Particularly the emotional needs. For instance, “I cannot feel secure with myself unless you love me” or “If you do not accept me, then I am nothing or I am completely worthless”.
This is a pattern that begins to affect both people in the relationship because now one person's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are based solely on the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of someone else outside the Self. People become enmeshed with one another when their personal boundaries are unclear or when they have not yet discovered that their sense of wholeness depends on the relationship they have with their own self, not with anyone or anything.
Relationships are tricky. Becoming entangled with someone we care about and love to be around is one of the hardest traps to avoid falling into. Unfortunately, this enmeshment is what often begins to create the cycle of unhealthy beliefs, conflicts, and patterns that destroy the relationship and leave people feeling incomplete. Most people feel a sense of lacking which they think will go away as long as they have someone or something that will make them feel whole.
If the Whole you is made up of mind, body, spirit, and emotions, what are you doing to nurture these parts of yourself?
Regardless of whether or not you have someone else to depend on who adds to your daily fulfillment, remember that you are already whole just the way you are. Learn to love and nurture yourself so that your own health and happiness in life is mostly dependent on the one thing you can always count on no matter what, the Whole You.