#69 Conscious Connections and Breaking Unhealthy Patterns with Karina Chapman

Unlock the secrets to attracting the love you deserve with dating and relationship coach, Karina Chapman! Ever wondered why physical attraction alone isn't enough for a lasting relationship? Find out how identifying and matching values is crucial in forming conscious connections. Karina shares her personal journey through several unsuccessful relationships and offers insights into recognizing red flags and trusting your instincts.

Discover how your past influences your present. Learn how early childhood experiences shape your perceptions and patterns in relationships, often leading to repetitive cycles of unhealthy partnerships. By becoming aware of these influences and recognizing self-sabotaging behaviors, you can redefine what a healthy relationship looks like. We also discuss unrealistic portrayals of relationships in media and the importance of proper education on interpersonal skills.

Don't miss out on practical advice, resources, and a free masterclass to help you increase your confidence and attract the love you truly deserve. And check out her books!

Chapters

• 0:00 Conscious Connections in Dating
• 6:55 Breaking Patterns in Relationships
• 17:01 Creating Conscious Connections for Lasting Love
• 23:49 Letting Go of Society's Expectations
• 28:07 Redefining Relationship Expectations

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth podcast. Frank talk about sex and dating.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Hello everyone, tamara here, welcome to the show. Today's guest is Karina Chapman, and we'll be talking about conscious connections. If you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. Thanks for joining me, karina, it's a pleasure. Thanks, tamara. I just want to ask, first of all, how did you start becoming a dating and relationship coach? And then I want to definitely get into some of the pitfalls and the things people aren't doing wrong.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Absolutely. I guess I got into it from having several bad relationships myself and of course, they didn't seem like they were going to be bad at the time. But after a few failed relationships I realized that I was choosing wrong. There was something wrong with my picker as such. So I thought, wow, I've wasted all this time in these many years with people that actually don't match well with me. So what am I doing wrong? Who actually would match with me and how can I figure that out?

Speaker 1: 1:08

So the realization of that sort of came upon me when I was doing lots of dating, because I thought I actually don't know who exactly it is that I'm looking for, so how can I find that out?

Speaker 1: 1:22

So that took me on a journey of dating lots of people to find out what's really important to me. So it was a very long process over many years, and I realized that we need to be a lot more conscious about choosing the right person for long-term connection so that we can have long-term relationships and we're not going over failed relationship after failed relationship and wondering what relationships. And we're not going over failed relationship after failed relationship and wondering what the heck we're going to do and also wondering whether we might just have to sit on the couch with our cat or dog and give up on love. So I think a lot of people have felt like that, gone through lots of relationships, thought I'm obviously doing something wrong, but what is that and how can I change it. Yeah, and I was going to ask what have you found? I'm sure obviously something wrong, but what is that?

Speaker 2: 2:04

and how can I change it? Yeah, and I was going to ask what have you found? I'm sure, obviously it took you years, but what have you found does work? What makes a good connection to start? What should people look for initially?

Speaker 1: 2:16

I find that obviously there needs to be some sort of physical attraction, but traditionally that's all we've gone on. It's just oh look, there's a cute girl or a cute guy, let's go and chat to them and maybe date them, and we never think further than that. But what we don't get taught is that values matching is really important, and a lot of people don't even know what their values are. So then if they're unclear of what they really value in life, then how can they possibly match up with anyone else? So I really advise people to become very clear on, say, maybe, your top 10 values, of what's really important to you, and once you've got that clarity, it's a bit easier when you're out in the dating field with those in mind, to see whether someone's matching well with you or not. Of course there's interests, characteristics, traits, behaviors, all of that as well, but the biggest thing that people really need to match on is values.

Speaker 2: 3:17

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, and we had someone recently on this show who mentioned that as well and she had a list to help people understand, like, what the values are. You know, like there's, you know a few that people know of, but they're kind of like a lot more than you that you think about. And then, after values, I'll kind of jump to like what do you? What mistakes do people make? I mean, I know you talked about it only going for looks. Are there any other things that you discovered? That definitely doesn't work when you first start dating.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 3:47

I find that a lot of people ignore red flags.

Speaker 1: 3:50

So if they're out on a date with someone that thinks attractive and that person says something that they kind of go hmm, that didn't feel or sound quite right, but this is an attractive person.

Speaker 1: 4:02

Maybe they didn't mean that and they start explaining away reasons why that person might have said something and they're not realizing that actually that's a red flag, which means this isn't the right one for you and let's not go on a second date. So that's a really big thing that people I find miss out on and and I've done that in the past myself. So I work a lot on getting people to understand how they feel when there's a red flag in front of them. So, even if they don't consciously hear what it is that's going on, they might actually feel it, which is often either a hard rock in your chest or a tight throat or perhaps even a twisted stomach kind of feel, and that can be an educator for you that something's going on that you need to pay more attention to and you better start listening, because this could be red flag, because it's a red flag feeling.

Speaker 2: 4:57

Yeah, I was telling someone yesterday about someone I dated and how it started out. I don't know. He had been overweight, he was not successful online, so he started losing weight and then he also changed his career field on his online app and it wasn't adding up as he was speaking and I was like it just didn't make sense of what he said he was doing. But I still dated him and he admitted it and said like, yeah, well, and I just took his excuse. I was like, well, you know it was hard for him, so he didn't think it would go anywhere. He was just trying to get dates, you know, to practice. So and we just happened to hit it off. But yeah, other people are like, what? Like, why did you? So? I still look at that. That's the problem. It's so easy to do. And what? What reasons have people given? Um, or do they even know they're doing it? Like, do they like, how do they explain why they do that? Or is that not really what you coach on? You just want them to stop.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Well, that's why I work a lot with people on what conscious connection is, because a lot of time it's on that subconscious level or we're not really conscious of what's happening. So somebody else outside can see it and hear it, but we don't. We've got this little voice inside explaining away a good reason as to, like you said, why he's changed what he did for his career or whatever else in his bio. That might not have been exactly true and when you met him you could have gone. You know what he's already lied about this and this and this. So how can I actually trust this person if we've started out with something that's not true and that gives a little bit more indicator? You know if you're really conscious, but most of us are not, and we're explaining away behavior that we shouldn't be explaining away. We should be running away instead.

Speaker 2: 6:44

Yeah, so how do you, or is that part of your method of coaching? But if you can give like the highlights of how the conscious connection part works, Absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 6:55

I have a program called Aligned Connections, so I take people through a process together. So the first thing that we do is we become conscious of past relationships and past experiences, because, as humans, when we're born, from the age of about zero up to seven, we're like little sponges, so we absorb all of this information in of everything that's around us and we don't know whether it's right or wrong, or good or bad. So if your parents' relationship is the only one that you see, you don't know whether that's a good or bad relationship. But that's the example that you've got of what a relationship is. So we even extend it further to the rest of the family. How were aunts and uncles? What about friends of the family? What about grandparents? Was there any positive relationship examples?

Speaker 1: 7:46

And it's amazing how many people have no good relationship examples. And so then they wonder, like, why am I never successful? But if you don't actually know what a good relationship is, then how would you actually create it? Because you're only creating things that you've seen and repeating that, and that's why a lot of people keep seeming to pick the wrong person the same type, over and over whatever it might be controlling, maybe physically abusive, whatever it is and they wonder but if you're a child and you saw your, say, father hitting your mother and to you that's a normal relationship, then it's very easy for you to slide into that same sort of relationship, not be happy, of course, but you've never had any other examples. So I work really a lot about looking at the past, figuring out have you got any positive relationships as an example from the past? And because, if you don't, what does it actually look like for you? What is a positive relationship? How would it look? How would you feel? All of that sort of thing.

Speaker 1: 8:52

And it's amazing how a lot of people are not conscious about who they had around them. And in fact, one of my clients came to the realization that I didn't have any good relationship examples around me and I said well, really, how can you expect to have a good relationship if you don't even really know what that looks like? And it almost took the pressure off her because she was like oh well, that makes sense. Yeah, if I actually don't know what it is, then how will I know if I ever find it? And then, even if she did find it, she would sabotage it in some way because that wasn't the type of relationship that she was thinking of. So it's amazing how we do that and, of course, the stories we tell ourselves. You know well that's how mum and dad were and I guess that's just what relationships are and that's how it is for couples and we don't know any better.

Speaker 1: 9:44

So for another client of mine, at first she thought she had no good relationship examples at all and then when we talked further she realised that one set of her grandparents were actually very supportive, kind, loving, caring towards each other and she had this belief that she'd created that there are no good long-term relationships. But when we delved further into her past and realized she did have an example of one, then she couldn't keep the same belief. So it's about our beliefs. We self-sabotage ourselves a lot and we don't even know what our beliefs are because often they're just sitting a little bit below on the subconscious level. So that's why becoming more conscious of beliefs, conscious of past relationships, conscious of patterns, things like that, really helps so that we can stop the patterns and we can start creating something new and create a clear vision of what type of relationship is a healthy, positive one and how we can move towards that and what it looks like.

Speaker 2: 10:48

Yeah, I mean, as you were talking, the other side of it is the movies and the rom-coms where it's like perfect world and everyone's happy and great, and then you either have yourself where you have nothing good or no good examples, and then the perfection thing, so it just doesn't match, and then you feel even more frustrated. And then also, unfortunately, there are no classes on how to have relationships In school. You learn a bunch of stuff but nothing about interpersonal relationships and that kind of stuff. And I also sabotage is huge too. I've definitely done that in the past. So, yeah, do you want to talk more about, like, how people have sabotaged? Like what were some examples of what people do that aren't helpful?

Speaker 1: 11:32

Absolutely A lot of sabotage is not something that we're meaning to do. I mean, we know when we're sabotaging consciously, but most of the time we don't realize in relationships how much we sabotage, and it's often stories we tell ourselves and beliefs that we have. So maybe we believe we don't deserve a great relationship, maybe we believe we're not worth a good relationship, maybe we're not loving ourself enough and we think, you know what, I've got this flaw, that flaw, that flaw. There's this wrong with me, there's that wrong with me. How could anyone love me? And then, next thing, you know, you start pushing that energy out to the other person and you start doing things without really being conscious to start pushing them away because you've already decided subconsciously that you're not good enough, that you're not really a lovable person, and it's almost like you're forcing the other person to see this, even though that's not true for them. So a lot of time I find the problem we have is we don't have enough self-love and because of that we're always picking on ourselves I'm not tall enough, I'm not slim enough, I'm not athletic enough, I'm not curvy enough, whatever it might be. And so while we're focusing on what we're not and where we're lacking that energy comes across to others, and we can usually find that we tell ourselves stories around that about ourselves, and then we tell ourselves stories about the other person. And the best thing that I can say for people that do that is, if you find yourself telling yourself a story that's not particularly helpful, then it's really good to pull yourself up and go hang on. Is this actually true, or is it just a story that I've made up for myself? And often it is a story that we make up, and by doing that, then we find that all of these beliefs that we have are sabotaging us.

Speaker 1: 13:37

So if we believe that we're not good enough, that no one's going to love us, that we're not lovable, that there's no one out there for us that would match us, well, then that's what we find happens, because what we think about is what we bring about into our lives. So you say look, for example, I'm not pretty enough enough. You go on a few dates and the guy says no, that's it. Then you tell yourself oh well, he didn't want to date me because I'm not pretty enough. If I was prettier, he would have wanted to date me. So you know so then, and it might have been nothing at all to do with that and in fact, that might not have even been the perfect match.

Speaker 1: 14:14

And yeah, we tell ourselves these stories so that we can justify where we're at in having not found love or not found a relationship or whatever the reasons that we think. But really, these beliefs that we have have been building over time for many years. So, for example, say, there's a girl out at a club and she's with her girlfriends and she sees a cute guy across the room and the girlfriends are like go and talk to him. Go and talk to him. And she's like oh no, no, no, no, I don't have confidence. I'm not the pretty one.

Speaker 1: 14:49

That's my sister. You know she's pretty and I'm smart, and why can't you be both, however, for her, and why can't you be both, however, for her? It came back to a child when she was a child and her parents would tell her how smart she was and they would tell the sister how pretty she was. So she made the story up of herself that you can't be pretty and smart, that she's smart, she's not the pretty one, so no one's going to be interested in her. And so then that affects her behavior when she's going out, dating in her 20s or whatever it might be and really affects her self-confidence. And of course the parents don't mean to do that to make them feel like they're not enough. They think that they're giving their daughters different compliments, that that's great.

Speaker 1: 15:34

But sometimes we take it the wrong way within and we think, because we're not praised on one certain thing, that we must not be that. So if I'm only being praised because I'm smart, then my sister's getting the pretty praise all the time how pretty she is, and so I guess that means that I'm not pretty. But thank goodness I've got a brain and and that can continue on throughout our entire life unless we can break that pattern. So once you've got the awareness of where it's come from and that it's not true, because you can sort of go well, is it true really that I can only be smart and not pretty, or is that a story I'm telling myself?

Speaker 1: 16:12

Well, actually I've seen a lot of pretty and smart women around, so it is true that I could be both. And why not? Like, if I'm looking, I can. I look similar to my sister, for example, and she was pretty, then maybe I am pretty and smart. So then you change that belief around to to be something like you know, I am both pretty and smart and proud of it. Instead of something like I'm just smart and no one's going to want to date me because I'm not pretty and smart and proud of it. Instead of something like I'm just smart and no one's going to want to date me because I'm not pretty enough.

Speaker 2: 16:43

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I definitely get that, and I'm glad you said more about how you can come to have those stories we tell about ourselves, because not everyone might get that at first. But that was a very clear example of yeah, like and, like you said, parents have no idea and they're not purposely doing it, but it definitely happens. As you said, there are sponges before seven, so and I, there's several books. I don't know if you have some that you recommend, but I'll just say the. I mentioned this one a lot getting the love you want is. It's called the Imago theory, where you attract people that remind you of your caretakers, so kind of what you're saying. It creates the beliefs, and then you go and look for those people and they call it Imago. So the more they are like the person you grew up with or your caretakers, the more like higher the Imago is. I'm not sure if they call it, but are there any books that you or just your program helps them, so you don't really need the books.

Speaker 1: 17:58

I find that working one-on-one to really uncover those beliefs because they're sitting at a subconscious level helps more than reading a book.

Speaker 1: 18:01

I mean, there's lots of great books out there and they certainly move you forward. And if they can make you think, gee, maybe I should love myself a bit more or be kinder to myself, or whatever it is, then that's great. But it is a bit of a process to try and figure out what these beliefs are that are sort of sitting just below the consciousness, and it does help to have someone else to repeat it back. Like usually when I'm working on that session with people, I just ask them lots of questions about how they feel about dating and write down their answers and then at the end of that session I parrot it back because a lot of the things that they answer are beliefs that are limiting them and stories that they're telling themselves. So we want to go from beliefs that limit us to beliefs that serve us to move forward to where we want to be, and by changing that around and making a more powerful statement and questioning like is this belief true for me or is it not? If it's not true, then what can I make my new belief that is believable and realistic and makes me feel great, because we want to feel empowered and boost ourselves up, because if we don't do that, then we're not increasing our self-love, we're not increasing our consciousness and we keep attracting the same old things. So we need to break that pattern to be able to move forward. And of course, I really wish there was something at school, because I know you mentioned before that we don't get any of this at school and I wish there was, because relationships and human connection is one of the main things. That is a huge human need that must be met. And if we don't know how to connect well with others, romantically and in friendships, then we can really live quite a lonely life or be quite unhappy for many years life or be quite unhappy for many years.

Speaker 1: 19:52

So by raising consciousness around who you are, what you want in your life and what type of partner would match you really well, then you're putting all this information into your brain and it goes into the reticular activating system part of your brain that's like a little executive assistant.

Speaker 1: 20:12

So when you feed it information about things that you're interested in, it helps you to take notice of it, and so a really great example of that would be say you wanted to buy a new car.

Speaker 1: 20:23

So firstly, you've done all of this work to figure out what type of car you want the size, the color, the motor, all of that sort of stuff. So all this research you put into finding a car, then you buy that car that you really want and you never really saw that many of them out there before. But because you've been feeding all of the elements in there of this new car, once you've got it, suddenly you see them everywhere and that's your executive assistant part of your brain going oh, there's that car, there's the same one, there's the same one. And you think, oh, there's that car, there's the same one, there's the same one. And you think, wow, how come I never even saw one of these cars before I had one? But that's how reticular activating system at work to help us filter out the things that we're not interested in and focus in on the things that we are interested in. And it works the same with love.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Yeah, I've had a past guest talk about that too and it's a very clear example. And I also wanted to talk back about. You mentioned the energy you give off when you're negative. But, like you're saying, once you have self-love and all the good stuff, you're also giving that positive energy out, so you're more likely to like have second and third dates and go longer. I was going to offer you to share how people can reach you if they do want to work with you.

Speaker 1: 21:31

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Unless you have more to say about what I said yeah, yeah, so the best way to find me I mean I'm on all social media outlets under Karina Chapman, but also my website is karinachapmancom and you can contact me directly through there. And I often hold free masterclasses as well for people on sharing secrets to attracting love. If you want to come along to one of those, then that's usually on the front page of my website. I've usually got a link there that you can register and come along. I hold them reasonably regularly because I just think that the more that I can help others to raise their vibration and their frequency, raise their confidence as well, doing all of that and the self-love changes your whole energy vibration.

Speaker 1: 22:21

And we also want to be happy, in love with ourselves as such, and we want to have a huge love for ourselves, because if we don't, then we only attract this much love instead of this much, which is what we are actually due to get and what we deserve. So I find that by holding little masterclasses here and there for people, then that helps give them clarity and if it's something that they've struggled with in finding a partner, then absolutely. If they want to join my Aligned Connections program, they're certainly welcome to, but I really do wish that we had a lot more about this from when we're quite young, so that we can understand more about relationships and connection with different humans in different ways and build a lot stronger long-term relationships that support and uplift us as we go through life.

Speaker 2: 23:14

Yeah, like even parenting classes, so you can at least stop the next generation or do it well, or at least some people if they've had, you know, like no good examples, they strive to be the good example for their kids at some point, if they learn enough. But I was going to ask too do you want to say, like you kind of summed up what seemed like final comments or like kind of the gist, but is there any more you wanted to add as far as like just the best way to go about dating, or what not to do, or Absolutely there's.

Speaker 1: 23:49

I find that a lot of women in particular are when their biological clock is ticking, for example. Then they have a little bit of a desperation vibe. So if you're wanting to attract someone but you're feeling like must find someone, must get married, must have children quick, quick, quick. Time's running out then that is the vibration that you put out and you really repel anyone from you. That you put out and you really repel anyone from you. So shelve all of that idea. Take away society's expectations that aren't often true or correct. You know we always sort of do what they say we should do, and who knows who they are. But I don't want to listen to them anymore. I don't know about you, but if we can work towards loving ourselves and going, you know what? I'm fabulous as I am, and there's a trend at the moment that's called let me think for a sec hashtag boy sober, hashtag, boy sober. So it's where women are having a break, so they can actually work on themselves, build up their own self-love and self-care, spend time with their friends and enjoy life without the stress and the pressure of I must find a boyfriend, I must find someone. Now. All of my friends are getting married, they're all pairing up. Although this voiceover trend is more in the 20s, there's a lot of women in their 30s, 40s and 50s that are doing that as well, that have had relationships in the past. They think you know what I need a break. I just need some time to fall in love with me again and know who I am, because sometimes after relationships we forget who we are, what we like, what we enjoy, because it's been so long since we've had to think about that and suddenly it's like, oh, I'm not even quite sure who I am. So spending that time to be able to get to know yourself, to increase the love that you have and to take away the possibility of dating off the table completely changes your energy and you'll actually attract more people when you're in that vibration than when you're in the other one of feeling like I must find a partner and time is running out.

Speaker 1: 26:04

So I mean, if you think as well, when we're little girls we're playing with princess dolls, we're watching princess stuff, people getting married. I mean, some people have said they've been looking at wedding things and planning their own romantic wedding in their heads since they're a little girl. Now how many of us think that guys do that? No guys. No guys are playing with their GI Joe going oh, gi Joe, you're going to get married. Quick, we need a Barbie to be your wife. There's no way. They don't think of that.

Speaker 1: 26:36

So unfortunately, we are almost conditioned to have this expectation, like you were saying earlier, of Cinderella or Princess, something. Let's get married and everything will be wonderful and happy. But they always stop the story there and we just assume they're going to be happy. We don't know. I mean, do these people even have anything in common? Does Cinderella really have anything in common with the prince? We don't know.

Speaker 1: 26:59

So we have all of these expectations that have been building up in us from really young, and then disappointment, disappointment, disappointment, and then we just think we're obviously doing something wrong and we just don't know. So that's why a lot more people, I think, nowadays are going you know what, if I want to get a different result, I have to change what I'm doing or I'm going to keep getting the same thing. So that's why a lot of people now are working with dating coaches to be able to get that clarity and not waste their time anymore, because, especially as we get older, we realize how precious our time is and how valuable it is, and we just don't want to waste it anymore on people that don't deserve it. And spending time on yourself and loving yourself, then that's going to help you to attract that right person into your life.

Speaker 2: 27:50

Yeah, no, I loved everything you said and I actually I've mentioned this sometimes, but I used to do standup comedy and that was one of the things I said like there, there's no guys trying to be Prince Charming. Growing up they didn't strive to do that and I did say we're setting up all the women to fail. And I see so many young girls in their little princess dresses walking around. It's like why are we doing that to these girls that are just going to be very disappointed later? We're just too high of expectations. Unless we have more classes where we actually get along and understand each other, you know, then maybe they can have that. But absolutely.

Speaker 1: 28:27

There's no boys playing prince charming. They're out, you know, throwing spitballs and rolling in the mud. They're not thinking about oh, what will my bride look like when I'm older? Who will I marry? So yeah, both sides have complete unrealistic expectations. So it's no wonder that so many relationships fail and we don't really know why. We've never taught anything around that. So definitely more knowledge and more education is needed in that area so we can all find the loves of our lives and have a wonderful life together.

Speaker 2: 29:04

Well said, and I think I will end it there. So if you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it. I think we got a lot of great info and, yeah, definitely work with Karina, and I love the free masterclass offer as well. So thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 29:18

Thanks so much. It's such a pleasure.