This call is about effectively communicating your needs to break unhealthy patterns in relationships. Today’s caller, Julie, is aware of the unhealthy patterns in her relationships but is uncertain why the patterns aren’t shifting. The amazing thing about relationships, romantic or friendship, is that they can provide healing ground for inner child wounding if we feel safe enough to do it.   [For show notes, go here: Christinehassler.com/episode263]   We all have masculine and feminine energy within us, no matter how we identify. Often, the way we present in life is not our core essence. Masculine energy likes to feel respected. It’s on the top of the priority list for men. And, for the female-identifying people that doesn’t mean that you don’t want to be respected but for the feminine essence it is a lot more about feeling safe and respect is part of that. It is about feeling safe physically, feeling safe emotionally, and feeling safe sexually.   Masculine and feminine energy is something Stefanos and I teach a lot. It’s another avenue of personal development we can learn about and in relationships, especially intimate relationships, it’s really important to have polarity, otherwise, you either kind of go into roommate mode or you have a lot of arguments.   When healing a romantic relationship there are two key aspects. The inner child piece and the polarity piece. It is hard to get the polarity piece in place when the inner child piece isn’t in place. So how the inner child piece helps with the polarity piece is as children we are more in touch with our core essence, either feminine or masculine, and it’s because of inner child wounding that those masks get put on. The more we give ourselves what we need inside ourselves the more we give the little one inside of us what we didn’t get as children.   Remember inner child work in a relationship is meeting our needs, parenting ourselves in the way that we didn’t get, and then communicating our needs in a non-attacking, non-passive-aggressive, non-manipulative way to our partners.   It’s a lot to be human, be a parent, and be in a relationship, but when we understand our inner child, understand how to parent, and understand polarity it becomes a little less overwhelming and a little easier.   Level 2 of the Virtual Inner Child Workshop will be held on Sept. 25-27. Go to ChristineHassler.com/Level2 to sign up or visit ChristineHassler.com/innerchildbundle to purchase both Level 1 and Level 2. Recordings of both workshops will be available until October 26, 2020.   Consider/Ask Yourself: Do you have patterns that keep showing up in your life, or your relationships, and no matter what you do you just can’t seem to shake them? Were you raised in a home where you had to parent your parents and you had to be both the mother and the father? Do you tend to parent your children in a way that is opposite to how you were parented but when it comes to your own relationship with your inner child you’re still parenting yourself the way you were parented? Do you relate to feeling like things are going well but you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop so you can’t really enjoy the good happening in your life?   Julie’s Question: Julie has grown a lot with personal development work but she can’t seem to shake the patterns of waiting for something to go wrong.   Julie’s Key Insights and Ahas: She separated herself from an abusive marriage. She looks for things to go wrong. Her mother is bi-polar. She is currently in a romantic relationship. Her partner speaks another language. She didn’t have a close relationship with her father. She adopted a protective strategy. She is in Personal Mastery. Her mother criticized her. She fears being disappointed and hurt.   How to Get Over It and On With It: Use her relationship as a healing container. Work with her inner child, little Julie. Give love and encouragement in place of self-judgment. Step into her feminine. Talk with her partner about get