Jordan

Well the end of my time in Rwanda is coming up quickly and while I do want to talk about this, I realized I never really blogged about Jordan! So while we were in Jordan we did 30 hours of relational training and this was one of the greatest experiences of my whole journey. I was paired with a life coach who I had one on ones with and we also did group training. I learned about what relational needs are all about and I learned that everyone has basic needs they all need to be met. These are things such as acceptance, security, attention and so on. I took a few tests to identify my highest priority need and that was security. To me it is very important to know where I stand with people and be able to trust someone enough to know that they won't do something like walk out of my life or lie to me or something like that. To me trust does not come easily and I learned that this is because I am a self reliant person. Now you may think that being self reliant sounds like a good thing but there is a difference between being independent and being self reliant. When someone is self reliant they refuse to believe they need help from others and think that if they can figure out their own issues then others can too. Being self reliant in the past hindered me from having deep meaningful relationships because I was hardly ever vulnerable with anyone and I trusted almost no one. Learning to work through that hindrance has been so helpful because now I have learned to take time to be vulnerable with people I trust and people I know wont use my vulnerability against me. For instance my sister has always been there for me but I recently realized I had never really opened up to her about anything that I had gone through despite the fact that she was always there and ready to listen if I ever wanted to talk to her. Through this training I also realized the need that went most unmet for me growing up was security just because my mom was a single mom so it was difficult sometimes for her to provide a totally stable and secure environment, so there should be no blame put on her for this, its just a fact of life. No one can always have every single need met, its just about figuring this out and how to work through it in a healthy and restorative way. I also learned what it means to truly comfort someone in their time of need and how to do it in a way that is helpful and not hurtful. This training really changed my life for the better and now I know how to work on my relationships and continue to grow. This training was about 7 weeks ago but the impact is still as great now as it was then so I am forever grateful for Ithraa training center! Thanks for reading everyone!