What I Let Others Do to Me
Breaking the Tether of a 45-Year Bond
By Stinne Jenning Erlandsen
Certified Life Between Lives® Facilitator, Austria
It begins simply as a story about a boy—a curious little boy who just wanted to explore. What follows, however, is not a typical childhood adventure, but the start of a lifelong lesson that rippled through time, carrying its weight all the way into the current life. This ancient echo manifested in the life of Alex, a lovely soul, a client, and a sister of my soul. She came to me feeling trapped in a suffocating relationship, unaware that her struggle to set boundaries today began centuries ago with that small child’s innocent desire to experience the world. We started with a regression to find the source of her pain, but we had to journey all the way to the Life Between Lives state to truly understand the lesson this boy left behind.
Alex came to me with a relationship issue involving a friend she has known for forty-five years, but as Alex has begun living her potential more, the relationship started to crumble. The more space the client takes for herself, the more she feels she can’t let go, and it is driving her crazy. She feels that the friend is stuck to her physically—being pulled towards her—and her immediate emotion is anger; she just wants to say, “Leave me alone.” However, as we talk a bit more about the anger, she notices that this is an emotion she deals with in several situations in her life, where something keeps her from being free. She describes the dynamic as one where she is the “smaller person” who doesn’t meet her own needs, while the other is the “stronger person.”
As the intention for the session sets in, Alex gets more and more emotional. She closes in on the core issue with the sentence that really started to work her up: “It is what I let other people do to me.” She realizes she keeps relationships with people who kick her mentally, and she feels, “I can’t get away.” We dove behind the anger and found the sadness and hopelessness—a dependency she can’t really put her finger on. She is confronted with this massive inner conflict, feeling that her life is being infected by this. Then she hits on something that really touches her: she has been too open, having “holes in her system” which led her to lose energy. The intention for today’s session is to go to the past life where she finds the answers to this peculiar situation, to find the freedom to set boundaries so she can finally fly, feel lighter, and live her light more.
We started the session using the affect bridge technique. We anchored into the specific somatic feeling of sadness and the core belief sentence: “It is what I let others do to me.” This phrase acted as a bridge, carrying Alex directly to the origin of this constellation—the very first time she experienced this specific despair.
She landed in a past life as a very small boy, alone in a cabin. At first, there was a sense of exploration; I laughed as she described the sensation of the toddler figuring out how to walk, driven by a pure desire to move and experience life. But this curiosity drew him toward the fireplace. Drawn to the heat, the toddler touched a hot iron pot. The tragedy was instantaneous—his small hands burned onto the metal, and he physically could not pull away. Screaming in pain and agony, he waited until his mother finally reacted to the screams and tore the boy’s hands away from the pot. What followed was a chaotic scene of trying to ease the pain, but there was only agony. Overwhelmed by helplessness, the mother slapped him. The pain was too much to bear; the boy withdrew from his body and completely dissociated.
As he grew older, he was treated as an object, a nuisance of no use to anyone. By age ten or eleven, he felt completely useless and numb; nothing could justify his existence. Yet, in this silence, the teenage boy found a profound insight: “I don’t really need my hands. I can live without them because I have my brains. I can see people; I feel them. People can’t pretend around me.”
We moved to the final scene relevant to the current life issue. He was in his thirties, weak, lying behind a curtain. The mother, now old, brought him soup, but he noticed that she really hated him. The numbness from childhood had remained. Realizing this was the moment he would leave, he looked back on a life where people were scared of him and didn’t want to be near him. With the thought, “Off I go,” he left the plane, feeling instant relief and peace.
Sitting in spirit form beside the body, he realized that people couldn’t get close because he had shut down. However, a higher perspective emerged: he was actually lucky. Because of his damaged hands, he was spared the crushing physical labor common to that era. He was an outsider, but he had the freedom to live a different internal life. The soul wanted to learn acceptance—to be with himself and see that there is more to existence than just sustaining life through hard work.
The soul then made a crucial connection: the mother from that past life is the friend in Alex’s current life. Alex saw that she was repeating the pattern of pulling away and rejecting, rather than confronting “what I let other people do to me.” She had been avoiding the confrontation in her current life just as she had as the injured boy.
We invited the soul who played the mother into the space so Alex could finally confront her. A heated, emotional monologue followed. Alex realized the mother had no idea how she truly felt. We moved them into the “Life Between Lives” space—where the life was planned—so she could deliver her final message: “Get on with your life, take responsibility for your own life.” It was all about boundaries. As the insight solidified, Alex said to the soul in front of her, “I love you, but let me go.” This unlocked a lifetime realization: “I don’t need to explain myself.”
Her spirit joined in with the message: “It is time to move on.” The presence of this light made her feel safe. He reminded her to keep him in her presence and to be aware that there are energies surrounding her that are not good for her. He advised her to hold onto the light like a “helping stick” for the next few weeks to secure her well-being. A deep dialogue followed, providing Alex with specific advice on how to seal the “holes” in her system and manage her energy as new insights continued to arrive.
Alex discovered the origins of her current life issue in such a lovely, beautiful way that she and I agreed this was something we could not just write up for you, dearest reader. Text alone felt insufficient to capture the relief she found. Therefore, we have placed the full session as one of our special features in this issue. You now have the opportunity to join us on this adventure, discovering the true origins of the anger, the deep sadness, and the overwhelming conflict with her friend.
We only ask that you listen with the intent to find your own insights. Look for the places where you might find conflict and confusion in your own life when you are confronted with the unknown. With the help of a session like this, know that we can resolve these deep-seated issues. All our problems that seem so overwhelming are actually an opportunity for us to encounter the challenge and work it out.
We learn that the “dark waters”—those moments of feeling stuck in toxic relationships or “infected” by the emotions of others—are not dead ends. They are invitations. In Alex’s case, we encountered the truth that her conflict with her friend was not just a modern annoyance, but an ancient dance of dependency she had the power to stop. We learned that anger is often just a guardian for a much deeper sadness, and that “what I let others do to me” is a pattern we can break.
This learning informs others by showing that we do not have to explain ourselves to those who hurt us. We learn that we can set boundaries not out of hate, but out of self-preservation (“I love you but let me go”). By witnessing Alex’s journey, we see that when we connect with our spirit guides and face the “holes” in our system, we can stop leaking energy. We can navigate the change from feeling heavy and small to feeling light, sealed in our own power, and free to fly.
I will leave the rest for Alex to tell you. There is a specific frequency of truth that comes through when a soul finally realizes its own worth, a vibration that my words on a page cannot fully capture. By listening to the recording, you will witness the exact moment the heavy “holes” in her system were sealed with light, and the ancient tether to her friend was dissolved by the simple, powerful realization that she does not need to explain herself.
A Note from Alex (Two Months Later)
“Now, as I reflect on the situation, I can easily say that since this session, something inside myself has let go of the pain and anger. If I put my attention to the person who triggered all this pain and the lack of self-esteem and self-worth—the person whom I gave so much attention in my mind, thoughts, days, and nights—she is gone. She somehow doesn’t touch my feelings or my life anymore.
I haven’t met her in person for quite a while, so I would not know my reaction in an encounter, but I have to say: I am not afraid of it. This gives me a feeling of freedom and power, and I am actually quite curious. This feeling arose instantly and has not left me ever since the journey. It is like I left something behind, I gained something new, and I remembered something old—a gift. I have collected something from a former life to help me in this life.”
Alex’s main transformational experience was not just emotional relief, but a physical reclaiming of her energy. She moved from feeling “pulled” and “infected” to a state where she could finally fly. For you, the reader, the takeaway is clear: no matter how deep the conflict or how dark the waters, the answers often lie in the spiritual history we carry. When we are brave enough to look at “what we let others do to us,” we find the power to stop it. We hope Alex’s story inspires you to find your own boundaries and live your light. ♥
Stinne Jenning Erlandsen is located in Salzburg, Austria, and sees clients in-person and online worldwide
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