Welcome to your weekly love column on Numerologist.com! Each week, Jessica McKay answers your relationship questions with a Personalized Energy and Spirit Guide Reading. If you have a question about your love life – past, present or future – be sure to comment below (or on Facebook or YouTube) for your chance to Ask Jessica.

Mary writes: “Why do I sabotage any new relationships with my insecurity and make them walk away?”

Hi Mary,

This doesn’t feel like the energy of “sabotage” to me. I’m not sensing that your subconscious mind is pushing people away to keep you safe. What it feels like instead is fear. Specifically, I’m getting the message that you are afraid of feeling out of control. When you’re dating someone, you have requirements that they need to fulfill in order for you to feel like you can trust them. I feel like you like things to be extremely ordered and organized in your life.

Relationship challenges you because it brings you into the unknown, and that is not a comfortable place for you to be — so you fight against it. When I say “you,” I’m really talking about your inner child — that energetic presence that lives within you no matter how old you get.

When we’re growing up, we find ways to adapt and survive under stressful circumstances. To a child, it’s a matter of life and death to develop a strategy to stay safe. I’m sensing that your upbringing was pretty chaotic, and your strategy was needing to feel in control of your world — so you probably did things to organize and compartmentalize your life so that you felt in control. Relationship is challenging to you because you can never predict what someone outside of you is going to do… or think. Or feel!

What I’d like to suggest for you is meditation, especially around letting go. Do guided meditations that bring you to a place of relaxation and surrender, like this one. Focus on releasing the illusion that you can control anything, and then notice that you’re still safe. You’re still you.

If you can feel comfortable with the unknown and if you can slowly allow yourself to go with the flow, you’ll be able to enjoy the dating process without so much fear and insecurity. Remember that it’s your inner child (not you) who is insecure, scared that she’s not enough, and afraid of being out of control. Comfort that child and let her know that even though life can be messy, you’re there to hold her and witness whatever she’s going through. Don’t criticize her for being insecure. Insecurity is fear — and all children feel fear. It’s your job as the adult to hold space for that and honor it — rather than judging it or telling her to go to her room and not come out until she can stop being afraid.

The next time you’re dating and you feel the need to control something, remember that your inner kid is scared, and comfort her. Any adult presence that’s capable of comforting her will come as a relief to that child self, and she’ll start to relax. She won’t need to hang on to whomever shows up, nor will she need to control circumstances. Very gradually, with love, this pattern will shift.

If you would like to submit a question for consideration for next week’s column, please write it in the comments below.