Do you want to experience intimacy and connection with others, and the joy and aliveness that this offers? You need to start by learning how to love yourself, rather than abandon yourself.
“Intimacy begins with oneself. It does no good to try to find intimacy with friends, lovers, and family if you are starting out from alienation and division within yourself.” – Thomas Moore, author, Care of the Soul
Most of us would love to have intimacy and connection in our lives, yet we often find this elusive. Why?
Thomas Moore puts it in a nutshell. Until we are intimate and connected with ourselves, we cannot experience the greatest joy in life – intimacy and connection with others.
The question becomes: what causes alienation and division within yourself? Just one thing – self-abandonment.
“Feeling bitter interferes with the body’s hormonal and immune systems, according to Carsten Wrosch, an associate professor of psychology at Concordia University in Montreal….”
“The data that negative mental states cause heart problems is just stupendous. The data is just as established as smoking, and the size of the effect is the same.”
–Dr. Charles Raison
Blame ignites the body’s fight or flight stress mechanism. If we actually fight, then the stress hormones will dissipate, but “When our bodies are constantly primed to fight someone, the increase in blood pressure and in chemicals such as C-reactive protein eventually take a toll on the heart and other parts of the body” states Raison.
Watch this 1 minute inspirational video to remind yourself that you are always deserving of the abundant love available to you.
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah, and recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer . . . → Read More: Inspirational Video – You Deserve Love
Do you understand the difference between self-pity and self-compassion?
There is a vast difference between feeling sorry for yourself and feeling kindness toward yourself.
Self-Pity
When you see yourself as a victim, you indulge in self-pity. You are a bottomless pit of misery, and you may find yourself crying endless victim tears. You might say things like:
Discover why people in a particular kind of community die of old age, rather than from heart disease and cancer.
I’ve been reading in many different sources about the research involving community and well being. In his best-selling book, “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell opens with a study done in a small Pennsylvania town called Roseto.
In 1882, Italians who lived in a town of the same name, Roseto, started to come to the U.S. These people worked in the nearby marble quarries or farmed the terraced land. Upon coming to the U.S., they found jobs in a slate quarry in Pennsylvania. Eventually, about 2000 Rosetans came to the U.S. They started to buy land on a rocky hillside and built closely clustered two-story stone houses. Eventually, they cleared the land and planted fruit trees and vegetables. They raised pigs and grew grapes for wine. Schools, shops and factories sprang up and the town thrived. Continue reading The Vital Importance of Community
I used to think that caretaking was the opposite of narcissism. I thought that narcissists were people who demanded that others give themselves up to care-take the narcissist. I thought that caretakers were people who were programmed to take care of others instead of themselves. I thought that caretakers needed some healthy narcissism and that takers/narcissists needed more compassion for others.
Now I know that there is a bit more to it. Caretakers do give themselves up to take care of others, but underneath their caretaking, they have the same agenda as the narcissist – to be taken care of by the other person.
The kind of narcissism I’m talking about here is about making another person responsible for your feelings and needs.
We all have this kind of narcissism in our ego wounded selves. The wounded self believes that our good feelings come from getting love, rather than from being loving with ourselves and others. Continue reading Caretaking: A Covert Form of Narcissism
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