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Discover that ‘healthy narcissism’ is an oxymoron! All of us have an ego wounded self who is narcissistic to one degree or another. For the purpose of this article, I am defining narcissism as abandoning responsibility for ourselves and expecting someone else to attend to us and define our self-worth, or expecting something external to fill us up and make us feel loved. Given this definition, ‘healthy narcissism’ is an oxymoron. Continue reading Is There Such A Thing As Healthy Narcissism?       Are you mystified about how to create meaningful emotional connection with others? We are inherently social beings, and feeling emotionally connected with another is one of the great joys in life. Yet, all too often, we feel lonely around another or others, wanting to connect and not knowing how. We may have learned numerous . . . → Read More: How to Connect with Others  Comments are closed  Relationships, Self Improvement & Personal Growth  connection, emotional connection, heartache, heartbreak, Inner Bonding, loneliness, Margaret Paul, Relationships If you tend to isolate, and you believe that isolating protects you from getting hurt, you might be surprised to learn of the harm you are causing yourself. In my counseling practice, I often have clients who tend to isolate as a way of protecting against their fears – especially their fears of rejection and engulfment. They are so afraid of being disliked, disapproved of, attacked or having demands made on them, that they choose to avoid relationships, rather than learn how to deal with these challenging situations. These people have never developed a loving Adult self, who knows how to take loving care of them when others are angry, rejecting or demanding. They believe they prefer loneliness over the challenge of relationships. Continue reading Do You Isolate? A recent study indicates that crying does not make people feel better. But there is a problem with this study. (Crying shame: Tears don’t make you feel any better, study shows, By Cari Nierenberg, http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/29/7190543-crying-shame-tears-dont-make-you-feel-any-better-study-shows#.TjR9l8uTx0A.email). The study indicates that:
The problem is that they do not differentiate between crying as a victim and crying to release the authentic pain of grief, loneliness and heartbreak. They do not differentiate between victim tears and authentic tears that release core painful feelings. It is likely that the one-third who benefited from crying were those who were releasing authentic pain. Continue reading Does Crying Make you Feel Better? Comments are closed Self Improvement & Personal Growth authentic pain, authentic tears, compassion, crying, grief, heartbreak, Inner Bonding, Margaret Paul, shedding tears, victim pain, victim tears What do you do when you feel helpless over another’s choices? What is the result? Are you happy with how you manage this feeling? Helplessness is a very difficult feeling. It can even feel like life or death to those of us who were left to cry for hours as babies, with no one coming to help us. Because we were so helpless over ourselves as babies and small children, it can trigger feelings of panic. It’s hard to remember, in these moments when fear is triggered, that as adults, we are not helpless over ourselves. For many of us, the deep fear that got programmed into us as young children can trigger our wounded self’s desire to control, when we feel helpless over another’s choices. What do you do when you feel helpless over another? Continue reading The Challenge of Accepting Our Helplessness Over Others The news stories of sexual addiction lead us to ask “Why?” One of the sad truths in our society is how empty many people feel, and the devastation their emptiness causes others through their resulting addictive behavior. We have all heard about the sexual acting-out of Anthony Weiner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton and John Edwards. We all know about the many famous people who end up in treatment centers for alcohol and drug addiction. The question is: why? Why would someone who seemingly has everything destroy their own life, and the lives of those they are close to, with their addictions to sex, alcohol or drugs? It’s true that these high-profile people seem to have everything that our society deems important for happiness and self-esteem – money and all that money can buy, relationships and fame. What is it that creates the desperate need to act out addictively when they have so much? Continue reading The Devastation of Inner Emptiness |
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