A Gentle Reminder
This is a groundhog.
You Are Worthy Of Love
Are you waiting to become good enough to finally put yourself first? Do you really think that somehow someday you will actually perfect yourself in a way that will finally make you worthy of loving yourself? You can only accept as much love as you are capable of giving yourself.
You’ll Always Be Becoming
Switching the metaphor now from an adorable rodent—that captivates us by measuring the speed of the impending arrival of spring—to a tree, which will wake up and blossom however soon spring does decide to return: your whole life you will keep growing, until you die. Like a tree.
Rising To The Occasion
We all know that trees are beautiful because they grow around their challenges. Don’t wait to love yourself only after you finally become successful because—guess what? You’ll always be becoming and growing around, through, and over your challenges, like a tree. Like a rodent. Like any organic being that is alive.
You’re Born Whole
As soon as you pass the test, get the promotion, buy the house, build the family—wherever you go, there you will find yourself, and there you will still be. You’re already a whole person now, just as you are, and all you need to do is get to know yourself and your complicated, emotional ins and outs, imprinted into you by your DNA’s responses to your specific experiences. Accept yourself and meet yourself with love, because—why not?
Love Failure-You
Learn to love that part of you that has the courage—the you who tries the things and makes the mistakes—and trust the you that is trying to do better, and just hope to fail better. (The whole of Beckett’s famous snippet gets a little dark and sad, although beautiful, so for now let’s just leave it at those two brilliant coopted inspirational words.)
Let Go Of Your Guilt For Having Feelings
Philip Bromberg theorized that we all have different self states, which means that different parts of us respond differently to emotional stimuli, carrying us from one mood or attitude into another, outside of our control. Acknowledging your emotions and changing moods gives credence to each place you have been relationally before. Everything we experience in life is measured and reflected against how we originally learned to relate. Our experiences pile up and we react in a series of sort of emotional habits. We can’t help or prevent this flow of emotional reaction to our stimuli, but we can observe and allow.
It’s Time To Become Your Own Parent
Some of us were taught by experience to push down feelings and/or to become numb, and so we learned to turn against ourselves. Learning to look at feelings and be with them is an act of love toward ourselves—one that our own loved ones may have been incapable of showing, for whatever reason that wasn’t personal. We must give ourselves that attention now—as little or as great as we were failed as children. Nobody else can give us doting attention in a way that will ever satisfy us, even though we keep expecting it to come from the outside world. Chances are, if we do get any sort of lavish attention it may feel clingy, and we may push it away, like the cat that comes to you for affection but becomes overwhelmed at the reality of being pet, and bites you, hard.
So Many Feelings About So Many Things
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, really sit with yourself and look at the moving parts of the feelings. Likely, if your emotions have piled up to the point of overwhelm, there are many different feelings that you need to process, one by one, with different gradients of emotions attached, probably alternating sadness and anger. Allowing yourself to have your feelings to get through them, and acknowledging them, and attempting to release the guilt for having them is a good way of beginning to really see yourself as you need to be seen, on precisely your own terms, in a way that will truly satisfy you, and not cause you to bite the hand that tries to comfort you, but sees that only as extra.
Disappointment Is Inevitable
We begin to learn too early in life, usually on the playground, that people will tragically fail us, betray us, abandon us. As you go through life, and others are too busy for you when you need attention, you can always be there for yourself. Come back to the breath and feel out what you need. Be what you need first, always, before you offer yourself up to others. Put the oxygen mask on you first and then help your child, your neighbor, your bully-enemy.
Self Contempt May Be Internalized In Response To Your Environment
Self contempt is not innate. When we hate ourselves it’s so often, if not always, because somewhere along the line we learned that hating inwardly was preferable to expressing our anger outwardly to others around us. The habit of beating oneself up usually takes hold early on, when we blame ourselves instead of our loved ones for things we feel they must think are bad about us (otherwise why would loved ones treat us this way?). Kids can’t blame the people in charge for many varying reasons, so they blame themselves. This is so commonly what eventually draws people into therapy to unpack. Children of any age may not recognize or even be aware that they actually do blame themselves for their parents’ divorce—because they internalized the blame and unconsciously hate the self, as a kind of scapegoat martyr—in order to let the ones they love off the hook. We learn to hate ourselves and wear the blame in hopes that it will somehow free others up to love us. But that doesn’t work that way. Self-haters risk being little black holes that suck up the light of love in any relationship.
We Can’t Love In Order To Be Loved
That’s not love, but pressure to be loved back. David R. Hawkins calls that kind of pressure emotional blackmail. Love yourself, and the love will beget other love, and suddenly you will attract love. (This is all so very woo-woo, and also true. Spoiler alert: I’m no theoretical purist and I like me a little woo-woo.)
Let Go Of All Of The Blame Everywhere
What if nothing is ever personal? What if every single crime against anyone or anything is a result of what’s mixed up or short-circuited only in the offending party? If nothing is personal, then we don’t have to react defensively because we’re not in the wrong. If we make a mistake, it’s just a mistake. We don’t have to flog ourselves on top of the mistake, and wallow in the woe of guilt, which Hawkins saw as self-indulgent. We don’t have to flog others for their mistakes. We’re all just rodents and trees, trying to be.
