Reclaim Your Life Through Authentic Self-Love


Self-love is a tough one for most everyone who enters a Recovery program. So many of us as children were taught, or programmed, to loath ourselves. We were constantly criticized by our parents and rarely, if ever, received positive recognition. We were taught by them that we were not valuable, that we did not count and that we were basically unlovable. 

Growing up in my own household as a child, I learned I was lovable if I did all of the right things to please my parents, but otherwise, I was NOT lovable. Love had to be earned and it could be withdrawn at any second of any day. This led to a fear of abandonment as well as self-loathing inside of me. 

Life became a hell of emotional instability for me. One day I might be lovable in the morning, but by afternoon, I was getting the silent treatment or hearing words like "I'm ashamed to even call you my son!"

As an adult I firmly believed I needed someone who could love me unconditionally into loving myself. I searched and searched for that person, but my radar was extremely broken and so I kept seeking unconditional love from people who were like my parents-- emotionally broken inside and totally unable to love me in any healthy way.

Recovery has taught me that I have to reclaim my personal power by learning to love myself; by turning off the inner-critic that tells me I'm not lovable; by learning to speak and act kindly and compassionately toward myself, especially when I make mistakes.

Recovering addicts have to work with God, or their personal Higher Power, to emotionally heal themselves and to learn to truly love and value the person they are. Sometimes this requires therapy and it definitely requires a support group, like A.A., Al-Anon or CODA.

Many people don't want to do the work of learning to love themselves. They hold tight to the idea that someone else is going to rescue them from their self-loathing and inner-emptiness, but that's nothing more than magical thinking.

We have to be responsible for ourselves, our lives and our happiness. Until we learn to love ourselves, we will be prisoners to the same old habits and unhealthy patterns of behavior. When we meet people who honestly do love us unconditionally for who we are, we won't believe them. Deep inside we will think they have an ulterior motive and that they couldn't possibly truly love us for simply being us. Why do we believe this? Because we don't love ourselves and we still don't believe we are lovable and so we find ways to push away those people who honestly love us.

Sadly, we often create drama, accuse them of false motives for loving us, blame them for everything that's ever been a problem in the relationship, make them the bad guy and push them out of our lives. And all because we are too unwilling to work on loving ourselves. Then, we often blame them for abandoning us when in fact the only person who has abandoned us is once again ourselves.

It's impossible to have a healthy relationship with another person until we first have a healthy relationship with ourselves. Sure, it's a lot of work-- self-work. But it's worth it. Stick to your Recovery program and learn to love what you were taught to hate-- yourself. Regain your personal power over your own life and happiness.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Image
Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas...
Read more

Happiness is Something We Cultivate and Share

Who makes you happy? In reality, no one can make you happy. People in your life can enhance your happiness through sharing your interests. Or they can add to your frustrations by pushing your buttons. But no one can be responsible for your happiness or your misery—aside from you. One of the biggest problems for codependents is that we too often enter relationships looking for everlasting happiness. We expect that the person we choose to attach our dreams to should be responsible for making us happy. In our minds, we fantasize that he/she will be focused solely on us, will spend every waking hour with us and will do everything in his/her power to insure that we are as happy as we can possibly be. In other words, we assume this person will meet all of our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs in the same way that we plan to meet all of his/her needs. In our little dream world we will smother each other with attention and we will both drip with the honey of happiness. R...
Read more

Where There Is Kindness, There Is Goodness

Image
Author’s Note: The next few meditations will be from a retreat I directed recently called The Good News According to Disney . If you aren’t familiar with the films that are referenced, I’d suggest to take time to see them and to look for the deeper meaning within them. Many people today still live by the biblical adage “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They actually believe that they will be at peace if they achieve revenge or restitution for any mishap that has befallen them at the hands of another. They believe they will reclaim their personal power once they have achieved their revenge, but this is impossible. Disney’s Cinderella (2015) reveals the true secret to owning one’s personal power and to retaining it no matter what we experience in life: “Have courage and be kind.” On the surface this motto looks a bit simple and wimpy. But in reality, it holds great power. That power comes from the heart of a person, or in this case Ella, who sees the world not a...
Read more

Become the Person You Want to Spend Your Life With Everyday

Image
I really don’t have to say much about the above quote. It says it all and it’s so true. We are too often taught faulty ways of thinking as children. So many of us get the wrong message at very young ages: Love is about finding the right person to love you. Looking back I realize I wasted many years trying to find that “right” person— the one who could love me into loving myself— instead of trying to BE that “right” person myself. It never occurred to me that I needed to love myself, nurture myself and accept myself enough to become the right person— the person I really needed most in my life. After all, what is my life without me? Now I know that I’m what’s been missing from my own life for years. My life is empty without me and without my spiritual Higher Power. This is true for all of us.  Once We find ourselves, become the “right” person God intended us to be, and become the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with, then we attract others into our lives who ca...
Read more