Margaret Paul, Ph.D.2013-05-24T18:50:54-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=margaret-paul-phdCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Margaret Paul, Ph.D.Good old fashioned elbow grease.7 Ways to Create Connection With Your Partnertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32675472013-05-15T08:10:25-04:002013-05-15T08:21:44-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
There are very specific things you can do to support connection with your partner.
1. Connect With Yourself
You cannot connect with your partner if you are disconnected from yourself. Connection with another happens when you are open and flowing within, not when you are feeling insecure and needy. Before trying to connect with your partner, do your own inner work to get yourself into a loving space. You will connect with your partner when you want to share your love, not when you are trying to get love.
2. Open to Learning
At any given moment, we are in one of two intents:
• The intent to learn about love and truth
• The intent to protect against pain with some form of controlling behavior
Controlling behavior closes our heart and disconnects us from ourselves and our partner. When we choose to be open to learning about loving ourselves and our partner, our heart opens -- which is what enables us to connect. We cannot connect with a closed heart. Choosing the intent to learn when with your partner is vital for connection.
3. Be Present
Nothing disconnects partners more than when one is talking and the other is thinking of other things and not actually hearing the partner. This makes your partner feel invisible to you.
When you are with your partner, be present. Look at your partner -- in your partner's eyes, if you can. Listen. Care about what your partner is saying and feeling. Be responsive.
If you often find yourself preoccupied when with your partner, do some inner work to discover what you are avoiding. A lack of presence indicates that you are disconnected from both yourself and your partner, so if you want to connect, you need to learn to be present in the moment with your partner.
4. Focus on What You Value in Your Partner, Not on What You Don't Like
When you do your own inner work and learn to love and value who you are in your essence, then you can also value the essence of your partner.
We all want to be seen for who we really are -- which is who we are when we are open. When fears get triggered, as they do in all relationships, we might turn to various learned protective, controlling behaviors. But these learned protective behaviors are not who we really are. We are our essence, our soul self, our true self -- which is always wonderful and beautiful. This is likely what you fell in love with when you first fell in love with your partner. If you focus on your partner's wounded behaviors that come from fear, you will create distance and disconnection. If you focus on your partner's wonderful core qualities and frequently speak to those, you will create the arena for connection.
5. Plan Fun Dates and Time Together
Connection happens when partners have time to be together in a fun and relaxed way -- like over dinner, taking a walk together, sharing interesting things about their day, cooking together, creating something together, holding each other and talking, playing a sport together, watching a funny show together, and so on.
Most people, when they first connect with each other, say things like, "We sat in the restaurant and talked for hours." This is what created the connection, and this is what you need to plan into your life together to support connection.
6. Support Your Partner in What Brings Him or Her Joy
It's far easier to keep our heart open with our partner when we feel supported by him or her in what we love to do. In healthy relationships, partners receive joy from the other's joy.
Supporting your partner's joy is not the same thing as supporting your partner in addictive behavior. If your partner's behavior is hurtful to you -- such as having an affair or getting drunk -- you need to focus on what would be loving to you. But if you find yourself threatened by your partner spending time with friends or enjoying alone time or playing a sport with someone of his or her equal ability, then you need to do your own inner work to value yourself enough to not be threatened. Supporting each other in what we each love to do is part of a healthy relationship, and definitely part of creating connection.
7. Be There for Each Other When One Is Triggered
Each of us has our vulnerabilities -- those triggers from childhood that put us into hurt, fear or sadness. Sometimes a partner protects against the pain with anger or withdrawal. Instead of being reactive to your partner's triggers and going into your own anger or withdrawal, each of you needs to learn how to be there with caring and compassion for the other. We all need help and support when old wounds get triggered, and compassionate partners can learn how to do this for each other. It doesn't mean you are taking responsibility for your partner's feelings -- this is actually not at all helpful -- but it does mean that you know how to support your partner in helping him or herself deal with the painful feelings. Compassion for each other's wounds and vulnerabilities goes a long way toward creating connection.
Connection with your partner is vital for your well-being and the well-being of the relationship. If you find that any of these suggestions are hard for you, then do some inner work to discover what is in the way. If you still can't follow these suggestions, then you might want to receive some therapy, coaching or facilitation to heal whatever is stopping you from being able to connect with yourself and with your partner.
For more on conscious relationships, click here.]]>What Do You Mean When You Say 'I Love You'?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32229742013-05-06T15:39:45-04:002013-05-06T15:39:52-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/wrote in "96 Words for Love," many other languages have many more words for love. For example, Sanskrit has 96 words for different kinds of love.
Having only one word can present a problem when it comes to understanding what someone is saying when they say "I love you." Let's look at some of the things you might mean when you say "I love you."
Non-Romantic Love
• Universal Love
When I say "I love you" to someone with whom I'm not in a close relationship, what I mean is that I love them in a universal way -- the way I love everyone. In my heart, I love everyone in the sense that I truly want everyone's highest good. I want everyone to flourish and have joy in their lives. I feel love in my heart for them and their journey toward their wholeness. They are not necessarily important to me in a personal sense, but they are important to me in a universal sense.
• Friendship Love
When I say "I love you" to a friend, I am saying, "You are personally important to me. I value you in my life and I am here for you. I think about you and I pray for your highest good. I always want the very best for you."
• Parental Love
When I say "I love you" to my children and grandchildren, I am saying, from the deepest part of my heart, "I cherish you with my whole heart and soul. You are a miracle to me. I will do anything to support your happiness, health and well-being. I will be here for you in whatever way I can until the day I die. You are more important to me than life itself. I feel joy for your joy and pain for your pain. You have a permanent place in my heart that no one else will ever fill, for you are uniquely you and I'm so blessed that you are my child or grandchild." For me, this is a deeply profound love, and very unlike romantic love.
Romantic Love
Romantic love is the love that most often gets muddied or confusing. When you say "I love you" to a lover or romantic partner, what do you mean?
• Love Expressed From a Full Heart -- Love Expressed to Give
When you feel full of love in your heart -- because you are connected with yourself and your inner source of love -- your expression of love is pure. You are saying "I love you" to your lover or partner as a true gift, with no agenda or expectations attached.
Do you remember a time when you welled up with love for a lover or partner? A time when your heart felt so full of love you thought it would burst? When your heart is full of love, the expression of love for your beloved is clean and spontaneous, and it feels great to just express it. In fact, you just have to express it and it feels deeply joyous to do so.
When you give this love to a partner, you are giving them a great gift. You are saying: "I want to be on this life journey with you. You are deeply connected with my soul. I love who you are in your essence. I want to share all of me with you and I want to know all of you. Let's learn and grow and play together, and let's be here for each other through all the challenges in life. I open my heart fully to you."
• Love Expressed from an Empty Heart -- Love Expressed to Get
Here is where the expression of love toward a lover or partner can be manipulative -- to get love rather than to give the gift of love.
Saying "I love you" when you are feeling empty inside means that your expression of love is coming from neediness, and therefore isn't love. There is a big difference between love and neediness.
This expression of "love" is to get something, such as sex, attention, approval, money or time with the person. Because the words sound loving but the energy behind them feels empty, needy and pulling, things can get confusing.
"He said he loves me but it doesn't feel like he loves me."
"She emails me that she loves me but doesn't act loving when we are together."
"I cringe when he says he loves me, because he only says that when he wants sex."
"Why does she say she loves me and is then often angry at me? It doesn't feel like love at all."
Can you see the confusion that can occur when you say "I love you" but your heart is not filled with love? You are not really saying "I love you." Instead, you are really saying, "I need you. I need you to love me to feel that I am okay. I need you to have sex with me to know that I am okay. I need your attention and approval to feel that I am okay."
Obviously, this isn't love, but it can get confusing when we couple it with "I love you."
Since we have only one word for love, for relationships to be clear and connected, it's very helpful to be clear on what you mean when you say "I love you."
For more on love, click here.]]>Conflict! What to Do and What Not to Dotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31803642013-05-04T10:10:01-04:002013-05-04T10:22:24-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
Did they fight when they had conflicts?
Did they ignore the conflict, hoping it would somehow get resolved?
Did one give himself or herself up to avoid the conflict?
Did one get angry and the other shut down?
Did one get angry and the other comply?
Did they discuss and resolve their conflicts, caring for themselves and each other?
Unless you saw them do the latter, you had no role modeling for healthy conflict resolution.
All relationships have conflict. Conflicts are a part of life and can provide an opportunity for learning and growth -- if they are approached with caring for yourself and the other person. How two people in a committed relationship handle conflict is often an excellent indicator of the health or dysfunction in the relationship.
Conflict can trigger many fears -- fear of rejection, fear of engulfment, fear of being wrong, fear of losing a battle, fear of getting hurt. When fear is activated, many people go into the "fight, flight or freeze" stress response.
When the stress response is activated, the blood leaves the brain, organs and immune system and goes into the arms and legs for fight or flight. The blood leaving the brain makes it hard to rationally think things through. Therefore, trying to resolve a conflict when the stress response has been activated doesn't work well.
What Not to Do
If one or both of you are triggered into fear, here is what not to do:
Don't escalate the conflict by attacking and blaming.
Don't fuel the flames by defending or explaining.
Don't shut down and withdraw.
Don't try to pacify the other person.
Don't comply. Don't give yourself up.
If you do any of these controlling behaviors, you will either escalate the conflict into a fight, or you will lose yourself. In either case, there will be no caring resolution.
What to Do
There are only two responses in conflict that have a chance at leading to healthy resolution:
Opening to learning
Lovingly disengaging
Learning: If neither you nor the other person is triggered into your fears/stress response, then you can open to learning. What this means is that you become curious about your own and the other person's reasons for each feeling the way you do. When you each share your point of view, with caring for yourself and the other person, you each open to the possibility of learning something new. By each of you opening to seeing the situation through the other person's eyes, you will each likely gain new information that will enable you to resolve the conflict in a way that works for both of you -- where neither of you feels you have given yourself up or compromised yourself.
Even if one of you is triggered into the stress response, if, in your experience, the person is often able to get themselves back into some calmness and caring, you might be able to say something like, "I really would like to understand your point of view, and I hope you want to understand mine so that we can resolve this conflict. Would you be willing to explore this with me?" If you say this in a calm, loving tone, this might help the other person to calm down and become open to learning with you.
Disengaging: Disengaging is completely different than withdrawing. When you withdraw, you are shutting down, closing your heart, cutting off your love for yourself and the other person. Withdrawal is a form of punishment: "I will shut down and withdraw my love from you until you stop hurting me, or do what I want you to do."
Disengaging is temporarily leaving the conflict, but keeping your heart open to yourself and the other person. This means that you need to learn to lovingly manage your painful feelings of helplessness over the other person being closed, and of the loneliness and heartache that might be there when someone is angry, blaming or shut down to you.
A powerful way of managing these painful feelings is to put your hand on your heart to ground yourself in your body, and fully acknowledge the feelings with compassion for yourself. Compassion is a very powerful energy, and when you acknowledge your feelings with compassion and understanding, you will find that they start to dissipate.
When you disengage, you might say to the other person, with a kind and open voice, "I don't think we will get anywhere right now. Let's try again in half an hour and then maybe we will be able to be more open with each other."
If you were triggered into fear, then once you have compassionately acknowledged your feelings and allowed them to move through you, take some time to understand what might have triggered your fear. Understanding this will help you begin to heal the triggers so that eventually you can stay open in conflict.
Once you feel fully open, go back to the other person and see if he or she is ready to learn with you. If not, then you will need to let it go for another time, or even let it go permanently. We cannot have control over whether or not another person opens in conflict. If the other person doesn't open, then you will need to decide for yourself how to take loving care of yourself in the face of not being able to openly talk about the conflict.
If you practice these two healthy behaviors each time you get stuck not being able to resolve a conflict, you will find yourself feeling better and better -- even if the conflict doesn't get resolved.
Most conflicts are fairly easy to resolve when both people are open to learning about themselves and each other, and are caring about their own and the other's highest good. Attempting to resolve conflict when one or both people are not open is generally a waste of time. You might find a way to end the conflict, but it likely will not feel satisfying to one or both of you -- especially if one wins and the other loses. This is especially difficult in a primary relationship, and will eventually erode the connection and intimacy.
Often, when one person changes the system by moving into the intent to learn and/or lovingly disengaging, the whole system improves.
For more on conscious relationships, click here.]]>Does Your Relationship Lack Passionate Sex? 7 Ways to Bring The Passion Backtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31270912013-04-22T12:59:18-04:002013-04-22T12:59:26-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
"Our lovemaking seems like a chore for both of us."
"Our sexual relationship seems flat and boring."
"My wife/husband is rarely interested in me sexually."
I often hear these complaints from my clients. Yet, some couples deeply enjoy their lovemaking with each other even in very long-term relationships. What are they doing differently than the complaining couples?
Having worked with thousands of couples for the last 44 years, I'd like to share with you what I've learned about what keeps passion alive... and what doesn't.
1. Personal Power vs. Neediness
Neediness isn't sexy. By neediness, I mean that your sense of self-worth and sense of security and lovability are tied to how your partner treats you rather than to how you feel about yourself and to how you treat yourself. If your partner has to have sex with you for you to feel that you are okay, that may be a turnoff to your partner. Women especially want their man to be in their power -- not coming to them like a needy little boy. I've often heard women say, "When I visit my husband at work, I'm so turned on to him because he is coming from his personal power, but as soon as he gets home, he turns into a needy little boy and all the turn-on is gone."
It's not just women who want their partner to have their own self-worth. I've worked with many men who are not attracted to their wives because their wives are needy and demand sex to feel okay about themselves. And it's not just heterosexual couples who struggle with this. This same issue comes up over and over with my gay clients as well.
The issue here is whether or not you are taking personal responsibility for your own feelings and well-being. When you have learned to love and value yourself, then making love with your beloved is a way to express your love rather than a way to get love and validation.
2. Time for Connection
When people date, they set aside time for each other -- time to connect, to share, to learn and grow and have fun. Often, once they live together, they get busy and no longer set aside time to be together. Intimacy and passion do not flourish without time together to play, learn, grow, share and connect. Date nights or date days on a weekend work wonders!
Having fun together, playing together, being able to laugh and joke together, are vital parts of an emotionally and sexually intimate and connected relationship, and they take time. If you want your sex life to be fun and alive, you need to create time for fun and aliveness outside the bedroom. For example, some of my clients find that the only time they have great sex is when they are on vacation. That's when they have the time to connect, and connection is vital for passionate sex.
3. Newness
Relationships get boring when there is nothing new happening, and they flourish when each partner continues to learn and grow in the relationship. A boring relationship can lead to boring sex. Sharing your learning and growth with your partner can lead to the excitement and newness that you had at the beginning of your relationship, and that excitement and newness can then show up on the bedroom.
Good sex also needs some mystery. If your partner knows everything about you because you have stopped learning, growing and changing, boredom can set in. The mystery is in the newness!
4. Conflict
Are you conflict avoidant? Do you see conflict as a problem rather than as a learning opportunity? Is conflict something you have to win, or are you willing to learn from it? People who avoid conflict by giving in or withdrawing, or people who attack and blame and have to be right and win, create an unsafe relationship environment where conflicts don't get resolved. Unresolved conflicts can create resentment, which may lead to a lack of being attracted to your partner. One of the quickest ways of losing your passion for your partner is to give yourself up to avoid rejection. This often leads to shutting down your feelings. You cannot shut down your feelings of heartache without shutting down your loving feelings, as these feelings reside in the same place in the heart. Opening to learning about yourself and your partner, rather than giving yourself up, withdrawing, getting angry or blaming will go a long way toward opening up your sex life to more fun and passion.
Often, what goes on outside the bedroom is reflected in your sexual relationship, so if there is emotional distance and resentment in the relationship, that may be affecting your lovemaking.
5. Control
Most people like to be in control, but they hate being controlled. If one or both of you are controlling -- with judgment, criticism, anger, blame or neediness -- the other person may shut down to not be controlled. Even if you are only controlling in the relationship outside of the bedroom and not in the bedroom, this can affect the attraction. If you tend to be controlling in a judgmental way while making love, this may be a turnoff to your partner.
However, sometimes consensual control can play an exciting role in lovemaking. Frequently, one or the other partner finds it exciting to be controlled in the bedroom. This can bring spice to your sex life as long as it is consensual. The popularity of the 50 Shades of Grey series attests to this.
6. Safety, by Allowing Each Other to Be Truly Important to Each of You
Speaking of 50 Shades of Grey, aside from the raunchiness of these books, there is much in them about creating a truly loving relationship that maintains passion. One of them is that they fully opened their hearts to each other. They did not allow their fears of rejection or their fears of engulfment (the two common fears that often get in the way of creating a loving relationship) to get in the way of their love -- at least not permanently. Knowing you are very important to your partner can give you the safety to be free in the bedroom -- to experiment with things you've never done before, to let your partner in on your fantasies, to create some mystery such as special date nights where one partner is in charge of the day or the evening. Aliveness in the bedroom comes from aliveness in the relationship, which comes from the spontaneous flow that occurs when people feel safe with each other -- safe to be who they really are, knowing they will be accepted.
Feeling fully seen, accepted, valued and cherished are really wonderful experiences, and these feelings can generate the kind of safety that leads to intimacy, spontaneity and aliveness in the relationship and in the bedroom.
7. Staying Fit, Healthy and Sexy
Many people work hard to stay fit while dating and then let themselves go after getting married. Sexiness may include many things -- an inviting smile, being flirtatious with your partner, and alluring clothing, as well as a fit and healthy body. While love is much more than skin deep, it's definitely sexy to some people see their partner taking physical care of his or her physical health and fitness. Many of my clients have complained that their spouse was healthy and fit when they got married and isn't now. It's often not attractive to see your partner not caring about their physical health and well-being.
While these are the main ways my clients have brought passion back in their relationships, I'm certain there are many more ways. I'd love your comments about how you brought passion back in your relationship.
For more on relationships, click here.]]>I'm So in Love -- Or Am I? 10 Experiences That Signal You Are in Lovetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30574532013-04-14T08:31:46-04:002013-04-14T08:31:56-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
"What does it mean to be in love?"
"I think I'm in love, but then I have doubts. If I have doubts, does that mean I'm not in love?"
"I feel in love, but why is this sometimes so hard?"
"I feel in love, but I've felt this way before and it didn't work out. How do I know?
Such a big question! And we all wish there was an easy answer -- a formula we could follow to determine if we are in love.
I don't exactly have a formula for you, but I do have a list of things to watch for that may be of help to you.
Before I get into what determines whether or not you are in love, let's differentiate between being in love and being infatuated.
Infatuation
Being infatuated comes from a completely different place within than being in love. Being infatuated comes from the same place as other addictions -- from the ego-wounded self. The ego-wounded self is needy and empty within, and wants to get filled externally by another through sex, attention and approval. When infatuated, you experience the kind of euphoria that you might experience with a recreational drug. There is an intensity of sexual lust and a sense of urgency to be with the other person. Unless love enters the experience, it is short-lived.
You are in your wounded self, feeling needy and empty, when you are rejecting and abandoning yourself -- looking for another to care for you. Your self-rejection/self-abandonment is what creates the inner neediness and emptiness that leads to the urgency -- and sometimes desperation -- of infatuation.
In Love
1. You are operating as a loving adult, not as your ego-wounded self.
Being in love comes from a full, secure, inwardly-connected place within -- a loving, adult place. In order to feel full, secure and inwardly connected, you need to be taking responsibility for your own feelings rather than rejecting and abandoning yourself. You cannot truly love another when you don't accept and love yourself. Not loving yourself leads to neediness rather than security, which then leads to infatuation, not love. If your sense of security is dependent on the other person, then you are in need rather than in love.
2. You see, value and deeply connect with the essence of the other person.
Being in love is about deeply valuing and connecting with who the other person really is -- not just how they look or what they do for you. In order to see, value and connect with the true essence of another, you need to be able to see, value and connect with your own true essence. In order for you to do this, you will have had to do your own inner work to learn to love and value your own true self.
3. Your physical attraction to them is more than skin deep.
Sexual chemistry is a mysterious thing. While it may start based on how a person looks or from your feelings of lust for the person, over time it evolves into a deeper valuing of who the person is and a desire to share your love with them in a loving and passionate physical way. You love to be next to them. Their energy feels great to you, as does their touch. Making love with your beloved is not just a satisfying physical experience. It is also a deeply satisfying emotional and spiritual experience.
4. You receive deep joy in giving to your beloved.
You have allowed your beloved to matter to you, so your beloved's happiness is important to you. Rather than feeling put upon when your partner needs something from you, you receive joy in being able to give to and support your partner in many ways. You receive joy from their joy and pain from their pain, while not making them responsible for your pain and joy. You are empathic and compassionate with them without losing your sense of self. You deeply desire to support both your own highest good and your partner's highest good. You want the very best for both of you.
5. Along with the physical spark, connection and flow, there is an emotional spark, connection and flow.
You love spending time with your beloved, just being together, talking and sharing yourselves with each other. Conversation flows easily between you, and you are also very comfortable being silent with each other. There is a warm flow of energy between you even when you are doing different things in the same room. You can feel connected with each other even from a distance.
6. You are committed to working through conflict in loving ways.
Rather than seeing conflict as a deal-breaker or as something to be avoided, you see conflict as an opportunity to learn and grow together. Rather than fearing losing yourself in a conflict -- or feeling that you have to be right and win -- you feel open and curious to learning about your beloved's way of seeing things. You feel a deep commitment to working through the hard times. You have no desire to give up on the relationship.
7. You laugh and have fun with each other.
You and your beloved enjoy playing together. Laughter flows easily between you. At times, you find each other fun and funny. You appreciate your beloved's sense of humor and you feel on the same page regarding what tickles you.
8. You feel safe to share your deepest self with your beloved.
You are not walking on eggshells, trying to avoid your partner's judgment. You know you can mess up without losing your partner's love and caring. You feel safe to share your fears and hurts with your partner -- even when they are about your partner -- and you are empathically and compassionately available to be there for your partner's fears and hurts, even when they are about you. You feel accepting of your beloved's challenges. Opening to each other on ever-deeper levels creates a deep level of physical and emotional intimacy.
9. You don't expect to be on cloud nine all the time.
You know you love your partner, even when you don't feel "in love." In fact, you don't expect to feel in love all the time. You know that in loving relationships, you move close and then move away, and then move close and then away, like the tide. You accept that this is the natural rhythm of a loving relationship and don't doubt your love during the more distant times.
10. You don't keep thinking that there is someone better out there.
Because you feel a deep soul connection with your partner, you have no desire to wander. You know that while there may be many wonderful people out there, this is the person you want to be with. This is the person you want to journey with toward learning to love yourself and love him or her on ever-deeper levels.
Some of you may have other ideas of what lets you know you are in love. I'd love to hear them.
For more on love, click here.]]>7 Reasons You Might Have Fallen Out of Love With Your Partnertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30108372013-04-05T11:59:26-04:002013-04-05T12:00:04-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
We are both open and caring people so there is no reason our love isn't going to last.
Our love is so unique and special that there is no way it won't last.
We have both had bad relationships and learned from them, so now we know how to have a loving relationship.
Sometimes this is wonderfully true, but often the love-bubble bursts and you find yourself falling out of love with your partner.
What causes this?
1. Fear Gets Triggered
When you first meet and feel a connection with someone, you are likely open hearted. You fall in love with who you each are when you are at your best -- open, loving, caring and fun to be with.
But inevitably, things happen that trigger fears, particularly fears of losing your beloved or of losing yourself -- the fear of rejection and the fear of engulfment, of being controlled by your partner. Perhaps one day your partner is tired and appears distant, and your fear of rejection kicks in. Out of this fear, you might become a bit demanding or clingy, which might trigger your partners' fear of being engulfed, controlled, smothered. Your partner withdraws to protect against the pull from you, which further triggers your rejection fears. Now you might get angry and start blaming, and your partner might retreat even further. You might become caught in a vicious circle of protecting yourselves rather than learning, growing and sharing your love with each other.
Unless you are able to learn from and heal your fears, you may get stuck in this negative pattern. Love quickly vanishes in the face of this closed, protective behavior.
2. Controlling Behavior Takes Over
As you become stuck in this negative system, each of you may become more and more controlling -- each in your own way. Controlling behavior may include anger, blame, attack, defensiveness, compliance, withdrawal, resistance or indifference. If you are using anger or blame to try to have control over your partner being open and loving with you, your partner might resist that control by defending, withdrawing, resisting or completely shutting down and becoming indifferent. If you are trying to control your partner by giving yourself up, he or she might respond by become more and more demanding.
3. Underlying Narcissism Emerges
There is an underlying narcissism in the ego wounded part of all of us -- the survival part of us that learned to protect against pain through different controlling behaviors. This narcissism is about believing that the other person is responsible for your feelings of worth and safety. This narcissism can take two different forms:
The taker -- overtly demanding: "It's your job to make me happy, worthy and safe."
The caretaker -- covertly demanding -- giving yourself up in the hopes your partner will love you: "If I do what you want, then you will love me and make me feel happy, worthy and safe."
This narcissism emerges when you have not learned how to take responsibility for your own worth, happiness and safety. This codependent system invariably wears down love.
4. Conflicts Don't Get Resolved
Conflict resolution occurs when both of you are open to learning about yourself and each other, when you have your own and your partner's highest good at heart, and when you each are willing to take responsibility for your own feelings. If one or both of you are closed and controlling, trying to win or at least not lose, or if you are too ready to give yourself up, conflict doesn't get resolved and resentment builds up. Love cannot flourish when resentment takes over.
5. Passion Diminishes
When you both get caught up in your protective, controlling behavior, your excitement and passion for each other may start to diminish. You might not feel turned on by your partner if he or she is angry, blaming, resistant, compliant, needy and so on.
If one of you needs sex to feel intimate, and the other needs to feel intimate in order to feel like having sex, and the intimacy is eroded due to the controlling system, sex becomes less and less alive and passionate.
Sex stays alive in a long-term relationship when each partner is open to learning about themselves and each other. Learning creates aliveness and newness, which affects the whole relationship. Without aliveness and newness in the relationship, the relationship can become boring, which can affect the vitality of the sexuality.
6. Losing Touch With Your Essence
The more you each react from your ego wounded self, the more out of touch you become with your own true self -- your essence -- and the essence of your partner. You fell in love with each others' essence, not with each others' ego wounded self. In fact, most of us don't like another's ego wounded self. We learn to tolerate it, which is essential for a loving relationship, but what we like and love is the essence. Often, by the time couples divorces, they actually hate each other because all they see is each other's controlling, wounded self.
7. Disconnection May Become the Norm
Where once you felt deeply connected with your partner, now emotional and sexual disconnection may have become the norm. You either settle for a flat relationship or you move on, often to create the same issues in the next relationship.
The Way Back To Love
There is a way back to love. The way back is to take your eyes off your partner and move into a healing process that leads to taking personal responsibility for your own feelings. Inner Bonding is such a healing process. By learning and practicing the Six Steps of Inner Bonding, you learn to bring the love to yourself that you may be trying to get from your partner. You learn to stop rejecting and abandoning yourself, instead bringing love and compassion to your own feelings and needs. You learn to connect with a higher source of love and bring that love inside, so that you have love to share with your partner, rather than always trying to get love with your controlling behavior. You learn to define your own worth and create your own inner safety, so that you no longer pull on your partner for these.
Before deciding that you chose the wrong partner or that you can't ever feel in love with your partner again, try learning and practicing Inner Bonding. Thousands of couples have rediscovered their love for each other by learning to love themselves.
For more on love and relationships, click here. ]]>Are You Love Addicted?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29486092013-03-25T17:24:50-04:002013-03-25T17:24:55-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
Many of us did not receive the love we needed, nor did we learn how to give it to ourselves, and when then is the case, we may feel a huge, painful emptiness inside.
Alicia wrote to me the following description of her love addiction:
The trigger from love addiction feels like the wound of wounds. The pain is so deep and encompassing. I feel I can't see anything else but this unbearable pain. I wonder WHEN this will ever end, because intellectually I understand another person cannot permanently make me whole. But every time they do -- for that period of time when we connect, the initial enmeshing is ecstasy. I feel it is the ONLY time in life that part of me ever feels any relief or respite from the pain that is my constant companion. And I am just crushed when the truth sets in and the relief of the connection is gone and I am abandoned again in a world/universe/creation far too vast for me to ever learn to live in.
If this sounds like a small child, it's because the small child in Alicia is still suffering from the unhealed wounds of not being loved enough as a child. Even though Alicia realizes that another cannot permanently take away her pain, she is deeply addicted to the brief times when someone else gives her love.
As an adult, only by becoming our own loving inner parent -- our own loving inner Mom and Dad -- can this pain heal. Until Alicia learns to bring deep love to the wounded child within her -- the love she didn't receive as a baby and toddler -- the wound will not get healed.
Gerald wrote the following to me about his love addiction:
I realized recently I suffer from love addiction. I am still in withdrawal and it is so hard. Even though my head knows she was not the best person for me, I still feel like I want her back and think (or kid myself) that we both need time to grow, mature and heal (she left me). How do I really get over her and the relationship or how can I mature and heal to hopefully establish a new relationship with her?
Because another's love feels so good for the moment, it's tempting to believe that only another's love can heal us. But, just like a parent of an actual infant, we are the ones who are with ourselves 24/7. If, as an actual parent, you consistently abandoned your child to another's care, withholding your own love, care and affection, your child would feel rejected. The same thing happens on the inner level. When we make another person responsible for healing the pain of our original lack of love, we are rejecting and abandoning ourselves, which serves to perpetuate love addiction.
Joanna wrote:
Hi Dr. M, I have been agonizing for four months over my boyfriend who dumped me because I became needy. I am addicted to super successful, interesting people. I know I put a great show on at the onset and that mid way in relationship I crumble and destroy because in all actuality, I feel like nothing in myself and that I am not worthy. How can I turn this around once and for all?
Each of these people is asking, "How do I heal from love addiction?"
Here are the steps to healing:
1. You need to be willing to feel the depth of the heartbreak, loneliness and helplessness that you felt as a child when you didn't receive the love you needed. You need to find a place within you that wants responsibility for giving the baby and toddler within you the love you didn't receive then. It takes courage to feel this very deep pain without running to someone else to fix it.
2. You need to learn to open your heart to the love that is always available to you -- whether you call this love God, spirit, the universe, your higher self, your spiritual guidance or an angel. It is less important how you conceptualize the love that we live in, than that you learn to open your heart and invite that love into it. When you really want to take full responsibility for healing your love addiction, then you simply extend the invitation and say, "Please fill my heart with love for the child within me who is suffering from a lack of love."
3. With kindness and gentleness, imagine picking yourself up as a small baby or toddler, holding and rocking yourself, bringing the love to yourself that you would give to an actual baby or child whom you deeply loved. Holding a doll or stuffed animal that represents you as a baby or toddler can help make this more real for you.
4. While you are holding yourself as a baby, imagine that an unconditionally loving being is holding you. It might be an image of your older wiser self, or an image of someone who has died who loved you, or an image of a religious figure. The important thing is to eventually experience that you are not alone -- that you are being held in love while you lovingly hold the baby within you.
5. Holding yourself with love is a good start, but it is just the beginning of healing from love addiction. You also need to begin to treat yourself as a worthwhile and valuable person. When you value yourself, you will not want to reject yourself by giving yourself away to someone else. When you value yourself, you will be kind to yourself rather than judgmental. You will feed yourself well and you will take loving care of yourself around others. You will do all the things for yourself that you would do for a child you deeply loved.
Valuing yourself can start by lovingly seeing the innocent child within you -- your essence. This is your true self, and may have been covered over by the fears and false beliefs of your ego-wounded self that you created as you grew up, to try to get love and avoid pain. As you learn to value your essence and recognize that you are not your ego-wounded self, you will naturally want to take loving care of yourself.
Over time, you will find that you no longer feel needy and no longer seek to get love. Now that you value yourself and are able to fill yourself with love, you seek relationships to share your love rather than to get love.
By following these steps, you can heal from love addiction. I have helped many people heal their love addiction through learning to practice the Inner Bonding process.
For more on emotional wellness, click here.]]>The 7-Step Guide to Miserytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28968742013-03-18T14:00:38-04:002013-05-18T05:12:01-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
Why would someone make the choice to be miserable? Because it is often a way of getting attention and of attempting to get someone else to be responsible for them. If this is what you want, here is a roadmap to make sure you accomplish your goal!
1. Get Angry, Blame Others
When you blame others, you are being a victim. You are making others responsible for your misery, which is a sure-fire way of remaining miserable. While you might think that getting angry and blaming others is powerful, it actually renders you powerless. If others are the cause of your misery -- and you actually have no control over them -- then you are just a victim and there is nothing you can do to make things better for yourself. So for sure, do not stop blaming and don't take responsibility for yourself!
2. Listen to Your Inner Critic
One of the best ways of staying miserable is to blame and judge yourself. Telling yourself what a jerk you are, that you are not good enough and will never be good enough, that there is something basically wrong with you, that you are ugly or too fat or too skinny, that you are unlovable and no one will ever love you, that you are a loser and will never get anywhere, that you are stupid, that you are weird and will never fit in and so on, will ensure your misery. So to stay miserable, be sure to never value your beautiful, divine soul.
3. Fear Failure
Be sure to tell yourself that you must never, ever fail. Be sure to lie to yourself and tell yourself that failure means that you are stupid and a loser. Ignore the fact that every successful person has experienced many failures on the way to success. Never mind that happy and successful people take the risk of making a fool of themselves, and don't care if they do. By making failure a big deal, you guarantee that you will stay stuck in misery, staying too afraid to try something different.
4. Avoid Your Feelings by Using Substances
The last thing you want to do -- if you want to stay miserable -- is take responsibility for your feelings. You want to completely ignore the fact that your feelings are informational -- letting you know when you are rejecting yourself or when you are being loving to yourself, and when others are being loving or mean. Instead of embracing and learning from your feelings, you want to avoid them with sugar and junk food, as well as with drugs, nicotine and alcohol. Remember, the more you ignore your feelings, the worse you will feel. Eventually, ignoring your feeling may lead to illness, and then you can really be miserable!
5. Avoid Your Feelings With Process Addictions
If substances are not your thing -- or if they don't completely blot out your feelings -- there are many other ways to avoid your feelings. Instead of learning from your feelings and releasing them so they don't get stuck in your body, keep them stuck by watching too much TV, overworking, playing video games, turning to sex and porn and to love addiction, over-spending, gambling and so on. I'm sure you can find many ways to continue to avoid your feelings, which will continue to support your misery.
6. Strive to Be Perfect, to Be Right, to Win, and Don't Forget to Compare Yourself to Others
Striving to be "perfect" (whatever that is) is a vital choice to keep you miserable. Since "perfect" changes with each person, it will keep you dancing as fast as you can and wear you out. You will lose yourself as you give yourself up to others in your attempts to be perfect, and losing yourself is a sure path to misery. Be sure to focus on having to be right, to win, and frequently compare yourself to others. Above all, do not accept and value yourself as you are. Accepting and valuing yourself as you are is a major aspect of happiness, so you need to be sure not to do that.
7. Try to Control What You Can't Control
A great way of staying miserable is to keep trying to control what you can't control. Misery and frustration thrive on futile attempts to control others and outcomes. Keep on convincing yourself that if only you try harder or get more angry or more blaming, become more perfect and judge yourself more, or give yourself up to others, you will finally have the control you are seeking.
I'm sure there are others ways of staying miserable, but these are the ones I've found to consistently work. By following these guidelines, you are guaranteed to stay miserable!
For more on emotional wellness, click here.]]>Do You Compare Yourself to Others?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28557512013-03-12T13:28:58-04:002013-05-12T05:12:01-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
My 8-year-old grandson is home-schooled, so he has not experienced the comparisons that go on in the school environment. He is being brought up in a wonderfully loving, highly creative, non-competitive learning environment. However, my daughter recently took him to a religious school where they were making religious objects -- which he enjoyed. At the end of his time there, the teacher told him that his creation was the best in the class. On the way home, my grandson said to my daughter, "Mom, when the teacher said that mine was the best, I felt like she sucked the creativity right out of me." Needless to say, she did not take him there again.
This is what comparing does. It shuts us down, sucking out the intrinsic joy of learning and creating, and undermines our sense of worth. Unfortunately, many people have absorbed the messages of comparison and now do it to themselves -- especially comparing looks, intelligence and performance.
Monica asked me this question:
Hi Dr. Paul. Please advise how I would remedy my tendency to always comparing myself to other women, especially feeling inferior and threatened when I'm dating a man, but also feeling jealous of those who are ahead of me professionally.
Charles asked me a similar question:
How do I stop comparing myself to other people? It's almost like a knee jerk reaction. I was often compared to others when growing up and it mostly left me feeling "not good enough," which is what it still does to me. Although I have the head knowledge, and I'm aware that I do it, I still am having trouble not doing it to myself. I frustrate myself with this.
Healing the Low Self-Worth That Fosters Comparisons
If you knew about and valued your intrinsic qualities -- such as your kindness, compassion, lovingness, creativity, openness, playfulness, lightness of being, caring, intuition, empathy, tenacity, spunkiness, sense of humor, introversion or extroversion, innate talents and abilities, your unique form of intelligence and so on -- and you based your worth on your intrinsic qualities rather than on your looks or performance, how would you feel about yourself? The chances are you would feel so happy with who you are in your essential self that it would not occur to you to compare yourself to others.
The problem is that most people have lost touch with their essence -- their true self -- and they think they are their outer, false self -- their ego-wounded self. If you don't know your essence, it is likely because your parents or other caregivers didn't know their essence, and therefore could not reflect your essence to you as you were growing up.
It is your ego-wounded self who may have absorbed the false belief that your worth is about your looks and performance. If this is how you define your worth, then it is likely that you are suffering like Monica and Charles, believing yourself to be inferior if you don't look as good as someone else, or you don't make as much money as someone else, or don't drive as expensive a car or have as expensive a house, or are not married with children, or you are not as well known as someone else.
High self-worth or low self-worth is the result of how we treat ourselves -- not about what others think of us. I've worked with some beautiful and handsome, wealthy and famous people who felt that they were not good enough. If looks, performance and approval are what create self-worth, then they would have felt great about themselves.
The reason they continued to believe they were not good enough is because they were judging themselves based on their external, transient qualities of looks and performance, rather than valuing their authentic and enduring intrinsic qualities. As long as they were judging themselves, they were creating their low self-worth, and as long as they didn't feel worthy, they continued to compare themselves to others.
Discovering Your Intrinsic Worth
You cannot see your true, essential self through the eyes of your ego-wounded self. Your wounded self decided long ago that who you are isn't good enough, so your essence might be buried beneath the false beliefs of your wounded self.
In order to see your true essence, you need to open to learning from a higher, wiser part of you. Imagine an older, wise part of you, your inner wise self. Imagine that this older, wise part of you is gazing with love at you as a child, just as loving grandparent might look at a grandchild. See if you can describe you as you were when you were a very small child, before you developed your fears and false beliefs. Do you see your light? Do you see your lovingness? What else do you see? What makes you lovable? What makes you uniquely you? What makes you inherently worthy -- worthy of being loved by you today?
This child -- this essence -- is still who you inherently and authentically are today. The more you learn to love and value your unique essence, the less you will find yourself comparing yourself to others. You will know that, not only is your worth not dependent on the transient qualities of looks and performance, but that you are a completely unique expression of the divine. There is only one you.
For more on emotional wellness, click here.]]>Is Your Relationship System Working Well?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28108952013-03-05T15:49:16-05:002013-05-05T05:12:01-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
For example, Thomas and Leann consulted with me because both were unhappy in their relationship. Married for five years, neither felt any emotional or sexual connection with the other. They had not made love in a year.
In their first Skype session with me, I asked each of them to summarize how they viewed the problems in the relationship.
"Thomas is angry with me a lot and often withdraws from me. He gives way more attention to others than he does to me. When I really need him, he is not there for me. When I try to talk with him about our disconnection, he gets very quiet or leaves the room. I hate that we can't talk about things."
"I have tried to be there for Leann, but it seems like she is a bottomless pit. I've had some big challenges this last year at work, and she has no caring or empathy towards me at all. She just wants me to listen to her, but she doesn't want to listen to me. When she wants to talk about our problems, it's always about what I'm doing wrong. I'm sick of this. I think maybe we shouldn't be together."
From my point of view, these two people have what I call a "Pull-Compliant/Resist" system. Here is what I see:
I see two people who do not take responsibility for their own feelings, and instead make the other person responsible for them -- which leads both of them to feel like victims of the other's choices.
I see two people, each focused on blaming and controlling the other person rather than looking at their own part in the system.
I see Leann "pulling" on Thomas to make her feel loved and important to him. Because she is rejecting and abandoning herself in many ways, she then feels insecure and wants Thomas to make her feel that she is okay. She uses over-talking, explaining, defending and blaming as her main forms of control.
I see Thomas giving in to Leann, trying to give her what she is not giving herself, and then getting angry and resistant when what he gives to her is never enough. I see him rejecting and abandoning himself to care-take her, then shutting down to avoid being controlled by her, and blaming her for his shutting down.
Both Leann and Thomas want very much to connect with each other, but because neither is connected with themselves, they are each behaving in ways that create distance rather than connection.
In my work with them, I first helped each of them to see that they were operating at a common level of woundedness -- which means a common level of self-abandonment. Both were contributing equally to the problems in the relationship, even though each believed the other was more at fault. For them to heal their relationship, they each needed to get their eyes off the other and on to themselves.
I then helped each of them see how they were abandoning themselves. Each of them were making the other responsible for their feelings rather than learning to compassionately manage their own painful feelings. I taught them the Inner Bonding process for learning to love and value themselves and take full responsibility for their own feelings.
Fortunately, both Thomas and Leann were open to learning about how to take loving care of themselves. As they each practiced taking care of their own feelings, their relationship gradually healed. As they each learned to connect with themselves and love themselves, they found they were able to connect with and share love with each other.
What Relationship System Do You Have?
I have found that couples who are having problems are generally operating from one of the following four systems:
The "Pull-Compliant/Resist" system described above
A "Pull-Pull' system, in which each person is actively blaming and guilting the other into giving them the love they are not giving to themselves.
A "Resist-Resist" system, where each person is terrified of being controlled and is shut down much of the time to avoid giving themselves up.
A "Pull-Compliance" system, in which one person is demanding and the other consistently gives in.
While these systems might look different on the outside, they result from the same core issue, which is that each person is abandoning themselves in various ways, making the other responsible for them, and then trying to control the other in various ways. Underneath all these systems there are deep unhealed fears of rejection and engulfment -- which are the result of the self-abandonment.
Each is abandoning themselves in some or all of the following ways:
Judging themselves and then projecting their self-judgments on to the other person
Not taking responsibility for their own feelings, and instead, focusing on what the other person is or isn't doing -- making the other person responsible for their feelings of safety and worth
Turning to various addictive behaviors -- such as anger, lying, withdrawal, resistance, compliance -- in an attempt to control the other person and avoid their own feelings, and perhaps turning to substance and process addictions, using food, alcohol, drugs, nicotine, TV, sex and/or porn, gambling and so on to avoid their feelings.
All of these forms of self-abandonment lead to feeling badly about themselves, and then being needy of the compassion and caring they are not giving to themselves.
Happy couples operate from an entirely different system -- a loving system. In these relationships, each person takes responsibility for taking loving care of themselves so that they are able to be kind, caring, empathic and compassionate with each other. Because they are there for themselves, they are able to be there for each other. Because they have learned to value themselves rather than reject themselves, they value each other.
If you are having problems in your relationship, or you are in the process of seeking a loving relationship, I suggest you start with learning how to love yourself. This is what makes all the difference!
For more on conscious relationships, click here.]]>Is Loving Yourself Selfish or Self-Responsible?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27507302013-02-26T15:16:52-05:002013-04-28T05:12:01-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/free webinars -- one that focused on what it looks like to love yourself -- Grant asked the following question:
"Isn't it selfish and pathetic to love yourself? Isn't it better and healthier to put your full attention on helping others?"
I feel sad that anyone thinks it is selfish and pathetic to love yourself.
Then Sophia asked: "Please distinguish between 'self love' and 'selfish.' Thanks a million."
How did we get so confused between 'selfish' and 'self-love?'
I got confused early in my life because I was told I was selfish if I did what I wanted to do rather than what my grandmother wanted me to do. She lived with us when I was growing up and she had very rigid ideas regarding what was selfish and what was acceptable. She told me I was being selfish when I did my homework on the Sabbath. I was being selfish when I didn't eat what she wanted me to eat.
Of course, I absorbed the false belief that the only way I could be unselfish and caring is if I put others' demands before my own needs.
It took me years of inner work to understand that it was actually my grandmother who was being selfish. Now I know that we are being selfish when we expect others to give themselves up for us. We are being selfish when we demand that others prove their love by doing what we want them to do for us, rather than doing what is important to them.
Let's look at what loving yourself means and what it doesn't mean.
Loving yourself doesn't mean:
"I'm just going to take care of me and screw you."
"I'm not responsible for how my behavior affects you. That's your problem."
"If you love me, you will do what I want (whatever that is)."
"I'm only trying to help you and support you in what I believe is good for you -- even though you haven't asked for my help or my opinion."
"I'll put my full attention on you and sacrifice myself for you so you will put your full attention on me and sacrifice yourself for me."
"When I'm hurting it's your fault, and it's up to you to fix it."
"Since I need your attention and approval to feel good about myself, it's okay for me to do whatever I can to get what I need -- such as being overly nice, being angry, blaming you or withdrawing my love from you."
"If you love me, and I end up disabled or dying as a result of not taking care of myself physically, that's your problem, not mine."
Loving yourself means:
"I am responsible for learning to manage and regulate my own feelings so that I don't dump my anger, neediness and pain on you."
"I am responsible for defining my own worth and giving myself the attention I need, so that I am not in need of getting this from you, and so I can share my love with you, including supporting you in doing what brings you joy."
"I am responsible for managing my time, my space and my finances in ways that make me feel safe and don't place a burden on you."
"I am responsible for learning how to access a spiritual source of love so that I can share my love with you, rather than trying to get love from you."
"I am responsible for taking care of my physical wellbeing -- eating healthy foods, getting exercise and getting enough sleep, so that you don't eventually have to take physical care of me, unnecessarily."
"I am responsible for the effect my behavior has on you when I have acted out in ways that are hurtful to you."
"I am responsible for taking loving care of you when you are my responsibility -- because you are my child, or you are old, sick or disabled and I have agreed to take care of you. There are times when it is loving to me to put myself aside for you, like when you are an infant or toddler and you need me, or when you cannot take care of yourself."
There may be many more loving and selfish behaviors that I haven't listed, and I'd love to hear from you about your ideas.
Now I want to address this question: "Isn't it selfish and pathetic to love yourself? Isn't it better and healthier to put your full attention on helping others?"
I hope you can see that if you are not loving yourself, then putting your full attention on helping others may be manipulative. When you are not loving yourself, you create an empty hole within that pulls on others to get filled. When you are focusing your full attention on helping others, you may be pulling on them to give you the love that you are not giving to yourself. When you are loving yourself by taking responsibility for your own feelings and needs, then you are filled within with love and have love to share with others -- without needing anything back from them. We are loving to others only when we give to them freely and don't need anything back, which occurs only when we are taking loving care of ourselves and filling ourselves up with love.
Rather than it being selfish and pathetic to love yourself, it is deeply self-responsible.
For more on emotional wellness, click here.]]>Become Your Own Valentine!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26629482013-02-12T16:08:55-05:002013-04-14T05:12:01-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
No!
You can become your own valentine!
When I was in elementary school, one of the very fun things we did was make valentines for everyone in class. I used to love writing a little note saying what I liked about each person. It made me feel happy inside to offer every person a bit of love.
Becoming your own valentine means doing this for yourself. Here's how:
Then look for a small gift for yourself -- something you would really enjoy and that celebrates you.
Here is the really important part: When you get home, set aside some time to think about and write about what you most value about yourself. Let go of all the things you might be critical about -- looks, performance, smarts -- and focus only on the true essence of you. Your true essence comprises your enduring qualities -- the qualities you were born with. Are you a kind person? Are you capable of compassion and empathy? Are you creative? What are your inherent gifts and talents? Are you funny and entertaining? Are you quiet and deep? Are you extroverted? Introverted? What is the value of being extroverted or introverted?
Take the time to look inside and see what is truly wonderful about you. Imagine that you are a very loving grandparent looking with love at you as the grandchild. If you had you as a grandchild, what would you love about you? What would you see that is unique and special about you?
Write all this out to yourself in the card. Wrap the present. Then decide on what you would like to do for your wonderful self on Valentine's Day. Do you want to cook yourself something special, or go somewhere that day or evening that would be fun for you? Do you want to spend time with friends? Do you want to cuddle in with yourself and watch a good movie or read a good book? Do you want to do something creative? Imagine that you are planning the day or evening for someone whom you deeply treasure -- your beloved self.
On Valentine's Day, open the gift and read the card out loud to your wonderful self, and then proceed with the day or evening you planned for yourself.
Becoming your own valentine can help you start focusing more and more on what you love and value about yourself, and less on what you don't like about yourself. Many people are extremely judgmental toward themselves, which makes them feel anxious, depressed, shamed and unworthy. You don't have to continue to judge yourself and make yourself miserable. While your ego wounded self might believe that self-judgment motivates you to improve, the opposite is actually true -- self-judgment is debilitating and may be keeping you stuck.
Make this Valentine's Day the beginning of becoming your own valentine -- your own beloved. If you devote yourself to valuing yourself rather than to judging yourself, over time you will find yourself feeling happier and more productive. Even if you are in a good relationship and enjoy celebrating Valentine's Day together, you might also want to celebrate your wonderful self on Valentine's Day -- and every day! The more you love and value yourself, the more you will be able to love and value others, and the happier you will feel.
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a relationship expert, best-selling author, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® self-healing process, recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette, and featured on Oprah. To begin learning how to love and connect with yourself so that you can connect with others, take advantage of our free Inner Bonding eCourse, and receive Free Help.Discover SelfQuest®, a transformational self-healing/conflict resolution computer program. Phone or Skype sessions with Dr. Margaret Paul.
For more on emotional wellness, click here.]]>How to Stop Fighting With Your Partner or Otherstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26454492013-02-10T10:46:38-05:002013-04-12T05:12:01-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
What often happens is one person says something that triggers the other, such as:
Something that isn't true or accurate, or in some way doesn't make sense
Something that indicates that one person doesn't see the other clearly, or is misinterpreting them
Something that sounds judgmental or blaming
Something that sounds arrogant or righteous
Something that sounds or feels rejecting
Something that sounds or feels needy
How do you generally respond when your partner, parent, child, friend or co-worker triggers you in one of these ways?
Do you:
Explain, defend or use logic to try to fix/change them, or do something else to talk them out of their feelings and show them they are wrong?
Get angry or blaming?
Withdraw in anger or resistance and sulk?
Give yourself up and go along with what they are saying?
What happens when you react in these ways? The chances are good that if you do the first two, you will end up in an argument. If you withdraw or give yourself up, you might avoid the conflict, but you may feel upset and resentful. In either case, the connection between you is broken for the time being, and this likely feels sad to you.
Does the conflict reach a loving resolution when you react in any of the above ways? Probably not.
One of the things many people have a hard time accepting is that when someone is coming from their ego-wounded self, they are closed to learning -- which means they cannot hear and take in what you are saying to them. Whatever you say when someone is closed falls on deaf ears -- and they are always closed when they are distorting the truth, misinterpreting, being judgmental or blaming, being arrogant or righteous or being rejecting or needy. Most of us cannot hear the other person when we are triggered into our own protective/controlling behavior.
Then, if both of you are triggered into your controlling ego-wounded selves, the interaction can escalate into threats, rage or violence.
What to Do to Not Fight
The first thing you need to do is fully accept that there is nothing you can do about what is going on with the other person. This is very hard for most people. We want to believe that if only we say the right thing or act right, we can get them to see things our way. No matter how right you are about the issue, explaining, defending, getting angry, blaming or righteous will do nothing to change the other's mind. They can't hear you when they are trying to control you!
Once you accept your helplessness over them, then you can realize that you are not at all helpless over yourself. Here are two healthy choices you can make to not get into a fight:
If you can walk away, do so, but not in anger or blame. Disengage -- not as a punishment of them ("I'm going to pull my love and caring away because you are hurting me and I will show you that you can't treat me this way") -- but to take loving care of your own feelings. Move into compassion for the sadness, loneliness and heartache that you may feel when someone you care about is disconnected from you and unavailable to talk openly about it. Of primary importance is: Don't take it personally. Their unloving behavior is not about you -- it is a reflection of their own self-abandonment.
The challenge in lovingly disengaging is to keep your own heart open so that when the other person is open, you are not stuck with anger and resentment. The way to do this is to learn to take full responsibility for your own pain, managing it with compassion and kindness toward yourself and making sure you are not taking their behavior personally. I like to put my hand on my heart, which grounds me in my heart, making it easier to be kind and gentle with my feelings.
If you can't walk away, then remain silent, going inside to attend to your own feelings. Remember, whatever you say when someone is closed will only add fuel to the fire. Resist the temptation to tell them how wrong they are, or to explain yourself in the hopes they will hear you and change.
What to Do If They Open at Some Point
At some point, the other person might calm down and open. If you have been taking care of yourself, then you are also open. The time to discuss a conflict is only when both people are open to learning about themselves and each other.
There are two things you can do that may facilitate resolution:
You can open to learning with them about what was going on with them -- why they were upset and closed. This can lead to new understandings of an issue that may need resolution.
You can share your truth regarding how their unloving behavior affected you -- sharing the loneliness and heartache you feel when they disconnect from you -- without blame or judgment.
If, at any time during this discussion, one or both of you close down again, stop. Stop talking. Stop trying to resolve anything. Accept that you cannot resolve a conflict unless both of you are open to learning. Go back to tending to your own feelings, staying open to why you might have closed up in the interaction. There is always much to learn about what triggers us into a closed, protected, controlling place.
You will likely find many of your relationships becoming more loving and connected when you learn to lovingly disengage, stay open to learning, not take others' behavior personally, and tell your truth without blame or judgment.
For more on relationships, click here.]]>4 Ways You Might Be Rejecting Yourselftag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25979262013-02-04T11:42:46-05:002013-04-06T05:12:01-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/
What I didn't realize in those years was that there were many ways I was rejecting myself, which led me to feel like I wasn't good enough unless others liked me and approved of me. My fear of others' rejection was really a projection of the many ways I was rejecting myself.
That was many years ago. Fortunately, when I stopped rejecting myself, my fear of others' rejection went away.
In working with many thousands of clients over the last 44 years, and in healing my own fear of rejection, I've discovered four major ways many people reject themselves. Do you reject yourself in some or all of these ways?
1. Judging Yourself
Do you feel rejected when others judge you? The same thing happens on the inner level. Self-judgment is a common and powerful form of self-rejection.
Are you aware of how you feel when you judge yourself? Or have you numbed out your feelings, which is another common form of self-rejection? Are you aware that when you judge yourself you likely feel anxious, depressed, guilty, shamed and/or angry? Have you ever connected these feelings with your self-judgments?
If you were to judge a child by saying, "You're pathetic," "You're stupid," "You're ugly," "There is something wrong with you," "You're not good enough," and so on, the child would feel rejected, unloved and unlovable. The same thing happens when you judge yourself. If you imagine that you are leveling these judgments toward a small child within you, then you can begin to understand why judging yourself is a form of self-rejection.
2. Ignoring Your Feelings By Staying In Your Mind
Many of us grew up learning to ignore our painful feelings because we were too little to manage them. If, as a child, you felt lonely, rejected, heartbroken and helpless over how others were treating you or over the loss of a loved one, then you had to find ways to not feel the depth of the pain. Little children cannot manage the pain of big feelings without a loving parent helping them learn to do so.
One way many of us learned to not feel our pain is by disconnecting from our body -- which is where the feelings are -- and focusing in our mind instead. But just as actual children will feel rejected if you ignore their feelings, the child within feels rejected when you ignore your feelings. The inner child is your feeling self, so when you stay in your mind and disconnect from your feelings, you are rejecting a vitally important aspect of yourself.
3. Turning To Addictions To Avoid Feeling Your Feelings
Did you learn to use food, drugs or alcohol, cigarettes, TV, video games, sex or the Internet to avoid feeling your feelings? Did you learn to cut yourself, pick at your skin, pick at your nails, pull your hair out -- inflicting some level of physical pain to avoid the emotional pain? Did you become anorexic or bulimic as forms of controlling your feelings?
Just as an actual child will feel rejected if, when he or she comes to you in pain, you consistently give him a cookie and sit him in front of the TV rather than compassionately addressing the pain he is expressing, or you buy her a new dress rather than lovingly attending to her feelings, so your inner child will feel rejected by you when you turn to addictions rather than compassionately embracing and learning from your feelings. You might think you are rewarding yourself when you turn to addictions, but whenever you ignore your feelings in any way, you will feel the anxiety, depression, guilt, shame or anger that results from self-rejection. Then, to avoid these feelings, you reject yourself some more with your self-judgments, or by ignoring your feelings, staying in your mind instead and/or turning to your addictions.
4. Making Others Responsible For Your Feelings
Did you grow up believing that others are responsible for making you feel safe and worthy? While our parents were responsible for this when we were little, as adults it is up to us to give ourselves the loving attention and approval we need to feel lovable and worthy. Even if someone else is loving you, if you are rejecting yourself in the above ways, you will not feel loved and worthy.
Did you learn to give yourself up, or get angry at others, to try to get love and avoid responsibility for your feelings? If you had an actual child and you were constantly looking for someone to take care of the child -- someone to give your child away to -- that child would constantly feel rejected by you. Again, this is the same on the inner level. You inner child feels deeply rejected by you when you don't want responsibility for lovingly managing your own feelings, and instead look for someone to give you what your parents might not have given you.
You Can Stop Rejecting Yourself!
You can learn to take responsibility for your own feelings. You can learn to lovingly manage your pain. That's what I had to learn to do, and if I can learn to do it, so can you! This is what I help my counseling clients do, and this is what thousands have learned to do through practicing the Inner Bonding process. When you learn to love yourself rather than reject yourself, then you can truly share love with others, rather than constantly trying to get love and avoid the pain of rejection.
Need help with substance abuse or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a relationship expert, best-selling author, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding self-healing process, recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette, and featured on Oprah. To begin learning how to love and connect with yourself so that you can connect with others, take advantage of our free Inner Bonding eCourse, receive Free Help, and take our 12-Week eCourse, "The Intimate Relationship Toolbox" -- the first two weeks are free! Discover SelfQuest®, a transformational self-healing/conflict resolution computer program. Phone or Skype sessions with Dr. Margaret Paul.
For more on emotional wellness, click here.]]>7 Reasons Why Connection With Self and Others Is So Importanttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25596542013-01-28T13:16:07-05:002013-03-30T05:12:01-04:00Margaret Paul, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margaret-paul-phd/Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt.)
Not experiencing loving connection as a child can lead to feeling a deep yearning in adulthood. Unfortunately, trying to get this connection from others, rather than learning to connect with ourselves and others, can lead to many personal and relationship problems.
In my work with clients, I focus on helping them, first and foremost, connect with themselves -- with their feelings and their higher self/personal source of spiritual guidance. Here's why:
1. An Inner Black Hole vs. Inner Fulfillment
When we are disconnected from ourselves -- from who we really are and from our feelings -- and when we are not filling ourselves with love through our spiritual connection, we create a black hole within. The black hole we've created through our self-abandonment becomes like a vacuum, trying to pull love from others. This neediness tends to push people away, so we end up feeling even more unloved.
When we want responsibility for our own well-being and we open to learning about loving ourselves, we open the door to connecting with an infinite source of love. Learning to bring this love within and share it with others creates deep inner fulfillment.
2. Failed Relationships vs. Sharing Love
Since we come together at our common level of self-abandonment and our common level of self-love, if we are abandoning ourselves by disconnecting from ourselves and avoiding responsibility for our feelings, we will likely attract someone who is doing the same thing. Each partner hopes that the other will fill the black hole within. While they might seem to do this for each other for a short time, eventually each feels unloved and resentful, leading to relationship failure. We cannot fill up another person. We each need to do this for ourselves, and then share our love with each other. We cannot connect on a deep level of love with each other when we are not connected with ourselves.
In my experience, sharing love with another who is also filled up with love and sharing it, is the most fulfilling and joyful experience in life. Do not confuse getting love with sharing love -- they are light years apart!
3. Depression and Loneliness vs. Happiness and Joy
Depression is a huge problem in our society. While there are many causes for feelings of depression, one of the causes is disconnection from self -- self-abandonment. Just as a child gets depressed when the parent is disconnected and unavailable, so our inner child -- our feeling self -- gets depressed when we are disconnected from our feelings and not taking loving responsibility for them.
Another cause of depressed feelings is social isolation and the resulting loneliness, which is often one of the results of disconnecting from ourselves and then being unable to connect with others.
The film Happy takes us on a trip around the world to the happiest people on the planet. Invariably, these are people who live in communities where they feel connected with each other. They feel safe because they watch out for each other. They are not lonely.
However, many people who have tried to establish connected or intentional communities end up leaving them for the same reason they leave marriages: They don't work unless people are connected with themselves and taking responsibility for their own feelings.
4. Physical Illness vs. Physical Health
Stress is a major cause of illness (see The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton). When we live our lives disconnected from ourselves -- not listening to and taking loving care of our feelings -- and disconnected from our personal source of guidance, love and comfort, we cannot manage stress well. Self-abandonment itself causes much anxiety and stress, which activates the fight-or-flight response and negatively affects our immune system.
There is some indication, according to Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, that people who live in connected communities are far healthier than those who live in a more isolated way. Connection with self and others is vital for good health.
5. Addictions vs. Self-Regulation
When we have not learned how to connect with our feelings and with the love and comfort of our spiritual guidance, we often turn to addictions as a way of managing painful feelings. In order to be able to manage and regulate our feelings in healthy ways, we need to connect with them with a desire to take loving responsibility for them. Turning to addictive behavior is a form of self-abandonment -- a way of avoiding responsibility for our feelings -- and can lead to many negative consequences.
6. Violence vs. Compassion
When we have not learned how to fully feel our painful feelings, compassionately managing them, learning from them and then releasing them, we may lose touch with our humanity. It is the inability to manage pain that can lead to destructive and self-destructive behavior. When we cannot connect with and feel compassion for our own feelings, we may lose our ability to feel compassion for others. When this occurs, we can act out in violently harmful ways.
7. Boredom vs. Passion and Creativity
Our passion and creativity thrive through our connection with our feelings and with our spiritual guidance. When we disconnect from our feelings to protect against pain, we also shut out joy, creativity and passion. Life becomes flat, pointless and boring. Love and joy live in the same place in the heart as loneliness and heartbreak. When we shut down, trying to not feel our loneliness and heartbreak, we also shut down our ability to feel love and joy. This is a very sad way to live.
You don't have to live this way. You can learn to connect within. You can learn to move your focus from outer -- trying to get love and connection from others -- to inner, truly loving yourself and others. You can learn to shift from avoiding feeling your painful feelings to compassionately embracing them with a desire to learn about what they are telling you. You can learn to take loving care of yourself and experience the deep joy of sharing your love with others.