Self-love. Step One: "Where Am I?"

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Before reading the article, do a little task.

Write a list of those who are closest and dearest to you. Descending order.

Are you on this list? If so, where? Where do you think you should be for yourself?

This is a fundamental question of self-love!

Remember the TV show "Sex and the City"? It has become iconic for a huge number of women around the world. Women have learned a lot from it. Including how a woman can learn to love not only a man, but herself.

Sexy blonde Samantha Jones loved men. One of her lovers who stayed in her life longer than the others and whom she really loved was Richard Wright.

He was rich, successful and loved life in all its forms. Once Samantha found him in bed with another and told him the following: "I love you, Richard, but I love myself more."

Of course, the heroine of the series is not a decree for us, but it can serve as a hint of how you need to feel in order not to suffer in a relationship.

In the list that you have written, the most favorable option is when the word "I" is in the first place.

"Well, Olga ?! I, this is the last letter in the alphabet! When you put yourself in the first place, isn't this a manifestation of terry selfishness ?!"

Ten years ago, I conducted a training session where I was a guest trainer. There were about ten people in the women's circle. The topic of the training was self-love.

As an introductory task was writing a list of the closest people. In this task, only one woman put herself first. There were those who were in third, penultimate and last places.

And there were those who completely "forgot" to write themselves among the people close to them.

So the latter were absolutely alone. They didn't have a man to love them.

Then I clearly saw the connection between self-dislike and loneliness. The result was an understanding:

To be loved by others, it is necessary that you love yourself

But the same expression can be read in the opposite direction, "In order for me to love others, I need to be able to love myself." A well-known postulate in Christianity "Love your neighbor as yourself" about this!

It is based on the principle "I can give to another only what I have myself."

Now let's define the terminology.

Love To myself - an unconditional feeling of acceptance of oneself, one's own feelings. "I love and accept myself." A person who learns to love himself in this way can love others with the same unconditional love.

Very often the concept of self-love is replaced by the concept of selfishness.

I would oppose self-love not selfishness (which can be healthy), but selfishness.

Egotism - the term of Gestalt psychology, which means an exaggerated opinion about oneself, an exaggerated sense of the value of one's personality.

Egotism means the tendency of a person to place himself in the center of the world, not caring about others, including loved ones or loved ones, in any other conditions other than those established by the person himself.

The reason is that a person is incapable of loving himself and others with unconditional love is childhood psychotrauma and, as research in recent years says, the excessive idealization of their child by the parents.

As you can see, there is nothing in common between self-love and selfishness!

When you put yourself first and say “I love myself more than you,” it's about:

- I came to this world to fulfill my own needs. In them, the most important thing for me is love, closeness, safety.

- I accept myself with my shortcomings. But I also accept you with your shortcomings.

“If your shortcomings prevent me from realizing my basic needs in the form of intimacy, security and love, I realize that I am hurting myself. And then I can part with you.

So where do you place yourself in your own life?