The Capacity to Love

Came across this on Facebook today, thought I would share because it couldn't be more true. 

Various Valuable Links

7 Things to Remember When You Think You're Not Good Enough
An important list that condenses the types of things I have been trying to talk about in this blog.

You're Probably Not Really a Nice Guy
A video I believe sets the record straight on "friendzoning" and discussing the "nice guy/asshole" boxes society stuffs boys into. Pay attention at 4:35

10 Habits of People Who Follow Their Dreams
A list of mind opening habits that may help you reach your dreams and goals by stepping out of your own way.

15 tips for Empaths
A little help for those of us who feel everything and everyone right to the core of our being.

Signs We Are Being Used for Sex
A useful article for those of us who find our own self love and self worth damaged by the people we spend our time around.

We Are Not Here to Fix Each Other
Another article for the incredibly empathetic, and those of use who base our own self worth on healing the severely damaged.

Learn.

I'm sorry I've been so inactive on here lately, but trust that I have not been inactive in the journey.

It's so hard to put all that I have learned and all that has happened in to words at the start, but once I get going it comes easier. That is one point that really has been driven home as of late. If you stand in your own way, you really never will get anywhere. If you step out, and most importantly step FORWARD on to your path, there is nothing you cannot do and no one who can stop you. The only way another person will ever be able to stand in your way is if you let them make you believe they can.

This world is full of distractions, and I think a lot of the purpose of these distractions is to keep us all from figuring that out. Can you imagine if we had a world full of people, particularly young, informed, intelligent people, who were completely aware of their own power and knew exactly how to use it? I use the word power very intentionally. I selected it over strength because they are very different, yet not unrelated ideas, Strength can be applied to anything, whereas power has a very particular link to free will. Strength is essential. you must have the strength to face things, to accomplish things, both mentally and physically. Until you realize your own power, you will never realize the full potential of your own strength. I can pull a rock up a hill all day long for anyone who asks me to. I can be motivated by my love, my fear, or my respect for them. However, if I knew that getting that rock to the top of that hill would get me closer to achieving my own dreams, that rock would move ever so much faster.

As I was saying about distractions. This world is full of things to take your mind away from itself. We are surrounded by advertisements trying to convince us that our bodies, our possessions, and our beauty is not enough and that we need to spend money to fix these fabricated inadequacies in our lives. That brings us to money, and working to get it. A startling portion of our young people sell off massive portions of their lives at what is literally called minimum wage. If you are living off of minimum wage, you are probably working more than 40 hours a week. You may be working 6-7 days a week, and in the little time off you do have, all of that working has not left you with enough money to provide your own basic needs and enjoy yourself. Many of us are caught in a cycle where we spend all of our time at jobs we dislike to go home to a place we dislike and eat food that is bad for us because it's all we can afford. A lot of us get more jobs, work more to try and break out of this cycle, work more hours so we can afford that better apartment or something we saw in an advertisement that is going to make our lives better. When all someone does is work and panic and focus on moneymoneymoney so they can eat and live and maybe have a little scoop of happiness on top, when exactly do they have time to think and realize, not only their full potential, but how royally fucked our system is? The answer is they don't, and whether society has engineered this to be so, or whether it is the result of being so focused on the moment that we couldn't see the big picture going on around us, that is how it is.

I am seeing a beautiful bloom of people trying to break out of this cycle, taking off in a myriad of paths to find their definition of better.

I see people going to school. Learning is beautiful. Specialized, higher learning is beautiful too! Sadly we then face debt, and the sad reality that in this world, when you chase your dream of learning everything about something you love, you better make sure that "something" is valuable to society. Society doesn't always value the artists or the musicians. Society doesn't always value the insatiable learners that are archeologists and scientists. Society calls our kind fools, dreamers, and unless you can convince society and the people around you otherwise or find some other way out, you will fall right back into the pattern of working to live that devolves quickly into living to work.  Many of us will pay dearly for the audacity of a dream.

I see people toss off the burden of society and completely leave it. There is a growing culture of young people who travel, relying on their skills, the cooperation and kindness of other people, and the will of the universe to exist. These people are largely silent cyber-wise, for obvious reasons, so those who exist in the land of screens don't hear from their minds. Step away from the screen. Talk to someone completely different from you, face to face, and really hear what they say. Ponder it, learn from it, but try not to judge it, at least until you've done the other two.

This is my latest challenge. Observe the world yourself. See what kinds of filters you see it through. Do you see the world the way someone else has told you to see it? Are things like your own fear or prejudice keeping you away from things or thoughts? Are your filters keeping you safe or keeping you insulated? I don't know the answers to these questions, and if you've already answered them in your head mere seconds after reading the words, you don't either.

Go think. GO think and learn and observe both alone and by talking to people. Talk to people you know and love, talk to people you have never talked to before. Talk to street musicians, politicians, parents, children, friends, actors, peers, supervisors, EVERYONE. Hear them, hear the way they see life, and see what they say. Make your priority the intake of information. Observe people, observe nature, observe the world. Observe the sky. Observe the water. Observe in such a way that you are completely separate, and observe without judgment or fear. LEARN.

Your thoughts and opinions are important and need to be shared, but that is true of everyone on this planet. Do you know why that is true? Because we are made to learn. So learn.

Response From a Reader

Reader:

"I just want to let you know that you've inspired me. I've watched you change through your posts and I love the way you try to change the way you look at things. Ya, things can still suck sometimes, but you've done a lot to make yourself happy and I'm slowly learning to do that too. I'm going to try that love poem to myself thing that you did. Thank you for showing me how I can help myself.

Life is really scary sometimes and i just have been needing a boost. I have to fight with myself to try to avoid anxiety attacks and depression. You've inspired me time and time again and I really want to change like that. Maybe all I needed was a mentally distorted buddy... So we could maintain sanity together"

This response means so much to me. it feels wonderful to know that I'm helping someone make it through, and gives me hope that I'm helping more than just her.

I know this isn't easy for anyone. It's not easy for me either, but I promise you, once this stuff really starts sinking in, life is so much more beautiful and easier to get through.

Backstepping

I'm hurting a lot today, and feeling very down on myself. I know I'm not alone.

These two songs really help me, maybe they'll help you.

Perfect by P!nk

Love Me by Katy Perry

I'm sorry I haven't updated much. As I said this journey is a hard one and mine is not finished. I am currently having a really hard time dealing with a breakup, and a lot of my old issues about myself have flared up pretty badly.

I think I am beautiful inside and out. My mind and heart fascinate and delight me, because they are a universe to explore in themselves. Their abilities astound me, like they are separate beings I don't even know all about. I worry that I am too intense, too odd to ever be able to connect with another person whole enough to love me the way I love.

Physical beauty isn't supposed to be important but we focus a lot on it, so it becomes that way. I am anorexic, and though I am even on the low end of a healthy weight for my frame I still find myself picking apart what I consider to be extra pounds. My acne and heavy acne scarring upsets me a lot. I feel like my hair is too thin. Everything I've already been through in my short life has already started to wrinkle my skin and grey my hair. I worry that all of these imperfections will make me too imperfect to be loved romantically.

These things may honestly be true, as every fear and insecurity I have listed has its origin, has its evidence where it got in the way of something, the moment a lover called attention to it.

I'm trying to make myself ok with being by myself because I may be all I ever have. I also know that every relationship I have until I reach that peace will be tinged with at least a little bit of desperation to not end up alone, and that will always add something untrue to whatever love I create.

My mission is to reach a level of peace that allows me to be happy with whatever my fate becomes. I have not come as far as I thought I had, but I have still learned.

Why Love Yourself? Because You're a Rebel

Society doesn't want you to feel good about yourself. Society wants you to feel crappy all the time so that you'll spend all of your money on their beauty products and treatments for the rest of your life. These products are advertised like they'll make you finally-FINALLY-feel good about yourself, yet when you examine the ads themselves, their very nature is designed to make the viewer feel inadequate. I'm not saying it's wrong to wear makeup and enjoy physical beauty, I'm saying that our obsession with physical beauty over all else, in addition to this pervading thought that only one person or type can be beautiful and all others are inadequate is tearing us as a nation and as the human race apart.

If you're distracted by feeling terrible about yourself and obsessively feeding your money into this cycle, you aren't realizing that society has made you a prisoner to its own idea of perfection. You are complacent, you are padding the pockets of the puppetmasters, and you are not a threat to this system. Some people are so brainwashed that they impose this ideal, not only upon themselves, but upon their peers, often in the form of mockery and judgement.

So, you rebel you, with all of your high notions about how the world should be, how government should work, and how people should act, how about you start changing things with yourself? Focus inward, stop spending so much energy on your outward beauty, and stop comparing yourself to what the media says you have to compare yourself to.

You have beauty already. Focus on it and love it.

Expecting Respect

When you're moving through a journey of learning to love and respect yourself, you are going to reach the point where you are treating, thinking about, and carrying yourself in a completely different way than you used to. This is going to affect how people treat you and think about you.

In my personal journey, the changes have been drastic. I now act in such a way that is respectful to myself, and people around me, especially new people I meet, treat me with the same respect. Let me provide an example. One of the ways I used to try and get people to like me was to be an extremely sexual person, ie talk about it a lot, put on a front of being "unashamed" of my sex life and acting in such a way that I thought made me seem sexually liberated. I was just painting myself as trashy and desperate.

Now hear me out, because I can already hear the hackles of women's rights raising. There's nothing wrong with having lots of sex, no matter what your gender is. There's no reason to be ashamed of having sex just because it is sex. In my case however, I was having sex for the wrong reasons. I was using it as a bargaining chip for other people's affections (pssssst, that doesn't ever really work FYI) and having sex that made me feel dirty and sad instead of bringing me happiness, like it's supposed to.

I now am not open about my own sexual history or sexuality. It's no one's business but mine and not something to be used to impress anyone. I generally watch what I say and pay more attention to the crowd I am around and the way I want them to treat me. the result has been that I am viewed as a person who deserves respect, and I get it.

I have always been a person who deserved respect. My new view on life on myself didn't earn me that right, I've always had it, and so have you. The thing is I didn't believe it and didn't act like it. I was a person who treated myself like trash and spent a lot of her time in social situations putting people in their place and not understanding why people were always crossing lines with me instead of being polite. Now, I walk in the room a lady who obviously respects myself and those I am around either follow suit or are no longer around me.

Treat others the way you want to be treated, but don't forget to treat yourself that way too. Lead by example.

Pain

Pain happens. No amount of inner peace or self acceptance is going to insulate you from pain, unless you manage to completely cut yourself off from love of other beings. That is the path for some, but definitely not for me. I will take the pain that comes with love.

It comes with all types of love, whether you love an animal, a family member, a friend, or a romantic partner. All love, even if it ends only in death, causes pain, and that's ok. It's ok that it hurts and that you're sad. Being sad is ok, it really is. It doesn't mean you will never be happy again, it means you're sad right now.

The reason I am choosing to write this tonight is because a relationship I was very invested in just ended. I'm sad, angry, and hurt. I am not, however, crushed. Back before I figured out how to love myself, I used relationships as validation. I needed another person to focus on and care for or I could not be happy because I couldn't stand just being me. Now, I know that I'm special without needing another person to tell me so. Instead of taking the relationship's end as proof that I am unworthy of love, I can see the true, and very valid reasons behind it. I'm sad that it's over, but I know I am going to be ok and that I am still loveable. I've never been able to do that for myself before.

This is one of the things learning to love yourself does. It helps you deal with pain in a healthy way instead of being crushed underneath it.

How I Feel About This Movement

When I realized that I love myself, it became easy for me to let toxic things slip out of my life. They were feeding my demons, not me. Once I stumbled across the secret they were keeping from me, that I AM a wonderful person worthy of love, things I used to put myself through suddenly seemed ridiculous. Toxic people I used to love suddenly became easy to not only resist but completely release emotionally. Procrastinating the things that are good for me, like exercise, artwork, and cleaning my space, became abhorrent. Every day it gets easier and easier to sing, even when there are people around, because I love singing and it lifts my whole being, regardless of how unskilled I am. My default mood is calm and happy, instead of sad or anxious, and it's not nearly as hard to get back to "ok" as it used to be. It feels unbelievably good to know that when I freak out or get stressed, I will be able to make it back to ok and not be stuck in that mode. This is a feeling everyone deserves to have. This kind of inner peace is the kind of happy no pill, no material possession, nothing else on this earth can fill you with. It's not wild and fiery, it's not fragile and desperate, it's solid. It's constant. It's the very thrum of the universe, and once you truly get it, you never lose it. This is something I want everyone to get to feel. It's something that I truly believe would heal the human race if we could all understand it. It's something that must be learned, but the greatest teachers have been silenced through the ages. I am no great teacher, but maybe someday I will be, and right now the only thing I have to offer is my own journey so far. So, here I offer it.

"Perfect" By P!nk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocDlOD1Hw9k

This is P!nk's "Perfect". I still can't hear this song or watch this video without tearing up. It's such a beautiful, pure, raw message. Have a listen.

Made a wrong turn once or twice
Dug my way out, blood and fire
Bad decisions, that's alright
Welcome to my silly life

Mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood
Miss 'No way, it's all good'
It didn't slow me down.
Mistaken, always second guessing
Underestimated, look I'm still around

Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel
Like you're less than fucking perfect
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel
Like you're nothing, you're fucking perfect to me

You're so mean (so mean) when you talk (when you talk)
About yourself. You were wrong.
Change the voices (change the voices) in your head (in your head)
Make them like you instead.

So complicated,
Look how we all make it.
Filled with so much hatred
Such a tired game
It's enough, I've done all I could think of
Chased down all my demons
I've seen you do the same
(Oh oh)

Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel
Like you're less than fucking perfect
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel
Like you're nothing, you're fucking perfect to me

The whole world's scared, so I swallow the fear
The only thing I should be drinking is an ice cold beer
So cool in lying and we try, try, try but we try too hard
And it's a waste of my time.
Done looking for the critics, cause they're everywhere
They don't like my jeans, they don't get my hair
Exchange ourselves and we do it all the time
Why do we do that, why do I do that (why do I do that)?

(Yeah! Oh!)
Oh, pretty, pretty, pretty

Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel
Like you're less than fucking perfect
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel
Like you're nothing, you're fucking perfect to me
(You're perfect, you're perfect)
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel
Like you're nothing, you're fucking perfect to me.

Acknowledge Struggles

It's important to acknowledge struggles and bad days. This process of undoing everything we've been taught by society, of defying this instilled need to depend on other people for emotional stability and becoming self-reliant, is not an easy one or a quick one, and it is not without its setbacks.

Today I am going to acknowledge a personal struggle I continue to have in my journey. I will also be talking about what I do to deal with and resolve this issue, because the reason acknowledging our struggles is important is so that we can learn to move on from them.

I am anorexic. I now eat healthily and carry a healthy weight, but I still struggle with the mental aspect of it. I still haven't stopped my mind from jumping to "maybe if I was skinnier..." every time I feel inadequate or unloved. I still often look down at my beautiful body and have a hard time seeing anything except problem areas and soft spots. I still obsessively count calories, even though now I use it to try and make sure I consume enough every day instead of as a limit. I am now 15 pounds over my lowest weight, and it's hard to be ok with that number, even though I know it's healthy, even on the low side of healthy for my frame.

Satisfying anorexia is futile. If I give in to the urges, no amount of weight loss will ever be enough, and I'll just keep going until my body gives out and I die. I don't want to die, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life picking myself apart either. That is a big part of why I started this project for myself. I knew the reason I was never satisfied with myself is because I felt unloved. I finally faced what I had known and been told for years; I can't just keep searching for some external force to make me feel loved. With My level of self-hate, the only people I would even allow close to me were those who confirmed my fears by mistreating me.

I HAD to fix myself and learn how to love myself or I would spend the rest of my life miserable, panicked, and doing terrible things to my body and soul in a misdirected and desperate effort to be "good enough".

I haven't given up on dating or finding love with another person, and I don't think that love and friendship are flawed sources of happiness. I have just learned that without loving myself, I will never be able to believe anyone else genuinely loves me, and will not be able to find happiness in those relationships.

I heard something a while back that really struck a chord. I can't remember the origin of the saying so do forgive me.

"Beware of a naked person offering you a shirt"

What it means is that if a person doesn't value their love enough to bestow it upon themselves, be wary of letting them bestow it upon you.

Check Out This Brilliant 17 Year Old

 https://www.upworthy.com/ever-considered-what-guys-look-for-in-girls-forget-it-think-about-what-a-17-year-old-says-instead?c=ufb2

Savannah Brown is a brilliant woman. I only wish that I had been able to gain this wisdom as young as she is. Mind Blowing.

Transcription of her poem:

When I first learned that no one could ever love me more than me, a world of happiness previously unseen was discovered because somewhere along the line of aging and scrutiny and time, I was taught to despise myself.

But I made sure I kept myself beautiful so someone would love me someday, so I could belong to someone someday, because that's the most important thing a little girl could ever want, right?

I was 13 the first time I was embarrassed about my body, of course it might not be the last, and I remember stuffing my bra in the morning, tears stinging my eyes, hoping, praying to something that I could look beautiful enough today, braces and all, for the ruthless boys who mercilessly told me I was worthless because my boobs weren't big enough.

And I would go home and put on a sweatshirt with my eyes closed, deny myself the right to be shown myself because I didn't dare want to insinuate beauty in regards to something so insulting as my body.

But, I mean, we all end up with our heads between our knees because the only place we'll ever really feel safe is curled up inside skin we've been taught to hate by a society that shuns our awful confidence and feeds us our own flaws.

And sometimes when I need to meet the me that loves me, I can't find her or remind her that the mirror is meant to be a curse so that I could find her in my mind, but when he or she shouts, "Let me out!" we're allowed to listen.

But it's met by a chorus of conceited, egotistical narcissists. But since when was self-substitute a sin? Since when was loving who we are made an offense by morons that don't matter? Change this physicality and that one. Don't you dare shatter the illusion that you could ever be anything beyond paper-fine flesh and flashy teeth and fingernails. A code of accusations of not good enough, never good enough. Have you ever felt so numb that it hurts? Entertain me.

You can't surrender to them. You've gotta remember that you're the only thing you'll ever truly have. And no, I don't mean your body. Because someday that will go bad no matter what you do. I mean you. I mean the way your bright eyes go wild when you smile and how your laugh is so melodic it's a song.

I mean the way your creativity is a compass that leads you to what you love. And you don't need any miracle cream to keep your passions smooth, hair free, or diet pills to slim your kindness down. And when you start to drown in these petty expectations, you've gotta re-examine the miracle of your existence because you are worth so much more than your waistline. You are worth the beautiful thoughts you think and the daring dreams you dream, undone and drunk off alcohol of being.

But sometimes we forget that because we live in a world where the media pulls us from the womb, nurses us, and teaches us our first words: skinny, pretty, skinny, pretty, girls, soft, quiet, pretty, boys, manly, muscles, pretty. But I don't care whether it's your gender, your looks, your weight, your skin, or where your love lies. None of that matters because standards don't define you.

You don't live to meet the credentials established by a madman. You're a goddamned treasure whether you want to believe it or not. And maybe that's what everyone should start looking for.

Challenge 2: Hang Out With Yourself

In my last post I talked about trying to force myself to focus on things I actually enjoyed, maybe even preferred doing alone. Now it's your turn.

Here are the guidelines I suggest you use for this challenge.

First, try to do this for at least an hour. Maybe you want to do it longer-fabulous! Maybe you can't quite make it-that's ok! You can work up to it! Nobody is counting or holding you to anything except yourself.

Secondly, and this part is hard even for me, try unplugging. If you can't unplug because your activity involves using the internet or your technology, at least unplug from messaging other people. That's not alone time.

Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, choose your activity carefully. You want to try to make these experiences positive. We are all still animals at heart, and if you're like me your mind and body learned that alone time means time to panic and be upset. I had to teach myself that it can be nice, like teaching an animal that humans can be friends.

Finally, try not to use any substances to do this. You aren't learning if you're high or drunk, you're numbed out. Believe me, I have been there, I get it, but at the end of the day you know that there's a line, and using substances for self soothing crosses it into danger land. I can guarantee you, your progress will be slowed if not halted or even reversed if you don't at least try to learn how to cope without substances.

Be patient and gentle with yourself. Show yourself all the love you would show to another being you were trying to make feel safe and comfortable in your presence. You deserve that same love and care.

Here are some of my favorite things to do by myself:

Watch movies
Read
Play my guitar
Sing
Do research on things that fascinate me
Do artwork
Meditate
Write

Good luck!

"Love Me" by Katy Perry

This song has really been helpful with my healing process, as has music in general. Pay attention to the words, they have a lot of wisdom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcGEsRqyipc&feature=kp

I lost myself in fear of losing you
I wish I didn't do
But I did
I lost my own, my own identity
Forgot that you picked me for me

But now, I don't negotiate with insecurities
They always seem to get the best of me
I found I had to love myself, the way I wanted you to...

...love me,
No more second guessing
No, there’s no more questioning
I’ll be the one defining who I'm gonna be
No concealing feelings, or changing seasonally
I’m gonna love myself, the way I want you to love me

Sometimes I wish my skin was a costume
That I could just unzip
And strip
But who I am is who I'm meant to be
And it's who you are in love, in love with

So now, I don't negotiate with insecurities
They're gonna have to take a back seat
I know I have to love myself, the way I want you to...

...love me,
No more second guessing
No, there’s no more questioning
I’ll be the one defining who I'm gonna be
No concealing feelings, or changing seasonally
I’m gonna love myself, the way I want you to love me

[2x]
No more standing in my own way
Let's go deeper, let's get closer
No more standing in my own way
(I want you to love me)

No more second guessing
No, there’s no more questioning
I’ll be the one defining who I'm gonna be
No concealing my feelings, or changing seasonally
I’m gonna love myself, the way I want you to love me

No more second guessing
No, there’s no more questioning
I’ll be the one defining who I'm gonna be
No concealing feelings, or changing seasonally
I’m gonna love myself, the way I want you to love me

How the Heck Do I Love Myself? I Can't Stand Myself!

The first time someone told me my problems would get better if I learned to love myself, I was confused. First of all, that's all they said. No pointers on how to proceed or how it would help me. Second of all, the baffling task of truly loving myself was so great that I didn't know where to begin. I started tallying up positive traits in my head and immediately disqualifying them with negative contradictions. Nothing seemed genuine enough to be worth loving, and it hurt.

It took a long time, a battle with anorexia, a lot of failed relationships, and a lot of pain before I finally faced that I was going to have to do something or else my self hate was going to kill me. I forced myself to find something, ANYTHING to love about myself. I angrily thought to myself about how I had been able to find things to love and beauty in all of these people who had treated me so horribly, but couldn't do it for myself.

That's when it hit me. Maybe all the misplaced love I had given to abusive people and toxic relationships could be converted into training to love myself. I tried to look at myself from the outside, as if I was looking at another person instead of myself. I realized that I loved how silly I was, and that I admired myself for my ability to laugh like a hyena without caring what other people thought. I realized that my eyes are unusual and beautiful, even if they are just brown eyes. I realized that I had a knack for finding the good in people in situations, ans that it was beautiful, and that I could use it on myself. I realized that I was one of the most loyal, forgiving, and understanding people I had ever met, and that those things made me a valuable friend. That made me realize that people were as lucky to have me as a friend as I was to have them.

Then, I tried to tackle my anxiety about being by myself. I tried to think of things I preferred or at least was ok with doing alone. I realized that I love to sing by myself and for myself. I realized that I prefer watching movies alone because when I'm with other people I'd rather talk to them. I realized sleeping alone is actually pretty nice, even if cuddles are awesome. I realized that being alone with myself didn't have to be scary because I didn't automatically have to be anxious and afraid of my anxiety creeping up on me if no one was around to distract me from it. I know it sounds crazy and impossible, but my anxieties started to melt away. I didn't spend nights alone tossing and turning unable to sleep any more. I didn't going in to anxiety attacks if the house was empty and no one would answer a call or a text. I went from psychotically terrified to be left alone with my head to realizing it's kinda nice in here and not nearly as scary as I thought it was. My self injury has stopped, though I do still fight urges when my anxiety pops up. My panic attacks have become less frequent and less severe. I don't feel like a burden on my friends and family any more. All of that, ALL OF THAT from learning how to enjoy my own company and do a little self-soothing. I know it sounds crazy, but seriously, just try it and see if it helps.

Now I hang out with people because I want to, not because I feel like I'm going to die of anxiety if I'm alone. I can sleep deeply and happily by myself. I enjoy my alone time. I can comfort myself and calm myself down because I have a better handle on what upsets me. This improvement isn't a temporary high caused by a coping mechanism, this is an actual, irrevocable step forward caused by true healing instead of a band-aid. These are the steps we need to be taking. Not just seeking out more band-aids to cover the wounds.

Coping Mechanism Problems

One of the problems I immediately ran into when I started trying to heal was with learning how to cope in a healthy way. I had lots of things I did to try and regulate my emotions, and almost none of them were good for me. In fact, a lot of them were seriously dangerous. I realized the methods I was using were more like addictions than ways to heal, and I had to learn how to break the cycle.

First I isolated all the things I did to cope. I self injured, shopped, had sex, played my guitar, sang, spent time with animals, exercised, slept for long periods of time, over-ate, did art work, and hung out with my friends. It was immediately obvious that some of these things were healthy outlets for stress. Music, art, exercise, and spending time with animals were all things that didn't hurt me and reduced my stress. Easy enough. At the same time, self injuring was obviously never going to be an ok or healthy way to deal with my stress and it was endangering my life. Then came the harder part of the grey-area items, and this is where a lot of people end up falling.

Things like sex, shopping, food, sleep, and time with friends are all fun things most people enjoy. The dangerous part comes from overdoing and depending on these things to regulate emotions. They stop being fun and start being drugs, and when you are inevitably forced to deal without them, your depression, your panic, and whatever else you're dealing with becomes worse. That's when dangerous coping mechanisms like self-injury and drug use start looking like your only option.

THE WAY I FOUND TO BREAK UNHEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS:

1. Identify the unhealthy coping mechanism
2. Identify the specific void you're trying to fill with said unhealthy action, ie find the root of the issue
3. Identify a way to solve the problem OR a healthy way to cope with the problem to replace the unhealthy action

For example, when I needed to have sex to be ok, it quickly stopped being fun and became a fix I needed to find. I made bad decisions about who involved myself with and would get irritable with significant others if I wasn't getting as much sex as I felt I needed from them. It also caused a lot of emotional pain for me because when I pursued unattached sex, I was unable to separate my emotions and ended up getting hurt when my feelings weren't reciprocated. Sex should never be something that causes shame and anxiety, and that became all it was for me.

I overcame this hurdle by figuring out what emotional pain I was trying to soothe with sex. After some introspection, I determined that I wasn't getting enough love, and since sex kinda feels like love sometimes, I subconsciously tried to fill that void with sex. Sex isn't love, and when it didn't heal the hurt, all I did was pursue it more and hurt more.

After figuring out what was going on, I came to the hard part, which was replacing the harmful coping mechanism with a healthy one and trying to heal the problem. I knew my need for sex stemmed from insecurities about not feeling enough love, and I knew the types of partners I was pursuing were only making that insecurity worse because they were treating me badly and using me. I took a step back from other people and from sex and worked on figuring out how to love myself. I realized that the more I loved and respected myself, the more I enjoyed my own company, and the less I depended on other people to regulate my emotions and make me feel loved and happy. Being alone became enjoyable instead of terrifying, and my urge to self injure was greatly reduced.

It's easy to say LOVE YOURSELF AND EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. The thing is, even though loving yourself does make life a hell of a lot better, it's not a snap your fingers type of deal, and it's not a magic fix. It takes work, it takes screw ups, and it takes time.

Today's media and social expectation encourages us all to hate ourselves inside and out. Outer beauty is never quite enough, and inner beauty is nothing without outer beauty, society says. It's really hard to break that well drilled concept out of our heads.

A lot of my challenges are going to be based on how I learned to love myself. I'm a firm believer in hands on learning, but some people learn by show and tell, so I will be providing both the challenges and summaries of my experiences in this blog. Hopefully people are able to find stuff that works!

Challenge 1: Write Yourself a Love Poem

I  have a challenge for you internet. I want you to write a love poem to yourself as though you were another person. I want you to look at yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you so much all your flaws melt into perfect imperfections. You don't have to share it, but I want you to do it. If you can't, ask people who love you for ideas to expand on.

There is a difference between humility and treating yourself like dirt, and I see very little humility among my peers. What I see is self-hate and a bunch of people desperately seeking some kind of proof as to whether they are as beautiful as they wish to be or as ugly as they fear they are.

It's time to bare our souls to ourselves and force ourselves to see their beauty. It's time to learn how to love ourselves so that we can truly love each other purely and not out of a desperation to fill holes inside of us. We need to fill those holes ourselves.

This is the first in a series of challenges I plan to put forth in the hope that some of the things I've learned can help my peers, and that they in turn can expand on them and teach me too. I am far from the end of my journey to peace. I am even farther from perfect, and I don't claim to be any sort of guru. However, I have uncovered some realities that have brought my world into a dramatically sharper focus and helped me reach levels of peace and emotional self-reliance I never thought I could possibly reach. I want to share them.

So, bear with me, try these ideas if you want to, and please share. This world needs more love, and just like charity starts at home, love starts within.

Thanks guys  Tyler

I love you. 

I love you because you smell like summertime and feel like rose petals. 

I love the way you give yourself so willingly to love that your entire body melts into every embrace, softly, like your heart has never been broken even though it's been shattered a hundred times. 

I love the way your hair shines red in the sun, glistens black in the moonlight, and flows long and soft as silk down your back. 

I love how you laugh long and loud and hard, no matter who can hear you. 

I love how you breath the rain in just as deeply as the sun so you can squeeze every drop of beauty out of every second of life you get. 

I love how your eyes can be soft and warm as fall leaves, or sharp and cruel as burning bronze. 

I love how you never wear a mask, how your genuine personality with all it's sassy spunk, all its awkward sweetness, all its boundless silliness, and all its raw honesty is as immediately visible as your face. 

I love that your loyalty, your compassion, your capacity to forgive, and your ability to love are almost bottomless. 

I love your ability to see the light in the darkest moments, the beauty in the most broken people, and the sweetness in the wickedness of life. 

I love who you are. You're beautiful in every way, in all your perfect imperfections, and you are worthy of love, respect, and forgiveness. 

I love you.