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What Comes To Me From Others Is a Gift

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Image by krystal.pritchett via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #246 – Take care of yourself and expect that what comes from others is a gift.

Do you ever ask,

Why does drama follow me?!

It is just darn hard taking care of ourselves (including taking psychotropic medication.)  Much of the rest of the world has difficulty with it too.  Despite our best efforts to go towards what is friendly, we might decide that choosing the company of un-self-cared-for loved ones is more friendly to ourselves than cutting them off.  That is our choice.  If we want them in our lives, we are not able to just take the bits that are friendly.

Some of us are more dramatically affected by this than others.  Wonder about why that is.  I’m wondering if it has to do with our different perspectives of who will take care of us.

Feeling like someone else is going to take care of Me is a trap.  Expecting someone else to find us for love, to expect leadership, to follow without accounting for our steps, to decide without knowing we decided, thinking someone else decided for us – these are traps.

Drama-icon

Image via Wikipedia

What do we expect other people to be for us?  We will interpret the drama we encounter differently when we are our own leader.  If we take care of ourselves and if we come in a state of readiness then we can offer more of these gifts and visa versa.  Gifts are free and as free of agenda as our flawed selves can give.

We embrace our emotional self, our thinking self, our judgmental self, our sensory self, embrace and live ourselves up most fully, and we are most friendly when we do it with the freedom our lives were designed for.

Drama will always come up as long as we think that someone is worth being in our lives.  We will remember that we chose them and can choose quantity of time, the volume, the reception and the degree of connection.  We can choose freely what we will do or not do with them and live and die surrounded inside of ourselves and outside of ourselves by the connections we fought hard for.

Questions:  Why do you think drama is in your life from the perspective of self-care?  Since you’ve been more in tune to being a friend to yourself, has anything happened to the drama in your life?  Please tell me your story.

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Love – Take What is Already Yours. You Have Been Given Love.

Stef's Present with Handmade Wrapping

Image by ex.libris via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #194 – Take what is already yours.  Be a friend to yourself.

Parenting, we hold the power in the relationship between us and our child/ren.  If we are emotionally maltreated by our child/ren, we parents are still the ones with the power.  What are we giving to her if we teach her that we will take the terrible words and dark emotions?  When we take the projected anger when we have the power to choose not to, what message are we giving to ourselves about ourselves?  What is the message if we say by our actions that Love demands from us to accept, to take and to be a victim to the emotional abuse?  Is that what love tells us?

It is difficult to receive maltreatment from anyone.  And because of the suffering involved, we can misinterpret the message, “This is the sacrifice that Love demands” – the sacrifice is doing what other people want before taking care of yourself.

It is difficult not to receive maltreatment as well.  Which choice is more consistent with our understanding of Love?  The words in the message might be the same, “This is the sacrifice that Love demands.”  However, the interpretation of the message, of what the sacrifice is – that meaning is different.  The sacrifice is, rather, taking care of yourself first so that you have the best of you to offer to others.

To read more on this topic, please see posts, Criticize if You Love Me, Listen to The Intention in What People Say and Stop! Before Hurting Yourself or Others.

Because we as parents hold the power in the relationship, we can feel trapped by our own power.  What a confusion for many of us.  Holding power but feeling helpless.  Holding a stick in both hands, so to speak, not seeing that we can still use our occupied hands for anything else in the mean time.

This kind of choice takes Love.  This is the kind of choice that is a work of a life-time or of a moment, but is life.  See, Let It Go and Keep Going.

We can’t teach others that we are valuable and how to treat us with Love if we don’t do it ourselves for ourselves.  When we act on Love, self-care means that we don’t accept treatment that is inconsistent with Love.  If we accept bad treatment, we are saying that self-care is accepting our lack of choices versus making the choices that are still available despite the circumstance.

FriendShip... A gift of God.

Image by ~FreeBirD®~ via Flickr

This of course applies to any relationship.  It applies to any connection, whether it is in the work-place, marriage, if you are the child in the parent-child role, friendships – take your pick.  You can choose Love.  You can choose.  Self-care starts and ends with “Me.”

Freedom is a gift.  No matter how many times it is wrapped up and placed in our hands, if we don’t open it, use it, own it, we will never have it.  Freedom to choose has been given to us before we were born, just like our salvation.  The salvation will never be taken away.  Nor the freedom.  Both are elemental and constant.  But if we don’t pull on the ribbon, lift the lid and take – we can’t expect anything but living without what was inside.  Does the title “victim” even hold if it was our choice not to take what was already ours?

Question:  How do you claim your freedom to choose when all you perceive at the time is what has been taken away?  Please tell me your story.

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Conned by Guilt

Feeling guilty? Many of us do. Some people are wired to in fact, more often than others. It’s in their temperament. This guilt nips their heels, urges them to attend birthday party’s, call their in-laws, respond to emotionally based petitions. You don’t have to be a Mom to imagine how kids can work it!

Paul Zak PhD believes that the hormone, oxytocin, is a key player in our emotional decisions. His book (The Moral Molecule) will be published in 2012. Oxytocin levels might even predispose us to being conned.

How bout us? Are we being conned by our guilt? Please let me know what you think….

But to be useful with this idea, what do we do with it? There’s nothing like the led weight of guilt to slow our steps, dim our lights and disinterest the once lion-hearted.

1st ask if the guilt is appropriate. If you can’t clearly sus that out, than run it by someone(s). After all, good science is one that demonstrates something that can be repeated. If more than one person tells you yes, than it’s more likely to be true.

In the situation that it’s not appropriate however, what now?
2 moms sitting on the step. Kids in a play-date in the background making noise. Their conversation turns to taking care of themselves and how guilty they feel just running errands without the kids, let alone taking time to exercise, a shower, a doctor’s appointment…. The conversation swivels through what to do with that guilt? (Let me clearly state we’re talking about the inappropriate type of guilt here.) Is there any hope?

Inappropriate guilt isn’t good on many levels.
1st off, you suffer.
But secondly and often less obviously, your “other” suffers – your kids or spouse or whomever is in the space of it’s heroic bleeding path. Frankly, it’s too much emotional responsibility for anyone to be on the receiving end for. People are grateful when you take care of yourself and leave them out of it. However, when you can’t, everyone suffers rather than benefits. It’s counter-intuitive to the giver but what comes from guilt is not a gift.

Insight helps. Personal support helps. Self-care helps. But what if it persists? Inappropriate guilt is common in many emotional illnesses, but especially ones involving mood and anxiety. If this guilt is building up a stink in your life, you may want to consider a medical reason.

Self Care Tip #18 – Do it for the right reasons. Be a friend to yourself.

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The Whole World Becomes Blind

Know when to keep your mouth closed.

Between you and me, and between him and her, between us and them, between is the space from this person to that person – in that space relationships are made or destroyed. That space is the mixing bowl for your relationship-kitchen. What we say and do and feel towards each other is whisked together like meringue. It can be tricky knowing what to do with what enters that space.

I will address today specifically when someone is criticizing you. Even reading that, how do you feel? Angry or irritated or defensive. Sometimes the criticism isn’t justified, it’s lopsided or lacks understanding. Sometimes it is deserved. Let’s imagine the common scenario that it is all of those. Not clean criticism, but dirty, stilted by some truth and some distortion. It mixes into your space.

Here enters the only part of that space you control. Your response.

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

Allowing someone to speak without responding is a gift you give them. But it’s also more. It is a gift for yourself. Someone once said that those who live by the sword die by the sword. Protecting the very person that said something hurtful is in fact protecting yourself.

My own Husband gave me this sweet gift last night. He listened with a heart full of love and in the end, we both felt it. Something good there that might never have been.

Next time, someone spills charged words and feelings into your space, detach yourself before making the whole world blind. You will feel better and your relationships will be better. It’s a friendly thing to do.

Self Care Tip #12 – Let it go. Be a friend to yourself.