Post by Della Wren on Feb 26, 2023 14:06:37 GMT -6
Seeing as this is the first post on the board, I want to make very clear that relationships are not just the romantic kind. We have far more relationships in our lives that just romantic ones. We have platonic friend relationships, we have family relationships, we have work relationships, we have a relationship with ourselves, and we have relationships with experiences, concepts, ideas, behaviors, religion, beliefs, and so on. We have relationships with things that aren't human themselves, they are simply aspects of the human experience. This board encompasses all of those things.
Most people struggle with dysfunction in one or more of these relationship types. Things get out of whack quickly. What I want to focus on for this post is the relationship you have with yourself because that is the most important relationship you have. That is the primary relationship in our lives.
Now, before you go down the rabbit hole and tell me about how I'm being narcissistic again, let's talk about what narcissism is and is not. Narcissism is a wound and a mental health issue. Self-mastery is the idea of understanding yourself through gaining clarity around and control over your thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. Self-mastery is a healthy way of being in the world. Narcissism is an unhealthy way of being in the world. Narcissism means the ego is in control. A person who has become narcissistic is entirely focused on their own ego and everything, including the pain they are experiencing, is coming from there. Self-mastery means we're healing pain and we're learning to understand how our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors were created by that pain so that we can heal them and not live from the pain any longer.
To heal the pain and not live from it, we have to have a relationship with ourselves and that relationship has to become the primary thing in our lives. It's not that we can't give back, it's not that we can't help others, we just have to learn to do so from a healthy place. When we are helping others because we're trying to please other people or because we're worried that we might not meet their expectations, we're living from pain. I was a people-pleaser that was constantly trying to live up to others expectations. I was very badly wounded by that behavior and I needed to change it. The only way I could change it was by uncovering my own truth within myself. I had to create a relationship with myself and pull back from other people for a while to do it.
Now I can give back freely because I no longer have that pain. I no longer have the people-pleasing wound. I'm no longer caught in the expectations of other people. I just simply do my own thing. So yes, I was selfish for a while until I didn't need to be selfish anymore. That's hard for people to come to because it triggers the fear of what other people are thinking or how they will react. That fear stops people from taking care of themselves.
We live in a society where we're encouraged to help others to a point where it is actually dysfunctional and unhealthy. We are encouraged to take ourselves off our own lists. We are encouraged to avoid ourselves entirely through entertainment and distraction. We are encouraged to give up ourselves in favor of others to the point where it is almost expected that we put our neighbors' oxygen masks on first before taking care of ourselves. We are expected to risk our own well-being in favor of another. That is not okay. It's not healthy. It's backwards. It's dangerous. It needs to change.
You're no good to anybody else when you're not okay within yourself. Many of the good deeds that you see out in the world these days are coming from pain. They are not done genuinely and freely. They are done with expectation and people-pleasing. They are done with martyrdom and self-sacrifice. But we praise this. We make this a good thing. We hold up people that are damaging themselves in untold ways as being how all humans should be. So all humans should harm themselves? That's what we want as a society?
Of course that's not what we want, we're just scared of what happens if everybody goes home to heal themselves. We're scared of what happens if people pull back and take care of themselves first. We're scared of the outcome of that. We worry about somebody being left behind or not getting what they need because somebody else is taking care of themselves. We've setup a society that runs on the idea of people taking care of others first but that's the reason why we need to take care of each other so much. It is because nobody is taking care of themselves and those that do get labelled as narcissistic. There's a loop here that we've created because of the fear of change.
When people heal they give back on a scale that they couldn't maintain before. We don't see that. We don't recognize it. When people free themselves to give genuinely, they end up with far more to give. It's really hard to give from an empty tank but we expect people to do that and the result is that most people give at a very minimum level because they don't have anything left. A person that has healed can give 10 and 20 times as much as somebody who hasn't healed yet. One person can do the work of 10 when they are healed and living genuinely.
Nobody would be left behind if we all went home to heal our relationships with ourselves. Everybody would get taken care of because there would simply be more power to take care of more people. The world would be less chaotic. There would be fewer problems. Life would be easier. But we're so afraid of the change that this would bring that we avoid it by encouraging martyrdom instead. I'm not trying to be fatal, but this will cause societal collapse because we can't maintain this way of being for much longer without destroying ourselves first.
Your relationship with yourself is the relationship you need to heal first. That's why I teach self-mastery. I'm not a guru. I don't have it all figured out. What I do know is that until we heal ourselves, this world stays in chaos. It needs to change and I'm here to spread that message as far and wide as I can.
Love to all.
Della
Most people struggle with dysfunction in one or more of these relationship types. Things get out of whack quickly. What I want to focus on for this post is the relationship you have with yourself because that is the most important relationship you have. That is the primary relationship in our lives.
Now, before you go down the rabbit hole and tell me about how I'm being narcissistic again, let's talk about what narcissism is and is not. Narcissism is a wound and a mental health issue. Self-mastery is the idea of understanding yourself through gaining clarity around and control over your thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. Self-mastery is a healthy way of being in the world. Narcissism is an unhealthy way of being in the world. Narcissism means the ego is in control. A person who has become narcissistic is entirely focused on their own ego and everything, including the pain they are experiencing, is coming from there. Self-mastery means we're healing pain and we're learning to understand how our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors were created by that pain so that we can heal them and not live from the pain any longer.
To heal the pain and not live from it, we have to have a relationship with ourselves and that relationship has to become the primary thing in our lives. It's not that we can't give back, it's not that we can't help others, we just have to learn to do so from a healthy place. When we are helping others because we're trying to please other people or because we're worried that we might not meet their expectations, we're living from pain. I was a people-pleaser that was constantly trying to live up to others expectations. I was very badly wounded by that behavior and I needed to change it. The only way I could change it was by uncovering my own truth within myself. I had to create a relationship with myself and pull back from other people for a while to do it.
Now I can give back freely because I no longer have that pain. I no longer have the people-pleasing wound. I'm no longer caught in the expectations of other people. I just simply do my own thing. So yes, I was selfish for a while until I didn't need to be selfish anymore. That's hard for people to come to because it triggers the fear of what other people are thinking or how they will react. That fear stops people from taking care of themselves.
We live in a society where we're encouraged to help others to a point where it is actually dysfunctional and unhealthy. We are encouraged to take ourselves off our own lists. We are encouraged to avoid ourselves entirely through entertainment and distraction. We are encouraged to give up ourselves in favor of others to the point where it is almost expected that we put our neighbors' oxygen masks on first before taking care of ourselves. We are expected to risk our own well-being in favor of another. That is not okay. It's not healthy. It's backwards. It's dangerous. It needs to change.
You're no good to anybody else when you're not okay within yourself. Many of the good deeds that you see out in the world these days are coming from pain. They are not done genuinely and freely. They are done with expectation and people-pleasing. They are done with martyrdom and self-sacrifice. But we praise this. We make this a good thing. We hold up people that are damaging themselves in untold ways as being how all humans should be. So all humans should harm themselves? That's what we want as a society?
Of course that's not what we want, we're just scared of what happens if everybody goes home to heal themselves. We're scared of what happens if people pull back and take care of themselves first. We're scared of the outcome of that. We worry about somebody being left behind or not getting what they need because somebody else is taking care of themselves. We've setup a society that runs on the idea of people taking care of others first but that's the reason why we need to take care of each other so much. It is because nobody is taking care of themselves and those that do get labelled as narcissistic. There's a loop here that we've created because of the fear of change.
When people heal they give back on a scale that they couldn't maintain before. We don't see that. We don't recognize it. When people free themselves to give genuinely, they end up with far more to give. It's really hard to give from an empty tank but we expect people to do that and the result is that most people give at a very minimum level because they don't have anything left. A person that has healed can give 10 and 20 times as much as somebody who hasn't healed yet. One person can do the work of 10 when they are healed and living genuinely.
Nobody would be left behind if we all went home to heal our relationships with ourselves. Everybody would get taken care of because there would simply be more power to take care of more people. The world would be less chaotic. There would be fewer problems. Life would be easier. But we're so afraid of the change that this would bring that we avoid it by encouraging martyrdom instead. I'm not trying to be fatal, but this will cause societal collapse because we can't maintain this way of being for much longer without destroying ourselves first.
Your relationship with yourself is the relationship you need to heal first. That's why I teach self-mastery. I'm not a guru. I don't have it all figured out. What I do know is that until we heal ourselves, this world stays in chaos. It needs to change and I'm here to spread that message as far and wide as I can.
Love to all.
Della