Loving Yourself – Chore or Freedom?

“Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.”
– Julie Andrews

How often have you said to yourself, “I have to take the time to do some Inner Bonding,” or “I’d better do my Inner Bonding work.”

If this is what you hear yourself say, it is your wounded self, trying to have control over getting you to do something that you think you ‘should’ do. Your wounded self likely sees Inner Bonding as a chore, something you ‘have to’ do to be okay. When this is your mindset about doing your inner work, then you might find yourself in resistance, because another aspect of your wounded self hates being told what you ‘should’ or ‘have to’ do.

The wounded self misses the point. Just as a diligent practice of playing the piano eventually gives you the freedom to play spontaneously, or the diligent practice of running gives you the freedom to run in a marathon, the diligent practice of Inner Bonding gives you the freedom to take loving care of yourself and bring yourself joy.

Choosing to be a Loving Adult

Some years back, I had the moving experience of working with Kevin (not his real name), a thirty-seven year old very talented branding artist we had hired to work on our website. From the moment I met Kevin, I knew he was a person I wanted to hire and work with. His demeanor was open, honest, caring and attentive. I had seen some of his work before speaking with him, and I was blown away by his creativity.

One evening, as we were having dinner, after working together for four solid days, I asked him how he had met his girlfriend. I had spent some time with Lila and Kevin and I was impressed with how loving they were with each other. They had been together for three and a half years.

How Do You Feel About Yourself?

Do you feel worthy, valuable, adequate, lovable, and secure?

Or, do you feel unworthy, worthless, inadequate, unlovable, and insecure?

Do you believe that your inner child is worthy enough for you to take loving care of yourself, or do you believe that your inner child doesn’t have enough value to make him or her worthy of being loved by you or by God?

Very often, when I ask my clients why they don’t take loving care of themselves, their answer is “I’m not worthy of love. I have no value.”

I always feel so sad to hear this.

The One New Year’s Resolution I Hope You Make…And Keep

One of the most important aspects of Inner Bonding is opening to a compassionate intention to learn. I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion, and I’ve realized that compassion is often more than people think it is.

Compassion does include the standard definition: the ability to feel empathy with another or others who are suffering, to be moved by the suffering and to want to help alleviate it.

Relationships: Accepting the Challenges or the Loneliness

“My inner child is lonely and wants to be in a relationship, but relationships are too hard. I feel like I don’t want to work that hard,” Karen told me in a phone session.

“Are you ready to fully accept the loneliness of never being in a relationship?”

“No, that sounds too sad and awful. But why do relationships have to be so hard? I’ve worked on myself for years, yet even relationships with close friends are hard. It shouldn’t be that way.”

“Karen, they are hard because most of us come from families where we did not see our parents or other caregivers being open to learning with each other, especially during conflict. We saw them get angry, give in, withdraw, resist and turn to various addictions. So this is what most of us learned to do. Relationships challenge us to give up trying to control each other and instead open to learning with ourselves and each other, so we can share love. When two people are open to learning, relationships are not hard. What’s challenging is reaching the point where we can stay open to learning in the face of conflict.

The Important Information Confusion Has For You

There are two kinds of situations that can cause confusion:

1) You might feel confused when your wounded self is in charge and you are judging yourself. This confusion is telling you that your wounded self is telling you a lie.

2) You will likely feel confused when you are with someone else who is lying to you. 

Confusion Stemming From Self-Judgment

In a session with Glenn, he told me about an incident involving his wife, Diana. Diana was telling him something while the TV was on, and he couldn’t focus on what she was saying. He became confused, and in his confusion, he got annoyed with her.

As we explored his annoyance, he became aware that he was judging himself coming from a false belief: “I should always know what to do.” His wounded self decided when he was very young that he was supposed to know what to do, since he often got punished for doing things wrong. So his feeling of confusion was not okay with him.

I asked him to go inside and lovingly embrace his feeling of confusion. Immediately he said, “My little boy is giggling in delight! He likes the feeling of confusion. It opens up his sense of wonder!”

“Glenn, are you willing to take your judgment off your feeling of confusion, and instead recognize that the feeling is informational?”

“Yes!”

“Now, go back to the situation and ask your Guidance what would be loving to your little boy in that situation with Diana?”

“I already know. I would say to Diana, ‘I can’t focus on what you are saying with the TV on. Do you mind if I turn it off?’ I can see that once I judged myself for feeling confused, I didn’t know what to do, so I got annoyed with her.”

Do We Have to Feel Good to Smile or Can we Smile to Feel Good?

I love it when I learn something new that adds a bit of joy to life. In the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, I read of a study done by three men – Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen and Robert Levenson, on what happens in the body as a result of facial expressions.

Volunteers were “…hooked up to monitors measuring their heart rate and body temperature – the physiological signals of such emotions as anger, sadness, and fear. Half the volunteers were told to try to remember and relive a particularly stressful experience. The other half were simply shown how to create, on their faces, the expressions that corresponded to stressful emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear. The second group, the people who were acting, showed the same physiological responses, the same heightened heart rate and body temperature, as the first group.” (p. 207)

You Don't Have to Live With Guilt

I grew up in a family that constantly used guilt as a form of control. Sometimes the guilt was somewhat subtle, such as “Fine, do what you want,” said with a blaming tone. Other times it was blatant, such as my grandmother (who lived with us) saying to me, whenever I didn’t do what she wanted, “How can you do this to me? You are so selfish.”

As an adolescent, if I came home five minutes after my curfew, I would hear my mother hissing at me from their bedroom as I tried to tiptoe into my room, her voice dripping with anger, “You’re late again. You know I worry about you.” My mother had many ways of making me responsible for her feelings – from her intense anger to her victim tears. I was always to blame.

How to Move Out of Your Ego Wounded Self

If you sometimes get stuck in your wounded self and can’t see how to get back into your loving adult, here are some ideas that may help you.

Sometimes, when we get stuck in our wounded self, it is hard to wind our way out of it. I’ve noticed what I do when I’m happy and my frequency is high, as opposed to when my frequency feels low.

It is helpful to me to keep a list of ways I’ve learned move myself from closed to open.

Here are some of the ways I’ve found work for me…

The subtlety of these choices is that I need to be consciously doing these things because it is loving for me to do them, rather than as a form of control. It’s possible for your wounded self to choose these same behaviors as a way to avoid responsibility for your feelings and avoid learning from your pain. When that is the intent, then these choices will not raise your frequency, which means you will not move out of your wounded self. So please be honest with yourself!

Do you have some false beliefs that taking responsibility for yourself limits your freedom?

A client asked me the following question:

“During my Inner Bonding process today, I uncovered a feeling of reluctance to commit to being there for my inner child. I felt like I didn’t want the responsibility, like it would limit me and tie me down. Part of me was saying “I want to be free.” Where do I go with this now?

This question indicates a huge false belief about taking responsibility for herself.

Addiction to Story Telling

I was at a social gathering speaking with Robyn, a woman I had just met. At first, it sounded like she was a very interesting person and a good storyteller, but after a few minutes I noticed that we were not speaking WITH each other – she was speaking AT me.

I also noticed that I was unable to connect with her, and I started to feel very bored. Being used to noticing and acknowledging my feelings, I thanked my inner child for the information she was giving me – my boredom – which was telling me that Robyn was likely addicted to story telling.

Robyn was using story telling as a form of control to capture my attention and drain my energy. She was counting on the fact that she thought I would be too polite to walk away in the middle of her story. She was wrong about my being too polite!

I do try to be polite, but…