By Ox Drover
One of the things we hear frequently on LoveFraud and in self help books we might read is to “love yourself.” This sounds like great advice, but the thing is no one ever tells me exactly how to do this.
Some suggestions for increasing my “self love” and “self esteem” given in various books and articles are to use “positive affirmations” such as “I am wonderful,” or some other positive self talk that I should repeat over and over inside my head until I eventually start to believe it.
Even though I might say these phrases over and over, no matter how positive and “self affirming” they may sounds, somehow I never seem to truly believe them. After saying them over and over inside my head somehow there’s a little voice that repeats “Yeah, RIGHT!” in a scoffing tone.
If anyone knows my faults, it is surely me, and somehow I just have problems saying and truly believing the large statement, “I am wonderful!”
One of the things that really bothered me of late is “getting old.” I look in the mirror and see my grandmother’s face looking back. I really hate to have my photograph taken because I look at them and see this fat caricature of my youthful self looking out of the photograph. I started on a calorie control diet to lose some weight, and looked at my skin which has more than a few dark sunspots and a liberal supply of “laugh lines” (read: wrinkles). I pound on myself internally for not listening to my grandmother and staying out of the boiling sun until I became bronzed when I was young. The sunscreen I slather on now does little good now that my skin is starting to resemble the Marlboro man. How can I like myself when I look the way I do and there’s not much I can do at this late stage in the game to improve myself?
Even if I lose the excess weight, all I will accomplish is to let the “air” out of the wrinkles that the excess fat smoothes out somewhat.
So because I was feeling pretty bad about how I looked , and really, there wasn’t much at 63 years old I could do, outside of extensive plastic surgery I couldn’t afford, I decided to work on loving myself the way I look today, rather than bemoaning the fact I no longer look like I did “back then.” If I could tackle that and succeed, I could tackle anything.
One of the things I used to do was stand in front of the mirror and pull the skin on my cheeks back, like a doctor would in a face lift, smoothing out the wrinkles and the line from my nose to the corner of my mouth, imagining how I would look after a face lift. One evening doing some rare television watching I saw a former “sex goddess” movie star, now probably nearing 70, doing a guest shot on a series. She had obviously had copious plastic surgery and she looked like a caricature of her former self, almost like a melted Barbie doll. Looking at her face, and at her attempts to continue to “look young” through the marvels of modern surgery —surgery that seemed laughable, I threw back my head and I laughed.
Sure, I looked like my grandmother at my age, and I had loved that face—on her, but I was going to learn to love that face on myself. I was going to learn to love myself, starting with my body. Not the body I would have when I lost twenty pounds, or the face that I would have after I had extensive plastic surgery, but the face I have today!
How could I go about learning to love my body the way it is, the face the way it is? Well, first of all, it wasn’t going to be accomplished by standing in front of the mirror and asking, “mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of us all?” I am no longer a beautiful young girl with creamy smooth skin, but that doesn’t mean my body or my face isn’t okay.
My body is a marvelous machine, wrinkled or smooth, my skin, the body’s largest organ, does an excellent job of keeping me free from bacteria and viral attackers, of cooling and heating my inner body, and evaporating sweat! It is well designed for its purpose. It does a great job!
People have always said my eyes are so expressive, and they really are! I can shoot a look out of them that my kids used to say would turn you to a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife if I were angry! They are still expressive but much more inclined now to smile and crinkle at the corners with laughter. They still see far away very well, but I have to have reading glasses up close, but that’s okay. My eyes really work very well and I like them.
My hair is still thick and heavy, and has always been a good feature even now that some of the strands are turning silver. The silver in my hair, which I’ve never dyed, almost looks like an expensive frost job! I wear it in a style that’s becoming, not trying to look like the sex goddess gone to pot with flowing tresses down to my waist, or cropped close and permed into a “poodle do” with a bluish cast, but natural. I really do like my hair!
My legs are still shapely, well muscled and firm from decades of walking and riding horses, I really do like my legs. They work very well and generally don’t hurt, all the joints freely function, and I can still kneel or stretch. I’ve really got great legs with slim ankles.
My back is a pretty good back, sometimes it has let me down a bit and ached after a hard day’s work, but I haven’t always been very good to it. I think I will try to be more accommodating to my back. I’ve worked it awfully hard all these years so I’m going to be better to it. I’ll do some stretching exercises before going out to work, and I’ll use my legs more to do the heavy lifting than misusing my back muscles. I really am fortunate to have such a great back, considering how inconsiderate I have been to it all these years. Yes, I can be proud of my back.
I remember how flat my abdomen used to be, back before I had children, and it’s not that flat now, but it really is a pretty good belly after all. It works well, it’s never let me down or made me seriously ill. Sometimes I don’t give it enough fiber and it complains to me when I mistreat it, but I think it has a right to tell me if I am not being good to it. Actually, there’s still a smattering of a waist there in spite of the fact it’s a bit over weight, but overall, I can’t complain about my abdomen. Actually, I think I like it pretty well and I don’t know anyone I would trade bellies with. Yep, my belly is A-ok.
The thing I have always been the proudest of in my entire self is my mind and my memory. Testing high on the “Bell Curve” of the intelligence test has given me a verification that “I’m smart.” Not just an opinion about my intellectual ability, but an actual objective piece of data. That always felt good. I generally made good grades in school and was at the top of my class if I even gave a modest effort to succeed in school, or in my job. That gave me a bit of pride, though I did realize that this was nothing I had done for myself or achieved for myself, but was a God-given attribute like my health and stature, it was more the result of my genetic make up than anything I did or didn’t do.
After my husband’s death in a tragic accident, to which I was a witness, I lost my mind. I lost my ability to remember things in minute detail. I panicked at realizing this, and even when my psychiatric physician and my therapist assured me that “it will get better, it won’t always be this bad,” I had great difficulty believing them. I was “not as good” as I previously was, forgetting many things, having holes in my memory for things I previously would have remembered without any effort. Finally, I complained about this so much that my therapist administered an IQ test, in which I still scored even a bit higher than I had ever scored previously. My mind is still good, and there is objective evidence of this. However, I know it doesn’t work the same as it did before the aircraft crash, before the ultimate stressor. I do have short term memory lapses, but that’s okay. I’m still me. I’m still smart, and what the heck does it really mean that my spelling has gone to hell, or that I can’t remember if I took the meat out to thaw for supper? Will the world end because of this? Does this mean I don’t have the intellect to make a rational or logical decision? Does this mean that I am “defective” and “no good” or “worthless” because I reach for a word, a simple word and can’t find it even though I can see the picture of a tree in my mind but can’t find that word? No, it doesn’t mean anything. I am still me. I still have a good mind, just different than before. I like my mind, my intellect, my ability to problem solve and even though it makes new learning more of a challenge, I still grasp large concepts, though I may no longer easily remember the name of the author. I have a good mind. I have a good intellect. I still like my brain even though it isn’t the same as before.
My “heart” both figuratively and physically, I like both of them. My physical heart has beaten well and steadily for 63 years now, and my physician has tested it and declared it a healthy heart. I depend on it to keep on beating well for more years into the future. I’ve tried to be good to it, by getting exercise and though I have mistreated it by smoking, I have decided to stop doing things that will injure my good heart, so I have stopped smoking cigarettes. I eat a “heart healthy” diet low in bad fat and other things that might damage it. I am happy with my heart.
My emotional “heart” is also something that I like. It is a compassionate heart and empathetic to others in pain. It is a generous heart, and one that will share the blessings of life that it has with others. In the past, my emotional heart has sometimes given too much to others and not enough to itself or to me, so I have talked to this heart and discussed a way that it can still be a generous and compassionate heart, but to also care for itself first. If my emotional heart gives all the blessings to someone else, it will not survive, so my emotional heart has learned to care for my body and itself first, so that I may continue to share with others. I like that about my emotional heart. My emotional heart is a good heart.
Looking over my body, mind and emotional heart piece by piece, I find that I like each individual unit just as it is. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t young any more, but it has matured with some grace and in many ways is far superior over all to the body, mind and emotional heart I had as a youngster. The packaging may be a bit wrinkled, but I wouldn’t change my body for anyone else’s, and I wouldn’t give up the maturity that I have gained with life and living.
So, I have found a way to learn to love myself, one part at a time, to enjoy living within the skin that protects me from the elements, and to savor the good parts of myself. I’m learning to love myself in a positive way rather than just chanting “affirmations” that are so vague and positive but have no real substance to my inner spirit who dwells in this mortal temple. I like my temple, I like my body, I like myself. I’m unique to me. I’m special. I’m one-of-a-kind, and I’m okay!
I’m trying, guys, but it’s so hard – I’m lapsing into depression. I did make some sounds last night. It really does help to move energy, but this feels so big and overwhelming, it never ends. As soon as I stop, I shut down, and there is this big wall.
I had a dream last night that I went to my boss’ house. Her daughter was there and we were hanging out. The daughter is somewhat on the sociopathic side. She was continuously busy cleaning while I was there but we were having a conversation. Then I mentioned to her how nice it must be that the bus stops right in front of her house to take her to school. 10 seconds later, the bus stopped, and she ran off and got on it without even saying good-bye. So her mom (my boss) came home. We were hanging out and trying to eat dinner, but she was very distracted. Then she asked me, “Why do you hate so much?” I said, “What do you mean? I don’t hate.” But she insisted. So I started to tell her about my abandonment issue and how if someone even looks away while I’m talking, I feel abandoned. I knew she would never understand (like no one else does). But as I was telling her, she got a phone call and got distracted and had to leave. And there I felt abandoned again. Story of my life.
I felt that part of this was a commentary on Western culture – that most people are too busy to sit down and connect with one another. My boss is a very caring and compassionate person, and she would do anything for me. But she has had so much going on in her life lately, that she has not been able to be there for me through the death of my cat or anything else lately. I don’t fault her for it, but it would have been nice to get a phone call over the weekend while I was grieving. But the rest of the dream is about my deep loneliness and inability to connect with others because they keep inadvertantly triggering my abandonment issues.
Star,
thanks for expressing that. It really helped me to understand a bit better.
Star, it sounds like your expectations of others to meet your needs and them failing to do so is depressing you very much.
I can relate to the “abandonment” issues, but what Ii have found is that I have to learn to meet my own needs rather than depend on someone else to meet them.
My first husband “left me”–deserted me if you will, kids included, and I was bereft of the security that being emotionally dependent on him gave me. I had to find my own, and I did….and 7 years later I remarried, and then I put my dependence for security and then He “left” me (by dying) and I was again abandoned and bereft of security. I felt I had to find another man to give me the security I needed….and I hooked up with a psychopath. After a rough 8 months, I kicked him to the curb, but was again bereft, felt unloved and unloveable, unworthy…but no I realize that I must support myself, must meet my own needs.
Sure I can reach out to friends, but I can’t expect them to READ MY MIND and call when I want them to.
I know you were grieving over your cat and your boss may have known you were grieving, but she did not know that you were expecting her to reach out to you and call you over the weekend. I suspect if she had known that you wanted that she would have done so, but she CAN NOT READ YOUR MIND.
I think the question in the dream about “why are you always so angry?” may have been a TELL from your subconscious. Maybe you might want to examine why. Many times there were TELLS like that in my dreams when I was processing things.
Meeting our own needs rather than expecting others to meet our needs EMPOWERS US because then our security is internal and no one can offend it or take it away. (((hugs)))
stargazer-try this one.
this is my world too. as in:
THIS IS MY WORLD TOO!!!
that’s what they mean when they say “you are a child of God” you know.
what God has given you,let no one take from you.
Star,
Is it alright if I make an attempt at an empowering interpretation for you. I get the impression in that dream that your boss and her daughter had another role than the literally one.
Houses tend to represent your soul and self. It never really matters whose house it is, whether it looks like the one you live in or not. If everything happens in one house, it tends to symbolize you. It wasn’t your home really that was used for a projection purpose: there are two key players in that house… a daughter and a mother. This is imo the key component of the dream.
The daughter imo is you, the younger, the more innocent version of you,… the one with a mother. And what is she doing? She’s cleaning up. So, that implies you’re feeling a mess and trying to clean it all up.
You mention how close by the bus stop is. A bus stop indicates that you feel that a decision abut your future needs to be made, a decision about what you want to do in your life. (Can you start to see how this ‘projection’ thing goes)… So you are telling your younger feeling self, your purer self, that she is lucky and free to make life changing decisions now, she is free to do with her life as she wants. She’s free to jump on the bus anytime she wants.
In other words: you are telling yourself that you are now at liberty and free to jump on the bus going to your chosen destination. In a way you are trying to comfort yourself, while you’re cleaning up. You have expressed on LF how you feel you must do some emotional cleaning before taking the bus, but also the sentiments that you are now not bounded to a life in your state anymore, since the loss of your cat.
There are two desires, two needs here, and they seem conflicting each other, which is why you have one projected in another figure who acts out one of the sentiments. The conversation you have thus is an attempt to unify both feelings, while some cleaning still needs to be done.
And then that situation is actually resolved: the bus arrives and the young woman jumps on it, not missing the opportunity. It happens so sudden, that it kinda leaves you baffled. And as you said on LF to me: it’s not because you move to a new country that you leave your issues behind… the issues will go wherever you go.
The next part is about showing you which issues you need to clean up, to resolve, and how you’ve been resolving them.
Now once the daughter is out of the dream, in comes the mother. But remember, the daughter was actually a part of you. So, with the daughter gone, that means you are now the daughter of the boss, and the boss is your mother. I think this is the other reason for the whole projection of yourself with the daughter. Advice and caring and feeling supported is often done by a parental figure in a dream, the dream needed a mother figure, and your boss seemed the best candidate for that role.
So,you’re trying to have dinner and having a conversation. Hunger and food often stand for needs and unfulfilled desires in a dream. It might be important to recall what you tried to eat. But the dream definitely makes clear that you have a hunger for something on an emotional level, and that you feel you’re not getting it. The delaying of the dinner shows what it is that you miss and crave: attention from your mother (the boss, who functions as a mother, in your projection dream). So, here is where the root lies of your abandonment anxiety: you feel your mother neglected to take care of your emotional needs. And that your true mother is unfit for the mother role in your opinion is shown by the fact that your real mother does not operate as a mother figure in your dream, but other women need to take up that role for you.
I think that this projection thing is what you do in your waking life too: I think that on an emotional level you see your therapists, mature friends as someone to take up that mother role for you, in a way to replace your mom. And actually this projection leads to continued abandonment issues: other people may not know or realize that it’s not really friendship or therapy that you seek with them, but a mother figure. And those who do realize what role they are expected to fill in your life may not want to be in that role. In any case, nobody really can be expected to take up that role in a completely satisfying way, because you’re not their daugher really, nor do they have “motherly” feelings for you… so you’re bound to be disappointed all the time then.
The call you wanted your boss to make is one of those expectations from a daughter to her mother: moms should know when their child is upset, and care about it and will not feel free to go to sleep and bed without calling their daughters first to check how they’re doing. And when the one your emotions pointed out to be the mother figure in your life doesn’t do what you expect a mother to do, you feel that abandonment issue again.
Let’s continue with what happens next in your dream: your mother asks you why you hate so much. I agree with Oxy that this may come directly from the subconscious, confronting you with a feeling that you may not even recognize or acknowledge that you feel. It’s not said what you hate… that is for you to figure out. Is it your real mother you hate? Is it yourself that you hate? Is it this need for a mother that you hate? Are it the row of mother figures who did not live up to your child needs? But it’s also possible that your real mother used to blame and tell you that you hate, when you don’t. I’m just throwing these questions around to help you figure it out for yourself. But it may be this “hate” that may be the root cause for projecting mother figures into people who aren’t your mother.
The solution lies in being your own mother, to mother yourself, to become a mother to yourself. And the dream shows you this via the phone call. Phone calls tend to represent your subconscious wanting to make contact with you to confront you with something you’ve been hiding from yourself, what you have avoided to confront in the first place. But it’s not you who picks up the phone, it’s your mother figure. Perhaps the subconscious is explaining the mother figure in you what is going on.
This part of the dream is showing you imo that you need to be your own mother. And that the mother in you needs to understand how the child in you feels.
And in fact the dream is already doing that partly: characters in a dream are always a projection or extension of a piece of you. When my mother appears in my dream I know it’s my mother-self taking care of me, I know it’s not my real mother. Dreams just happen to love to use projection for us to confront, integrate and communicate our needs and feelings.
Your dream actually involves projection upon projection… many layers of projection on top of each other. And the reason for that imo is because you project in your waking life too.
I think it’s time to find the mother in you who’ll take care of your emotional self. She’s been absent for too long in your life.
((((((((((((((Star)))))))))))))
wow. Darwin’s mom, amazing.
Star, I understand exactly what you are saying. I’ve been in the same position of facing significant loss and no one to turn to for comfort. Thought I had a friend I could rely on but as often happens, people avoid those of us who are suffering. I believe there are several levels to this, from avoidance of reality to assuming “WE” must have done something to cause this to happen. In turn, they decide to distance themselves from us, even if it is on a subconscious level within their own mind but it definitely appears in their actions/inactions.
As Oxy stated, I too have come to realize the ONLY person I can rely on emotionally and financially is myself. I dealt with my mother’s death alone. My two siblings completely abandoned me. They didn’t want my life challenges to interrupt their world. I was rejected by them at our Mother’s funeral. I had NO support. I’m the one who is settling the estate and going through all of her things. They now believe I am stealing from them in some way even though I send them copies of EVERYTHING. It was my mistake to expect even the slightest emotional support from them. They emotionally abandoned their own Mother, of course they weren’t going to be there for me.
Though I am far from being through the process, I have realized at some point in our lives, most of us have to face the realization that all we have is ourselves. The assisted living center my Mom was at was filled with abandoned elderly. Some of them had children living only a few miles away yet their children ignored them even on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is so very heartbreaking yet I too have now experienced abandonment for the holidays. The lesson for me is that I will NOT go through this level of the abandonment/loss experience again because I no longer have expectations from anyone. Zippo.
It’s a hard lesson. The depression is almost unbearable. But there IS a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not the headlight of a train.
When you’ve had a little time to heal, perhaps an occasional visit to an animal shelter will help with the grieving process. I periodically did that for almost six months after losing my previous cat. The animals at the shelter have been abandoned too. They understand alone and scared. They understand depressed. They understand love and need it in their lives as much as we do in ours.
Many heartfelt thoughts going out to you.
~New
I think it’s a deep, amazing dream that Stargazer had, Sky 🙂
Now, I do tend to interpret dreams often from a role transferral and outside-of-yourself projection method… to me dreams are like looking inside yourself and discover a theater play on stage played just for you, where each character represents a role, character or need within you… it’s just difficult to see and understand it clearly if you saw 10x yourself on the stage having conversations with each other. It’s also a theater play where the actors interact with the audience – you, the dreamer. And what you may not always understand consciously, you may have already understood in your dream. Each time a character disappears from the dream-theater stage often signifies that at least subconsciously a resolution and understanding has been realized. But because of the interaction with the audience (you, the dreamer) it can be confusing. you, the audience, is still left mulling over what occurred on stage, but the act has been over and you’re forced to watch act 2 in progress.
In stargazer’s dream this happens when the daughter takes the bus and when the boss-mother picks up the phone and leaves stargazer by herself to understand it. I think it means that the young-spirited Stargazer is ready to take the bus, and I think the mother-Stargazer is also starting to understand Stargazer. Now Stargazer has to integrate it all, unify it for herself.
Projection can be a very powerful and useful tool, but it’s important to realize you’re doing it.
The key to your abandonment feelings imo, Star lie in the mother-child relationship you had with your mother. You have mentioned how hurt you felt by therapists. But I think your dream has now gave you the key to what any therapy needs to tackle for you now: this mother-child relationship that went wrong for you, and it would be helpful to tell them that you may project this unfulfilled need onto them.
My therapist in my mind, embodies a mother-earth energy. She compares in many ways to my mother. She gives me the same sense of down to earth security that I normally have with my own real mother. But because she’s not my mother, it leaves out anxiety and worry my mother would otherwise express to me. My mom is sick with pain, anguish and anxiety for me when she knows I’m not well, and then can sometimes project it in a way as if she feels I’m going through something abnormal that must be treated like a mental disease. My therapist kinda functions as a mother-role to me, but without involving her own fears and worries and concerns. She does, what my mother is able to do for others (be professional and detached) but unable for me. She actually kindof explained it that way when I visited her for my ID-crisis and explained a bit of my mother to me (don’t blame my mother… I guess it goes with being a normal mother and loving your child). My therapist could do this, because my mother was a client a couple of years before I became a client. So, my therapist is like a counterweight to this part of my mom. In that way, my therapist helped me to identify myself as myself, not an extension of my mom’s worries… she was kindof the voice of myself that needed to find my own identity and values and believe in them as valid as much as my mother’s are.
That’s why I think it’s important and helpful that you are able to tell your therapist what your subconscious needs and expectations are from a therapist. A good therapist will not comply to this fully, but will help them to solve and integrate this in an interraction with you, or if they feel they cannot to at least refer you to a therapist who can.
Ugh, I just posted this long post and it disappeared. I’m really overwhelmed right now and spiraling downward. I have been medicating with food, which really is a sign (after losing weight and being so healthy for so long) that I am at a loss as to how to direct my life right now. I feel like I’ve been hit with a ton of bricks. Work was really hard today. For once, I didn’t have it in me to smile and pretend. I was just down. One of my co-workers actually had the nerve to tell me to be positive and happy. Really, is that what you tell people who are deeply grieving an important loss? I didn’t realize how much that cat – my last family member – was my reason for living. Now I feel empty and despondent. The thing that usually pulls me through is having some sort of hope that my life is moving in a positive direction, that I’m healing. But now I am having a lot of doubt that I’ll ever get better. It’s discouraging.
I realize I have to heal my own issues and no one can do it for me. But the burden feels very heavy right now. I’m dealing with the loss of my cat and also the abandonment issues triggered by the neighbor. In addition, my old mortgage company does not realize I sold my place, and they are still sending me delinquent notices. No one over there can help, and I cannot afford an attorney. All of this feels like it’s pinning me down like a ton of bricks, and I’m just going through the motions.
As for the dream, here are some other details for the dream analysts: My boss’ daughter was not just cleaning up any mess. She was cleaning piles and piles of cat poop left by her cat. When I sat down to dinner with my boss, we were in my old dining room where I spent my teenage years. So I do think she was in the dream and in real life somewhat of a mother figure. We were eating different meals. They were both from restaurants, and they were both good, but hers was better – maybe it was from a nicer restaurant (she and her husband are fairly wealthy, so her lifestyle is very different from mine).
I have no therapist and don’t think I would even be able to trust a therapist at this point, nor could I afford any except a free one through my job. I feel like I could use some help but don’t know where to turn. Most therapists really have not been able to help me and have not known what to do or who to refer me to – historically over the years. So I’m pretty discouraged about trying again with a new one.
When my Siamese died, the pain was excruciating, but I managed to get through it. For whatever reason, two years ago I had a lot of support from people. They called, gave me cards, and gave me a shoulder to cry on. For whatever reason, this year I don’t have that support. The few times I’ve reached out, people have been busy. So I’m just kind of on my own here.
I’m just a mess right now. Hope no one out there was looking up to me as any kind of role model cause I’m not it at the moment. Sorry.
Star,
While you may have to do the healing yourself, that doesn’t mean you have to alone and cannot use support and comfort and a shoulder to cry on.
I don’t think the dream is telling you to do it all alone, but to understand your needs better, and that even if you project the giving of those needs onto someone else, that you realize you are doing that. This knowledge can help you communicate it better imo to the people in your environment.
The dining room is usually an area where visitors can come, it’s the part of you that you show to the outer world, where you have guests… it often stands for the communication with your environment. I did think the cleaning of the daughter probably was related to the loss of your cat. And I also think this loss brought your mother figure need to the forefront in your life.
I’m really sorry about your loss, and how you feel alone in having to cope with it, feel as if your environment is unable to meet your needs. I really wish I could give you a physical hug right now. ((((((((((((((Star))))))))))