seeing myself clearly

All posts tagged seeing myself clearly

38Narcissists have a personality disorder that does not allow them to tell the truth to themselves. If they did tell the truth to themselves, it would go something like this: I hate myself. I can’t love anyone outside of myself in a meaningful manner because my emotions are infantile. I feel like an emotional infant and it’s always got to be me, me, me, and I know this, and I don’t like it, so I’m always mad at everyone around me, because I hate myself for being this way. PLUS, I am a brilliant person, a superior person, I’m talented, smart, gorgeous, so I deserve beautiful amazing people around me, and they should all adore me. But if they do, I’ll be mad at them because it will never be enough because everyone around me is a mere reflection of me. Narcissists don’t really see you for who you are. This does not mean they don’t understand you. It’s just that, even if they do understand you, they don’t care. The reason for this is, to a narcissist, you are there for them. You are there for them and you are a reflection of them. Since the narcissist already hates themselves, (too fat, too thin, too poor, too warty, too wrinkled, background too poor, father too abusive, whatever) they want you to be better than they are. But when you are, they judge you for liking them. It’s like the old Groucho Marx joke: I would never belong to a club that would have me as a member. If you think the narcissist is good enough for you, then you are not good enough for the narcissist.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4818960_not-love-naricissitic-personality-disorder.html

If you ignore me,
I will ignore you.
If you don’t start
the conversation,
we won’t talk.
If you don’t put
in the effort,
why should I?
unknown

26594One thing you will need to spot a person, who is incapable of love, is some experience. The inexperienced person who falls in love for the first time is capable of being blind sided. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you won’t know when you see it. A person who can’t love can be charming, beautiful, even generous. But we will dissect those qualities so you see what they mean in such a person A person who is charming wants you to like them. It’s not about you. A person who is beautiful, is just fortunate, or spends a lot of time taking care of them selves so they can look good on the outside. Again, it’s not about you. A person who is generous gives for a variety of reasons. Generous people can give because they genuinely care about others. But sometimes it’s because they want to feel good about themselves. It has been said that narcissists can’t love others because they are too in love with themselves. This is actually not true. Narcissists don’t love themselves. They hate themselves but they also have huge egos, which are damaged egos. Narcissists require love from others in order to feed off that love, so they can tolerate themselves.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4818960_not-love-naricissitic-personality-disorder.html

Nice people
don’t necessarily
fall in love
with nice people.
Jonathan Franzen

métis 72HE MUST FEEL SAFE: What will get a man over the speed bumps and into the home stretch? He has to trust you. He has to know that all that fear and confusion and uncertainty will land him in a SAFE place. Everyone wants to feel safe, right? You can help him feel safe by giving him every reason to trust you. Give him every reason to feel comfortable with you. Listen to him talk. Share parts of your life with him. Offer a listening ear when he needs it. Share your thoughts and feelings – within reason, of course. The closer you get, the more comfortable he will feel. The more comfortable he is, the safer he will feel. Soon he will be sharing everything he feels with you. That fear will gradually fade away.
http://relationshipabode.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/why-men-hide-their-feelings/

Don’t ever play
with someone’s feelings,
you could win the game
but you could lose
that person forever.
Frank Ocean

liquor-1221-1280x960Men are twice as likely as women to become alcoholics and now scientists believe they know why. Researchers from Columbia and Yale universities studied the underlying biology of how drinking affects the brain. They found that consuming beer and wine on a night out gave men a far greater ‘pleasure rush’ than women. The team compared a group of male and female college-age social drinkers in a laboratory test of alcohol consumption. After consuming an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink, each participant underwent a specialized positron emission tomography (PET) scan, an imaging technique that can measure the amount of alcohol-induced dopamine release. Dopamine has multiple functions in the brain, but is important in this context because of its pleasurable effects when it is released by rewarding experiences, such as sex or drugs. Despite similar consumptions of alcohol, the men had greater dopamine release than women. This increase was found in the ventral striatum, an area in the brain strongly associated with pleasure, reinforcement and addiction formation. The findings were reported in the journal Biological Psychiatry. Senior author Dr Anissa Abi-Dargham, added: ‘Another important observation from this study is the decline in alcohol-induced dopamine release with repeated heavy drinking episodes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1321767/Why-men-twice-likely-alcoholics–drinking-sparks-pleasure-male-brains.html

People who have never had an addiction
don’t understand how hard it can be.
Payne Stewart

5184287516_aae120babbEDITWrite: Putting your feelings down on paper not only enables you to begin unloading your emotional baggage, it also allows you to process the situation so that perhaps you may a) gain objectivity, b) understand the other person’s point of view, and more importantly c) be free to move on with the more important and pleasant things in life. Plus, if you do this regularly in the form of a journal or diary it makes a fascinating read many years later.

Music: If you play an instrument, write a song about what is bothering you. Not only is it a release, it is a way to take that negative energy and be creative with it positively. Sometimes it may be a song that no one else will hear, but that’s fine. It would have served its purpose. If you’re not musically inclined, listen to someone else’s song about a similar subject. Music has the power to move you deeply and by the same token has the power to heal.

Confide in someone: If you feel you can’t talk to the people in your immediate circle, look outside it. They do not know the details of your life as they have been out of contact so may be able to provide an objective point of view or “outside advice. Bear in mind, if the advice given is not what you wanted to hear, do not be angry and defensive toward someone who is trying to help. Be honest with yourself.

Pray: Even if you’re not religious, even if you don’t believe in God, just give it a shot. You have nothing to lose by asking for help. Don’t be surprised if you bump into someone the next day that will make you smile, or you see an ad on tv or a show that makes an impact on your life for the better. There is always a solution, no matter how bad the problem is.

Everybody bottles up their emotions at some point. The trick is to realize that doing so is not healthy. When you learn to let go of the hurt or anger or frustration within and are no longer carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, you will feel much happier with life. Taken from an article at
http://marcofratelli.hubpages.com/hub/Ways-To-Release-Your-Bottled-Up-Emotions

All the art of living lies
in a fine mingling
of letting go
and holding on.

Henry Ellis

PDHMFULL-bwI have a confession to make. I don’t want to hug you. It’s not that I don’t like you. I do, probably. I just really don’t enjoy hugging in any form. I know this probably makes me sound cold or like I suffer from some Monk level OCD contamination fears. Neither is true. Nor did I spend my formative years in a creepy Soviet orphanage where I had no physical contact. Hugging to me just doesn’t feel natural. It is never my instinct to hug someone. The worst is when I run into some random acquaintance I haven’t seen in a while and the first thing they do is try to hug me. In a way though, I’m jealous of these natural huggers. They certainly come off as much warmer and friendlier than me even if it might not be wholly genuine. Since I don’t want to come off as unapproachable or snobby, I’ve gotten pretty good at faking enjoying hugs over the years. I am now able to hug someone without doing the creepy straight armed Dr. Evil style hug. Progress. So I normally let other people dictate the terms of first contact. If they go in for a hug, I will return it warmly. But I will never be the “hug initiator.” Maybe someday I’ll be able to proudly own my non-hugging status and have t-shirts made that say “You seem like an awesome person and I’d like to get to know you better, but please don’t touch me.” From a post by Amanda Fox
http://hellogiggles.com/confessions-of-a-non-hugger

We were not a hugging people.
In terms of emotional comfort
it was our belief that no amount
of physical contact could match
the healing powers of a well made cocktail.
From “Naked” by David Sedaris

komunikacja“Why don’t men express their feelings?” Well, they do. Men just express their feelings differently. First of all, they have more control over their facial expressions, where most feelings are communicated. Women are what experts call high-expressers and externalizers, whereas men are low-expressers and internalizers. Men can substitute, neutralize or minimize their emotional expression through facial expressions. In contrast, women are an “open book.” Society conditions women to think they are the emotional gender. Women are taught a separate set of rules that allow a wider range of self-expression. Women aren’t as good at hiding their facial expressions… With men, it’s more of a guessing game. Self-expression isn’t purely learned. The different brains are also at work. According to Morgan Road in her book The Female Brain, “The areas of the brain that track emotion are larger and more sensitive in the female brain.” Men notice subtle signs of sadness in a face only 40 percent of the time, whereas women pick up on the signs 90 percent of the time, Road says. When you are expressive, people also know where you stand. This, in turn, increases their comfort level and feeling of familiarity. We are always suspect of the people we can’t seem to get to know. They won’t let us in, so what are they hiding? Adapted from the book “Code Switching: How to Talk so Men will Listen” by Audrey Nelson, Ph.D.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/he-speaks-she-speaks/201102/the-expressive-trap

They have the unique ability
to listen to one story
and understand another.
Pandora Poikilos

Generic pic of a couple in a bar.My wife and I were emotionally disconnected. Over the years I had become more and more reticent to tell my wife the truth about my heart. In part that was due to my own lack of awareness, and in part I didn’t want to deal with any upset it may cause. So, I told her what I thought she wanted to hear. This started out with small and gradually led to bigger things. I expected my wife to make me happy. I had believed that marriage was supposed to make me happy. I was very confused because I was not happy. And in fact, the more I tried to make my wife happy – the worse things got in our relationship and the more miserable we both were. I was like a blood-sucking leach trying to experience life through sucking it out of my wife. I thought (at the time) I was being virtuous – trying to make her happy. In reality I was very selfish as my motive was about me and not her. And she knew it. I had no boundaries. I grew up with three sisters and have always felt comfortable with women. I enjoyed connecting with women. I used to say that I was just being playful. … a mentor of mine told me that I was not being playful, but seductive. I was looking for affirmation and attention and had developed a skill to get it from women. I was bored. I was under-challenged in my job, my kids were not around, my wife was traveling for her job, and I was alone a lot. I had lots of “down” time with nothing to fill the void. I was (unconsciously) looking for something to fill the void. I believed that I would never cheat. I was the last person I thought would ever commit adultery. I knew what was right and wrong. I was strong and I could handle any and all temptation. I was Superman. NOT! My pride led me to believe that I could get close to kryptonite and not be destroyed. That was foolish. I was a fool. I was 100% responsible for my infidelity. It was my fault. These things did not “make me” do it. However, these were things that made me vulnerable to cheating on my wife. I am still weak – but now I know I am. And in light of that, I can make different choices and therefore guard against being vulnerable.
http://affairrecovery.com/survivors/Jack/why-people-cheat

When would he realize
that it wasn’t his infidelity
I couldn’t bear,
but his cowardice?
From “Sarah’s Key”
by Tatiano de Rosnay

i_love_you_and_i_hate_you_80005Romantic love is described in idealistic terms as something huge, uncompromising, and without limitations. Statements like “The world has changed, everything is different now,” “Loving him is wonderful; my whole being expands into unprecedented realms,” “I am surrounded by nothing but you” are common among lovers. If “All you need is love,” and “You are everything I need,” then it is difficult to see how love can be criticized as being excessive. Emotions might be harmful when they are excessive. Emotional excess is harmful for the same reasons that other kinds of excess are harmful. As in other emotions, excessiveness in love can impede the lover from seeing a broader perspective. Even normal cases of romantic love tend to create a narrow temporal perspective that focuses on the beloved and is often oblivious to other considerations. Although it is difficult to define what constitutes excessiveness in love, characterizing love as “too much” implies that some damage has been done-either to the lover or the beloved. When intense love blinds our sight and makes us act improperly, people may say that such intense love is too much. A remark such as, “I couldn’t help it, I was madly in love with her,” indicates that sometimes love can be excessive. From “ Loving Too Much” by Aaron Ben-Zeév http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-name-love/200908/loving-too-much

People always think that the most painful thing
is losing the one you love in your life.
The truth is, the most painful thing
is losing yourself in the process
of loving someone too much,
forgetting that you are special too.
Unknown

Avoiding+AffectionThere are many theories on why people have trouble showing affection, and also cultural studies on how different groups show affection. Some theories suggest that such gestures of affection are often determined by our degree of nurturance as children.. In families or cultures where affection is common, people will more commonly show affection. Others also suggest a gender difference, especially in many Western cultures, between showing affection to boys and girls. Girls may receive more affection than boys, especially when they are emotionally distressed. Boys, alternately, may be told when they seek affection, such as when they are injured, to toughen up. Even though we think we’ve shed these gender differences, evidence to the contrary is available in a variety of studies; we are still harder on boys. This can matter a lot when boys and girls grow up, because girls will expect a higher degree of affection than boys, who have been nurtured to give less. Women will claim their husbands have trouble showing affection, and men may actually complain that their wives show too much. There are other reasons why people may have difficulty showing affection. People who have experienced sexual or physical abuse may find it very difficult to receive or give affection, even very simple things like a caress or hug. For these folks, touching itself has become a violation of self, and they don’t want to receive touching, or give it and possibly be considered as abusers too. More simply, some children are just less acclimatized to affection than others. Parents can love their children but have trouble showing affection to each other or to children.
http://www.wisegeek.org/why-do-some-people-have-trouble-showing-affection.htm

Do not be afraid of showing your affection.
Be warm and tender, thoughtful and affectionate.
Men are more helped by sympathy, than by service;
love is more than money, and a kind word
will give more pleasure than a present.
John Lubbock