Dr. Margaret Paul

It’s one thing to be loving to yourself when things are going well and you feel centered and peaceful inside. It’s quite another to love yourself when you feel panicked and freaked out.

Anxiety is often the way our inner child lets us know that we are abandoning ourselves rather than loving ourselves. There are a number of major causes of anxiety, and all of them are related to various forms of self-abandonment.

Loving yourself with high sensitivity means that you learn to deeply value your ability to perceive subtle energies – both positive and negative. It means that you deeply value your perception of people’s feelings and moods. It means that you deeply value your rich inner life, and how profoundly you are affected by art or music, and by the environment you are in.

All of us meet perfectly wonderful people with whom we just don’t feel a connection.

The wounded self operates out of false beliefs, rather than from the truth of who we really are, it wants to control how people feel about us.

Every interaction we have with others is a reflection of our beliefs about ourselves, and we have the opportunity to learn from each difficult interaction.

I’ve waited so long for love to come into my life, yet now that it’s here, I’m depressed. I can’t figure this out.

It takes great courage to shift from invisibility to being seen and valued. It takes great courage to be willing to lose others rather than continue to lose yourself.

If you learn to trust your feelings and honor them by telling your truth, you will likely see much improvement in your relationship.

Rather than being a victim of the other’s behavior, you have taken emotional responsibility for yourself.

Infidelity generally comes from the same inner emptiness as does alcohol and drug abuse, food addiction, gambling, spending, shopping, and so on. In the case of infidelity, the addiction is to attention, approval or sex – using another person to fill the inner emptiness and take away the inner aloneness.

Anger and blame toward your family of origin are not only a waste of energy, they keep you stuck in being a victim rather taking responsibility for learning to love yourself.

Of course it’s always “okay” to call it quits if that is what you want. No one can tell you whether or not it’s right for you. But – and this is a big ‘but’ – you might want to do your own healing before ending the relationship.

It’s amazing how quickly love vanishes when one or both partners have the intent to control.

If one or both people in a relationship are closed to learning about themselves and each other, the relationship will not heal.

It’s too easy to leave, too easy to blame the other person, too easy to miss the incredible opportunity that relationships provide for healing and growth.

The challenging truth is that we cannot connect with another until we connect with ourselves.

It’s vitally important to be honest with yourself so that you don’t end up feeling like a victim, and so that you have less of a chance of repeating this in a future relationship.