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.