I love my friend or not.

Learning to love yourself isn't easy,Can you,.....Love yourself like a friend?

• Close your eyes and think of a person you deeply love and trust, and who you know loves you-- a friend, a lover. Think about all the things you love and appreciate about them. Notice how that love feels inside you, how it makes you feel good. Now turn it around the other way -- be your friend, feeling that same deep love for you. Trust in their love for you, and just feel it. Let yourself see your self through gentle eyes, with compassion and love the way your friend does, even if you can only do it for a moment. Now let yourself receive that love, the love you have as a friend to yourself. Feel the warmth move through you. Remember how it feels, and come back to that love another time. Make it part of your daily routine to praise something in yourself or think about something you like about yourself. In this society, we're taught that praising ourselves is selfish and wrong. But praising ourselves for things that are good about ourselves only helps us. It is a healing thing to do, something that nourishes our self-worth. When we love ourselves, we're happier and more true to our own selves...and that happiness and ability to be free spreads to others. So...try to think of something that you like about yourself, or something that you did today that made you or someone else feel good -- no matter how small it may seem. Give yourself the kind of warm praise that you would a friend. Have compassion for yourself. If you're feeling really judgemental about something you've done or said, try to understand where the judgement is coming from. Not the immediate, surface answer, but an answer deep down inside you. Are you afraid of something, or are you feeling insecure? Do you think you did something "wrong," or are you hearing the judgement of a voice from your past? Try to connect to that little kid inside of you who's feeling that way, and really listen to how s/he's feeling. Hug and reassure that kid, and let her/him know that s/he didn't do anything wrong, and that you love her/him. You can also think of a friend having acted as you did. Imagine how you'd feel towards them -- how you'd still love them and readily forgive them if there was anything to forgive. You probably wouldn't even find it bothersome! Try to feel that same love and compassion for yourself. Recognize that the love has to come from you. If you're a survivor of child abuse or come from a dysfunctional family, you may still be waiting for a parent to give you the love and acceptance you never got as a child. But the kind of love you need (or needed as a child) probably isn't going to come from a parent who abused you or who looked the other way while you were being abused. But it can come from yourself. It can be hard to give it to yourself at first -- after all, if you didn't receive love as a child, or if some of that love was torn away from you by violence, self-hate may have built up inside you. But you have the courage and strength to love yourself, if you've survived this long. And you do deserve it! So try to connect to that little child inside, that child who deserves all of your love and acceptance. Recognize Self-Critical Messages -- and Talk to Them It's easy to let old, critical voices and messages that we heard as a child play over and over in our minds, without stopping them. Often we may barely recognize that they are there, or we don't really listen to them, we've heard them so often -- but they continue to impact how we feel and think about ourselves. Try noticing next time you hear a small (or very loud) voice inside your head criticize you. Be aware of what it is saying to you, and try to talk to it. Ask it why it feels it needs to say those things. Is that part of you trying to protect you, in some child-like logic? Or perhaps that part of you felt it had to take on the messages you heard as a kid. Remind that part of you that you no longer need to do that to survive. You are free to make up your own mind about yourself. Counteract Negative or Critical Thoughts About Yourself Write down all the negative or critical thoughts and messages you hear inside your head. See if you can figure out who first said them to you (or said something of that nature). Then write out a response that counteracts each of those messages, one by one. Make the counter messages as strong and loving as you can. If you're having trouble writing out counter messages, see if you can connect to a deep, wise part inside of you. Or write out what you would say to a friend if a friend said those things about her/himself.

• Answer:

  Before I can show my love to others, I must love myself first. Took me damned near sixty years to figure it out. RScott