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What is a Healthy relationship with self?

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for me it comes down to bounderies. both for my self and respecting those of other people. that is the foundation upon which i build being healthy and most things come secondery to that.

of course that is the hardest thing depending of what your trauma is. or it may not be relevent to you at all if your trama history occurred as an adult.

i also tend to seek out things that are nice and that make me feel good. instead of crazy and painful and awful.

this is not consistent but usuelly i know that i am more on track of when i am doing silly or fun things instead of yelling and banging my head on the wall and crying.

i also do my best to be around people who are uplfting and nice and not stressful. when things are slower and calmer and easier that is the framework. it takes a lot of work to keep it consistent. and it fails often.

but that's ptsd.
 
I don't believe in "healthy" but I assume it means you have some comfort with yourself and do things that allow your body and mind to feel good rather than to feel bad. In short term, mid term and long term.

When I'm about to do something I ask myself if my self of a few hours, weeks or months later would agree with this.
 
No idea. I don’t have one. Not something I’ve ever thought of, nor am I able to wrap my head around the concept. WTF DOES that mean??? 🤔 🤖 🤠
This. I can do a little meditation that helps me. Letting go of everything negative is such a hard concept because everything
is. Me? My relationship with me. What’s that mean. I mean I know but it makes me laugh almost to try and think about it. Laughing helps. I listen to the therapist talking and sometimes I think she’s a Martian . My favorite. : )
 
When you find out, let me know!!

Maybe it is different for everyone? Idk.

But basic self care: we're worth being fed and watered etc?
And then emotional kindness?
And then living a healthy lifestyle?

Idk. Some of those things are easier at some points and harder at others.
But honestly: I don't know.
 
A healthy relationship with yourself looks pretty much like a healthy relationship with an extremely close friend IMO. You love your friend and care for them and want them to be happy as much of the time as possible, and you do things for them to increase their happiness. When things go wrong, you don't blame them. You listen to their problems and fears and help allay them when you can. If you have a fight, you admit wrongdoing when applicable and forgive whenever possible.

I find it tough enough to do with another person. Doing it with myself is really hard work. Too hard, sometimes.
 
Understanding oneself more and more.

Knowing one's limitations and learning, over time to accept them, to work within them and who knows? Maybe even transcending one, or some, that you might have thought were indelible.

But the learning to be ok with ourself, despite our limitations, is key.

There's freedom there. Within the acceptance of the limitation. Ironically.

Because you've always got strengths, no matter what, and when you can stop fighting the not-strengths, for any length of time, it actually frees up energy to recognise and work with the strengths you already possess.

Being "healthy" in no way equates to being any kind of "perfect" but it is about stopping fighting the "not- perfect-not-by-a-long-shot" coz that's life; it's not, never gonna be "perfect", instead, "growthful" "developmental", a process, not a destination, forward, even by the most minute of millimetres (sorry I'm Australian), metaphorically speaking, inching forward is still inching forward, and yeah, sometimes life is just cyclic and we do just go 'round and 'round, in circles, but maybe they are actually spirals, and we are making progress without even recognising when we do ...So "healthy" is about learning to recognise those millimetre, 12th-of-an-inch movements forward and being able to give ourselves a little credit for every, progressive, incicle step, and even being ok if we are just so effing tired we just need a rest, for whatever length of time that is.



Stopping projection helps a lot, in my opinion.

Learning to trust yourself and if you can't, recognising why and making a note to work on it.

Being ok to receive help, coz that can evoke a lot of shame and fear, in some of us, so, actually being able to recognise that we do, and then do something about it, is actually HUGE.

Learning to be open, the right kind of open, but not TOO open.

Learning whatever tools and strategies work for YOU, just you, as an individual, and they might look different to every other person you know, BUT THAT'S OK.

Dropping needing to overacheive.

Dropping the need for constant outside approval, or maybe getting used to outside approval, if that's something you're NOT used to.

Learning that rejection is NOT an indication of your internal worth.

Learning to enjoy (or just tolerate 😝) your own company, and to be able to go inside and really feel, what you feel and know that it won't kill you; you'll get through it, and be a bit wiser and stronger for it.

And other stuff ...plenty of which other people have already covered.🙃.
 
Actually something did blip in my mind when I was reading about behaviours we didn’t like about ourselves… even the real nasty ones. First in CBT DBT based stuff that formulates stuff like "what is the immediate reward this brings to you? There is one otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it"… then in larger views, I think it was Maté’s saying "You can’t just scold yourself for the bad things you’ve done, or the parts that did awful things. Even these parts, they were trying to help and serve you. If you cannot look at these destructive parts with care and compassion and see what they did try to do for you, then you can’t make them change." I found it rather profound and it’s made me see spots of myself that I loathed a lot as being rather evil because potentially violent and destructive in a very different light. It’s not so far from the first thing, but that formulation in particular, that was more relational and understanding you aren’t a block but somewhat transient between states and circumstances, it did click for me. Still it isn’t easy, but it did bring a way more concrete idea of what a relationship to yourself means.
 
I think it was Maté’s saying "You can’t just scold yourself for the bad things you’ve done, or the parts that did awful things. Even these parts, they were trying to help and serve you. If you cannot look at these destructive parts with care and compassion and see what they did try to do for you, then you can’t make them change."
this is a similer model of what we were talking about on the perpetrator trauma thread-and it's where i think this stuff needs to start going. and some thing my therepist has ran through with me just to show me what the modaleties of it are (because it's interesting and because a lot of my therapy is like "instead of having a f*cking nervous breakdown, i'll just be intellectually interested in therapy." 🤪)

a lot of it is like specifically not only not scolding your self but actively looking at the posetive reasons for why you behaved badly. i've kind of taken that on board and started to re-frame some of my own things through this lens but it's very difficult because i don't believe my actions were justified (mostly) so it feels like justifying them.

but that's not what it means. it's asking you why.

the consensus with catharsis or validation is that if you validate it, you're excusing it. but people don't work like that. i didn't leave my daughter at daycare and go use heroin because i hate my kid and i love heroin. i did it because i was trying not to die, so i could be still alive, so my daughter could have a f*cking father. even if it was a shitty one.

and that doesn't mean that i'm giving my self a free pass to go to all the heroin i want because it's keeping me alive-that would also be nonsense. but it does mean that i could probably consider that i am not an evil person for having done that. since i was f*cking 17.

i haven't watched mate's thing yet but i remember reading in the realm of hungry ghosts and if you put aside all the holistic mumbo jumbo (it's what works, i know, i just don't find it helpful) most of his modalities are years ahead of where he should've been. i suspect it's because he was traumatized so he knows first hand what the f*ck he is talking about.

Learning to be open, the right kind of open, but not TOO open.
this one's so hard! for me this falls under bounderies and it's honestly the f*cking hardest part of it. what to share. what not to share. what to be like. what kinds of things are you allowed to say. what is appropriete or not appropriete.

but ultimetely as much as the rigid "rules" of social engagement which they can be, it is self-protective as well. over-sharing may place emotional burden on other people but it also has the potential to hurt you.

A healthy relationship with yourself looks pretty much like a healthy relationship with an extremely close friend IMO.
i really like this a lot because one thing that i have noteced especeally with people like us is that we are so good at being able to recognize in others what is logically happening (those double standards-it's okay for thee but not for me!) i find i will often reject logic entirely and just be like,

"actually this would be wrong to do to anybody, but it was right to do it to me, because i'm special." which is nonsensical. framing it more as your relationship with yourself is a full relationship, the same as a relationship with someone else-

especially because with other people we can more easily see what is right and what is wrong.

I don't believe in "healthy"
can i ask if you could elaborate on this more? i am curious of your thoughts on this subject. i have a very rigid understanding of what healthy is that it is "good" to be healthy and "bad" to be unhealthy. but i can see how that language could potentially become overloaded of toxic positivity and whatnot as well.
 
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