Let me tell you how to live your life...

Whew...how the fu%* should I know the answer to that? I have had a good laugh at myself this week. The people in my life lately, we are all talking at one another, me being the worst culprit, with spiritual quips or heady suggested life advice based on all my wonderful life training...and then the tables turn...and suddenly I get to be the recipient of this "live your life this way" advice-giving and whoa there horsy, my temperature rises. Sure most is just my messy ego getting in the way of receiving what is probably really useful information but there is also something else going on.

I traveled with this woman recently who said the best piece of advice she ever got was from her grandmother who said, "You can't tell nobody nothin'"...and at first I smarted at hearing that coming from my own Pentecostal Christian-ten commandment-background where the way to live your life was all written down. While I have rejected that path, I sometimes wonder how the whole "personal growth" path fills that void or protects me from living my own answers? "Of course you can tell people somethin' and let me tell you how you should love yourself, stop projecting, be present...etc." I say. But it is all do do do do do do do do. Whew, that is a lot of doing and I am tired now. Where has the creativity in muddling through life gone when the answers are already pre-ordained by our guru of the day?

I once went and saw a body worker and after an hour-long interview in which they misquoted half the stuff I told them, they then said they needed to "get all the kinks out of my body so I could show up in my life". After dealing with my initial reactions to this statement all I could think of was, "but I love my kinks". Today I realize I want to be kinked and perhaps that is what is so valuable about the I LOVE ME practice. That in fact, the hard part of life and the real showing up in life involves accepting and loving our kinks and the kinks of others...not processing them out. "Let's love the kinks and see what happens." Now, when I go get massages I ask to please have all my knots left in, no digging them out, just make them feel good, tell them it is ok they are there, and thank them for all the stress they have endured... man it works wonders!

Fitting then, that I wondered what pearls of wisdom I could type up on this blog today. I am muddling...and see the thing is, while I am finding accepting and deepening into this place of muddling not totally familiar, largely uncomfortable, it is also remarkably creative. No answers, no right way to be, no right way to be loving, no right community member to be, no right political activism, no right amount of selfless or selfishness, no right thing to say, no right amount of kinks...just muddling.

I LOVE ME is not, I realize, an act of trying to get somewhere, to achieve some state or for me to tell you how to achieve some state. It is an act of creation ... of creativity as we, as I, allow myself to love my kinks, to tolerate the intensity of life's unknowns and to move as I will in my own creative direction and I realize that that muddling creativity is what this blog is all about.

While I find this muddling through head-space a pre requisite for being a good therapist, today I discovered its value in being a good friend. In accepting and loving my own creative muddler and not having a right answer to give, I could be in a state of total acceptance and inspired awe of my friends' creative head-space and, well, it was just way more fun and intimate! I often find that when myself or others need to espouse answers or give unsolicited advice or wisdom that in those moments it is hard to be with the unknown of the moment or to make intimate contact with the person across from me. But even this attachment to needing to preach or teach is its own kind of muddling through and so I notice it in myself and others and keep on loving.

It is with great intention that I choose to remember the I/Thou in relationship. Perhaps a topic for the next entry.

Am I Entitled?

This entire year of working with I LOVE ME in my own life has been a massive lesson in entitlement and what that means. It seems to be a theme for much of what is going on for those around me as well. I would like to unpack some of the beliefs about entitlement and what happens when, in fact, we don't "step in" to our own space and claim our rights and the sneaky unconscious ways anger, jealousy, competition, gossip, depression, and even self-hatred can creep in to replace our entitlement to our own needs.

There are many barriers to "I LOVE ME" and entitlement. We might wonder;

"Am I entitled to be that big to actually say out loud that I LOVE ME?"

"Isn't I LOVE ME a little self absorbed or narcissistic?"

"Shouldn't I be putting others first before my self?"

This is a tricky subject because in American culture right now, we are in a time of narcissism and self-absorption; "the ME culture" as pop culture has referred to it. So how could we possibly need a lesson in how to be entitled? Some of the signs of narcissism in varying degrees include arrogance, attention seeking, self-focus, a lack of empathy, etc. But all these defenses are only protection mechanisms so we don't have to feel how much pain exists underneath for having faults or aspects of our personality that might make us unlovable or unpopular to others.

How did this culture of narcissism begin? There are many theories. Philip Cushman written about in last week's post talks about how during the Industrial Revolution and the growth of large cities with no cultural tradition binding the city together there was a feeling of being "lost in the crowd". This brought rise to this notion of personality over character as that which was the prime measure of success. "Personality meant the ability to be attractive to others, to stand out in a crowd." "Personality was shaped by attending to and manipulating others, not by following moral codes or adhering to religious ideals" (Cushman, 64).

Psychological theory says our culture of narcissism has to do with our primary attachment to our caregivers and takes the cause outside the socio political realm and places our own self-esteem issues squarely on the shoulders of the family system and mothers. Psychology often completely bypasses the role of culture. I think both contribute and therefore more weight should not be given to one than another.

That said, what I love about I LOVE ME is you don't necessarily need to understand "WHY" you can just practice and see what happens. And because this whole culture is permeated with the narcissistic after effect of self worth issues each individual who begins to really root him or herself in this new shared tradition of "I LOVE ME" begins to change the culture at large.

Let's get clear, however, on what I mean about entitlement and I LOVE ME by giving an example. Because some forms of entitlement really are the old defenses of filling up the "empty self" that we talked about last week it feels important to distinguish what is what. Entitlement is the belief and action of our right to be alive. To be alive is to be aware of our present time experience and from that what we want and what we need in any given moment and how we meet those needs and wants. We can meet those needs and wants on our own, by putting on a sweater when we are cold, going to bed when we are tired or eating when we are hungry or we may need to express a need to another person like our husband to help in folding laundry.

Here is where the difficulty comes in. Socially, we are taught to put other people's needs before our own. You are considered likable if you take care of others. Women are famous for doing this. So what we have learned to do is to check out and not even notice what we are feeling and experiencing in the moment and do other things to fill our personal selves up in exchange for all the ways we aren’t noticing our own needs throughout the day.

But wait a minute, you say, "I meet people all the time I find incredibly demanding and have no shame about demanding their needs to be met?" The tricky thing about needs is that if we stuff them long enough or if we don't truly believe we are entitled to have and communicate our needs the only other option we have is to get really angry either in reaction to stuffing them or in order to muster the voice to express them. Other people don't get angry, they just plain get depressed because they go into a place of hopeless despair around the possibility of getting their needs met. Others get competitive and some people will gossip to a third party about their needs rather than risking being in conflict with the person they need to talk with.

Conflict - ah yes conflict - this brings up an important point. Sometimes our entitlement is in conflict with someone else's. What do we do then? We have to love ourselves enough to negotiate. The alternative is stuffing our needs out of fear of this kind of discussion which makes way for the feelings we talked about earlier; anger, depression, jealousy, gossip. This is especially rampant among women in our culture. Ironically, if we can muster the courage to really meet another human in their own entitled aliveness you might be surprised to find that rather than the situation being a scary endeavor of butting heads it is an endeavor of intimacy as each person makes his or her needs known. It is hard, I know. Especially if we have had family and social reinforcement that we she never have needs in the first place.

Replacing this old familial and social reinforcement for having no needs is precisely the value of I LOVE ME. Practicing, believing and living self love means checking in with what we are feeling and experiencing in the moment, catching ourselves thinking in old learned ways or projecting feelings onto others and stopping these behaviors, and moving out in the world in a new way from a place of joyful loving entitlement. The analogy I like to give people is the one of a mother to a newborn. Have you noticed how attuned they often are to their infant? They pay attention to every burp, feeding, cry, gurgle and do everything they can to make that baby comfortable out of love. I LOVE ME is like enacting that same level of motherly attentiveness and care for you.

Finally, dealing with the inevitable NO. What happens if we ask a person to move down one chair at the movies and they say ‘no’? This is another really tricky part of having the courage to ask for what we need...hearing no. Often we can feel hurt, angry or disillusioned. This is a part of the asking process. I LOVE ME not only helps us feel entitled to ask but I LOVE ME helps us feel loveable and loved even if someone in the moment says no to our need. It also helps us remain open and empathic to the 'no' we are receiving on the other end.

I realize, as I write this, that this may not leave room for the times in life where it is appropriate to get very vigilant in service of our needs but that discussion is best served for another entry.

Until then, my wish is for all of us all to feel so warmly attentive to our internal experience that we recognize and name what we need and then meet them when possible the same way a mother does for her newborn infant. And my second wish is that we have courage and stay soft in the face of difference and no.

Much Love to You,
Traci

The Empty Self, Culture and I LOVE ME

As a first blog post it probably makes sense to give a small tidbit of background. Actually, rather than doing that, go to the vision page of MyOwnBiggestFan.com and you can read the history there. I am too eager to get into the thick of things. http://www.myownbiggestfan.com/vision.html

As a psychotherapy intern who is trying to balance my therapy work with a full time corporate job, I set aside Sundays to do psychology reading. Ever the skeptic about the "healing technologies" deployed in psychotherapy I am always fascinated by how culture shapes psychotherapy and even the "I LOVE ME" meditation.

And so this morning, my husband made the eggs while I made the coffee and I sat with my nose in the book, Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy by Philip Cushman. While I like psychology and new age spirituality and all that it has brought to my life, I also have a beginner's mind, a questioning observer or even a Jungian archetypal curiosity when it comes to the field of psychology and the practice of the "I LOVE ME" meditation. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, psychotherapy and new age spirituality are part of the social fabric. Sure not everyone is into this stuff but most folks are aware of it.

Cushman's book (the sixty pages that I am into it) looks at the cultural history of America and the many healing technologies found in the most unexpected places over the course of our history. Our own racism was in a way, a healing technology. Ouch. So it seems a good thing to be aware of how culture impacts our practice of psychotherapy and any other healing modalities, “I LOVE ME” included. He says that psychotherapy can unknowingly be in support of the cultural status quo and wrote the book to not only bring this to light but challenge therapists to examine the macro view of psychology in a larger cultural context.

Cushman ultimately posits that staunch individualism rules the day supported by capitalism and its prerequisite for an empty self that psychotherapy often supports. "...Individualism is itself a Western tradition, a response to economic arrangements, moral understandings, and political constrictions of feudal life" (Cushman, 10). In order for capitalism to function we have to create a rampant consumerism and the best way to do that is support this notion of an empty-self that needs "filling up" and behold we have consumer marketing to help with the "empty self" project. The goal is to get us to spend money on food, alcohol, clothes, cars, expensive parties, etc. Boy am I a sucker!

Going deeper, I wonder how this notion of an empty self impacts how we relate to one another? There was a recent university research report, which studied the nature of friendship in America and the prevalence of lack of a confidant by 25% of Americans. I am really not interested in finding someone or some system to blame, like capitalism or anything else. I just wonder about all this staunch individualism, emptiness and now loneliness as part of our evolutionary process as Americans and how psychotherapy and perhaps "I LOVE ME" is functioning unconsciously in support of the very system that is creating our suffering.

I know for myself, I crave a greater sense of community but without losing my individuality. Perhaps our whole culture is at this watershed moment where we are trying to figure out how to be individuals and community members at the same time. I suspect it is all a largely unconscious movement and a difficult task to achieve holding what, right now, feels like a polarity of self and community, especially seeing as capitalism says that emptytiness=consumerism=money and the impact money has in segregating and splitting our community.

But what do all these pontifications have to do with "I LOVE ME"? The Rodan Foundation's "I LOVE ME" was communicated in trance from a different dimension to members of its church. Me always being the skeptic, I had to try it out before I was sold, and sometimes I am still skeptical. But the practice of the "I LOVE ME" meditation is not just blind spiritual bypassing. I suppose for some it is - they tell themselves "I LOVE ME" so they can feel superior or not have to see the homeless guy outside on the doorstep. In my experience it has given me the tools to explore myself with open curiosity and a sense of humor and slowly as I practice more I want to be open, curious and loving towards others. I want to know what stirs inside me when I see the homeless guy or how I relate to others.

So is "I LOVE ME" in support of this continued "empty self" stuff that keeps us shopping or is it something else? I think it is something else if we intend it to be so. The intention of "I LOVE ME" as I understand it is to change the vibrational frequency of our energy bodies from a fear vibration to a love vibration. That vibratory shift impacts the vibration of the community as a whole. But I also see that it has the potential to fill us up with our own self-love so that we can, if we choose, move out into the world from a place of fullness and make contact with people out of authenticity rather than from the needs of the empty self. This empty self notion not only fuels our consumption but it also fuels our using this message ONLY to spiritual bypass rather than really actively LOVE who we are. I wonder, who is the homeless guy inside of us that we don't want to see...I think "I LOVE ME" helps us be with our own inner “homeless guy” and create a home inside from which we can reach out into our community.

You know, I had a friend come to the launching of my t-shirt company at The Love Awakening Summer Festival this July and I was very curious about her response to the festival. This is a woman and therapist I deeply respect. She works with inner city kids living in the most unloving, abusive and impoverished environments ever. She said to me, " this I LOVE ME stuff is nice for rich white people to feel good about not seeing what is really going on but how does it reach others?" I guess I have taken her comments on as an inspiring challenge. Not out of guilt but again from this place of “I LOVE ME” where I can really explore and be with her question. How does “I LOVE ME” grow beyond the boundaries of my own skin, race and class as a real practice of “I LOVE ME" and "I LOVE MY COMMUNITY” because loving my community is loving me. I don’t totally know how but I have some ideas, some I am beginning to live and others I am just mustering the courage and vision to see.