Loving yourself.

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I found an article today, I found it quite useful. I dont know about the affirmation at the bottom though, doesn't really apply to people with a neurological disability so dont read that... but nice article anyway...

http://www.attractionmindmap.com/how-to ... n-17-ways/

I found the article because I was wanting to read about self esteem.

I read an article once somewhere that implied self help and self reaffirmation exercise actually make you feel worse.

That's an excellent list It's something I have trouble getting my head around, loving yourself without being arrogant about it, how does that work? I'm still nowhere near but what I've started doing is trying to give myself a break.

Eliminating self-critcism is hard but essential if you want to move on from a bad place and is the logical place to start (falling in love with yourself is a big ask for people who've spent their lives doing the opposite). Obviously you can't stop being aware when you're doing something wrong but there's no need to berate oneself for every single little thing that doesn't go the way it was supposed to as it inevitably spirals out of control and can lead to full on meltdowns.

It must be true then if it's implied I read it's possible to read the intithesis of everything if you read for long enough. Sadly I don't remember where I read that (j/k)

I think this was it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8132857.stm

So no it wasn't implied but quite literal . But that was just repeating some phrase.

lol I'm glad you could see the humourous intention in that as well as the request for sources

But yeah that research is about self help mantras, repeating assinine phrases such as 'I'm a lovable person'. That's obviously going to do precisely nothing for logical people.

I only read it quickly but there were no mantras or new age bobbins in the list it's all helpful enouogh. It may help to replace the word love with 'like' or at least 'accept'. I'm not sure I could ever really love myself the way NTs do but I know I can stop hating myself long enough to get some things done.

What I find fascinating is the repetition of terms such as "I" and "Self" as if they are two separate things. The writer clearly feels there is an "I" that is capable of love and a Self that is totally separate to this "I". Hence "I" cannot possibly be my "Self" (which rather destroys the urge to "be myself", but that is another story) , otherwise how could "I" and "Self" have any relationahip at all? It's as if the 'self' is a thing that can be owned by an "I". e.g. "I love my Pikachu", "I love your ears", "I love my self".

What's confusing is how this terms are mixed and matched until I'm not sure what or where these "I" and "self" are that should somehow be existing in a relationship other than their current one.
e.g. "I own me I am me". If I and Me are the same, then I cannot possibly own Me. If I and Me are not the same, then I am NOT me, in which case: "who am I?"

Begs the question: "do normal rules of attraction follow for the love affair between an "I" and a "self"? Does the self have to be well-groomed, confident, with a career and a good sense of humour? What if the "I" notices another "self" that it finds more attractive? Can "I"'s be monogamous or can they love more than one self equally? Is a Self different to a Myself? Plenty of room for practical experiments...

lol nice work ManErg. You've got stuck on an insignificant semantic detail for comedy effect and it's worked well BUT (and it's a big but as you can see) this is a problem people here really do have, getting stuck on a minor detail and missing the bigger picture where the point can be seen in full.

The semantics barely matter, you could have the same argument about mind and brain or mind and body even but you're still none the wiser than when you started. Forget about wether it's the I or the self and just get on with not hating yourself.

The BBC link posted has a lot of good points in it too about needing to use the right techniques that will actually work for yourself. It must be common for people here to try something that was never going to work in the first place and then give up discouraged. There's always something else you can try as long as there's an I or a self to do it.

"I" is mind, awareness, the consciousness without content. Self is part of the content of the mind, the self-concept, our recognized identity. Meditation makes this an obvious distinction.

Thanks...but however hard I look inside, I do not feel 2 separate entities inside me: a Self and an I. Given the whole gist of the article is about making "I" love my "Self", the whole article leaves me totally confused.



When somebody feels "themselves" (whatever that may mean) qualified to dish out advice to others, semantics DO matter!! ! Unless perhaps their words are worthless....If you were fixing a fault with your car (assuming that "not loving yourself" is actually a fault, not a correct perception - there really are people who are unlovable), what use would it be to read "adjust the thing attached to the other thing by several units"?

Can we *choose* to love absolutely anybody? Obviously those of us short of Messiah status will struggle with this. So how can we *choose* to love a random person of the 6 billion on earth, just because it happens to be the one whose body we are stuck in - despite never choosing it?

Better advice is to start working at making yourself lovable, rather than accepting the faults that make you unlovable.

Also found that from a link from somewhere today. AOL?
Timely and useful.

Yes yes I know what you mean but I think you're taking this out of context, this is a self help articlemeant meant for easy reading not a psychology dissertation. This is the haven not ppr.
We're not fixing a car, there are no replacement parts that will slot effortlessly in to the place of the broken ones, we're talking about feelings and how we can influence them for our own benefit. Things are more fluid, in fact metaphors involving water and it's movement are usually more appropriate.




The last line there is great advice. The rest is words you put between yourself and the good advice. It also shows you didn't read the article and are at best attacking the thread title.

Great to wake up and see all these replies! And great that people are thinking about it too.

My take on this is that yes we may look in the mirror and see things that we perceive to be unlovable. But consider this. When you were 2 years old, did you have low self esteem? How about at 3? Now think of how you thought of yourself when you were 12.

Probably by then you were feeling pretty crap about yourself. What happened? Society happened- bullies, well meaning people, parents, teachers, relatives, school friends, all giving you messages about how to be.

Many aspies have received an enormous amount of negative messages growing up. I know myself I have experienced rejection and ostracism on a pretty big scale.

Yes you could agree with the bully "I am worthless as I dont have good social skills." But that in itself is an affirmation. The bully gave you an affirmation and you agreed because you were too young to know better. Any belief about ourselves carries an affirmation that we tell ourselves.

Not to say we should chant affirmations because our minds are too conditioned to accept something like "I am great as I am" as the truth. The article is about making a start to change the beliefs so that we dont need to chant affirmations. And next time someone says "You are no good" you can say "Screw you. I am good."

I found it via google, as I was feeling down, and I googled "How to love yourself".

Once you even assume a concept of "social skills", you are already making a judgement. A judgement that, for an Aspie will require a huge affort to avoid turning out negative. Someone who sets up a class, or writes a book: "Improve your social skills" is continuing the work of the bullies by the very judgement that there are such a thing as "social skills" and you damn well need to get off you butt and improve them".

Affirmations have always made me feel like crap.

They've done research into that http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8132857.stm Turns out people with low self-esteem don't take well to affirmations, I'd go further and say people with a working brain wont take well to them. It's not even what the OP is about. The OP and the link posted by Southwestforrest are much more suiteble for people on the spectrum.