Unconditional Love
by Anne Schanz, Ph.D., LPC • November 11, 2010
What a concept! Love with no conditions. This has confused me for most of my life. My notions of love are so embedded into relationships that I didn’t really understand how such a thing might exist–except from God, but not among us mortals.
Recently, another jarring ‘what if’ has come to me.
What if ALL LOVE is unconditional? That set my mind reeling.
—Well, let’s look at this. If all love is unconditional what about all the relationship issues? What about all these different kinds of love relationships: romantic, agape, friendship, pets, etc?
What if love is love, and it exists separate from the giver and receiver? What if it really has NOTHING to do with relationships at all?
OMG! Now, my synapses are popping.
When do I FEEL love? I feel love when I am in a certain state of being. It is associated with feeling warm, calm, happy, joyful, excited– an endless array of expansive feelings.
Are these expansive feelings really about what I am doing or what another is doing for me? Hummmm. I have been conditioned by association to believe that is true.
When I am feeling these feelings I do certain behaviors which are loving. Are my behaviors love? No, they result from my being in the state of love.
How did I get to the state of LOVE? I assumed that someone else evoked it or put me there, but is that true? Can I put MYSELF there? Am I really in charge of feeling love(d)?
When I focus on certain thoughts/images I can put myself there. When I act lovingly toward others, I put myself there. AM I IN CHARGE OF MY FEELING LOVED?
Yes, I believe I am.
So then, what my spouse, child, brother, sister, mother, father, uncle, aunt, friend, co-worker, enemy does or does not do— DOES NOT control when or how I feel love(d)?
I can feel love(d) regardless of what others say, feel or do? I have unconditional love at my own discretion, anytime? WOW! That changes everything.
Then, I can conclude that my relationships are entirely separate from feeling love/loved? Relationships are just ‘contractual’ arrangements for reciprocation of services/behaviors. Dealing with relationships is just a negotiation for services/behaviors with no impact on my feeling love(d) or not?
This changes everything.
Self Acceptance
by Anne Schanz, Ph.D., LPC • November 6, 2010
Self Acceptance is very tricky. Our usual approach is to embark on goals to change the parts of Self that we don’t want or like. This will never work.
By identifying those things we don’t want or like, we are rejecting (part of) Self. It makes no sense at all that we will reach Acceptance of Self through Rejection of Self. Therefore, we must ACCEPT ALL OF SELF.
WOW! That sounds completely backwards in this self help, fix it, make it go away culture. But, what if……
If I did not reject any part of Self, how might I feel?
Calm, peaceful, open, safe, warm…
Could that be what love feels like?
What Is Self Esteem Anyway?
by Anne Schanz, Ph.D., LPC • October 27, 2010
‘Self esteem‘ is a term we use so often it’s meaning isn’t really clear.
Let’s look at the words.
Self. That seems pretty simple, but is it? Who is this ’self’ I am referring to? Is it my body? Am I my body? Am I more than that? What more? Is it my behavior? Am I my behavior? Is that all I am? Who am I? This leads to more and more questions.
So this is a very complex issue after all.
Esteem. Regard, respect, admiration, acceptance. That seems pretty clear. So for self esteem, I need to have regard, respect, admiration, and acceptance for myself. Do I have regard, respect, admiration and acceptance for myself? How can I if am not sure who this ’self’ is? Now we are back to the knarly question of ‘Who am I’?
This is the question we are really grappling with when we are having self esteem ‘issues’. Who do I believe I am and what does that mean to me? We start answering these questions as babies and toddlers based on our interpretations of what we experience.
We have the brain power to make global assessments long before we have the framework of experience to understand why things are happening the way they are. We wrongly assume that everything that happens is about us (our fault), and it is all good or all bad. During infancy and early childhood we are completely dependent beings, driven to get those who provide us food, shelter and nurture to like us enough to take care of us so we can survive. We inevitably discover that we are not perfect in various areas that SEEM to be crucial to our acceptance by our caregivers so we must hide those dangerous secrets DEEP in our unconscious. Those ’secrets’ become the drivers our behaviors now, even though we don’t know what they are, or, even that they are there.
Radical Self Acceptance is the class designed to expose these secrets and stop them from driving our current behaviors. When we begin to understand who we really are, not the secrets we hid away as tiny children, we begin the journey to true regard, respect, admiration and acceptance of our ’self’. Once the journey is started, it does not stop.
Join me. The class is available every month. The class meets for 2 hours every week for 4 consecutive weeks. It is offered on Tuesday evenings from 7-9 or Thursdays at mid-day 11-1. Class size is limited to 8 students so register early.
Vive la FAMILY Revolution!
by Anne Schanz, Ph.D., LPC • October 27, 2010
I am so excited about our newly defined focus. FAMILIES!
It is about time we realized that the whole family unit must be involved if we want to make lasting lifestyle changes. One individual deciding to make changes doesn’t work well. I have experienced trying to improve my diet only to fail when everyone else in the house is still eating fast food, chips and sweets. If the whole family gradually embarked on changing eating patterns, what would that look like? Could we all be healthier?
Where do we go for this kind of support? The Alive and Healthy Institute! We offer support for individuals actually living in families and communities to make sustainable changes in their lifestyle habits. We have the team, we have the systematic program that has been around for thousands of years updated with modern science and techniques, all we need is you.
Join us!
Stay tuned. We have new and exciting healthy lifestyle programs coming in January!
