Emerald's 10 Step Recipe to Self Love

Dear readers,

I've received a number of letters that all end up with the same question: how can I stop this rollercoaster? How can I gain the strength to make a change for the better? How can I gain self- esteem?

I'm going to answer all of those letters with Emerald's 10 Step Recipe to Self Love. Grab a bag of chocolate chip cookies and a six-pack of expensive beer (my favorite dish before I stopped drinking!), and settle in for the read.

Thanks to Lawdy Mercy!, Grouchie, Belldandy, and OMG I have forgotten, (I'm SORRY!), for giving me helpful additions when I posted this on TOW.

How can we learn to love ourselves?

1). Make a decision. This is an intellectual decision. You do not have to feel a thing. Decide, right here and now, that you want to learn how to love yourself, and that you will.

Making this decision is the single most important part of this journey. I mean it.

It is here where you decide that you can and will grow. It is here where you decide that you are not a victim, not stuck in a situation created by others. Here you decide that your life is an evolution towards a beautiful destiny that, as of this moment, you begin to mold.

You may not FEEL deserving. You may feel pathetic or helpless. Or, on the contrary you may feel all-powerful and arrogant. So what. Summon all of your powers and SAY OUT LOUD: I commit to the journey of loving myself!! I commit!!

2) Accept yourself exactly as you are today. Period. You will have to do this on a daily or hourly basis. It is the fundament of self-love.

No matter how crappy you feel or how badly you hate yourself for being where you are in this moment, make a decision, once again, to BELIEVE that you are whole and perfect and beautiful as you are. Make a decision to BELIEVE that you are exactly where you are meant to be. Make a decision to believe that nothing, absolutely nothing, is wrong right now.

Because nothing is wrong. You're where you're supposed to be.

Look in from where the angels live. They are concerned, of course, but they are smiling. They do not judge you at all. They see the real you, the whole and brilliant you. They know you are on your journey towards that You, and they know the place you occupy right now is temporary. You are on one stepping stone in a long path of change.

Regardless of how gross or painful it feels, practice accepting you and your life as perfectly OK.

3) Get your butt to therapy.

Sorry, I stand firm on this one. Change is really rough. Most of us don't do it on our own. We kick and scream. We need help. We need help recognizing OUR PATTERNS. I bet the secret to my hairdo that your EMR is an old pattern of yours in a new form.

We need therapy because we need help identifying what what we are changing from, and what we are becoming. We need help cutting through our own bullshit. We need help taking responsibility for our own lives. We need help getting angry at mommy and daddy. We need help forgiving mommy and daddy. We need help seeing ourselves in new and loving ways.

Most important, we need help forgiving ourselves. Find a therapist who gets this and go. Regularly.

4). Make a decision to learn how your journey encompasses mind, spirit and body.

Look, everything you have done up until now has landed you right here, in a place where your mind, spirit and body are unhappy. More than unhappy, they (You) are HUNGRY, STARVING for new food that will create positive changes in your attitudes and actions.

Go out and find that food. Hunt or gather, or both. Make it fun. Take trips to the bookstore and sit in the addictions, spirituality, self-help, relationship, new age, WHATEVER sections and feed yourself. This is VERY important. Create time for self-feeding. You will not grow without new food. You cannot change if you recycle the old information that got you here.

We are gifted with gazillions of books which inspire us to create our unique journeys. At the end of this I will give a list of my favorites, but it is important to go out and find your own.

Take responsibility for this FULLY. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen posts which say ‘Oh my God I just read this book, this paragraph, this article, and it made so much sense to me!" Find yourself in those books. It will change your life.

5) Exercise. Start small and keep going. I am a complete NUTCASE if I don't exercise. No matter how I feel before I start, I always feel better afterwards. No matter how much of my life I have given over to Mr. Unavailable, exercising is always only for ME.

Excercise battles depression, the blahs, the fats, the grosses, the pitymes. And, if you find a gym or a class, you have the chance to socialize.

Seriously, exercising is such a simple way to love yourself.

6). Decide if you are or have been in the throes of one, or several addictions.

I do not want to say that every EMR is an addiction. Maybe some are not. However, many EMRs take on very addictive qualities. Seemingly normal people become obsessed with their lover in ways they never imagined possible.

Go learn about addictions. Are you addicted to substances, alcohol, shopping, gambling, relationships, or other addicts? Did you grow up in an alcoholic or abusive household? These questions can be addressed in therapy (you ARE in therapy now, aren't you?).

The answers will be the basis for your healing. That is a fact. Do not underestimate the importance of this part of your self-discovery. In adulthood we are healing old wounds.

If the wounding has led you to addictions, the intensity of an addiction equals the intensity of your inner longing to heal your wounds with self-love. Repeat that 4,000 times.

If you have no addictive background but find yourself unable to leave your EMR, learn about relationship addictions anyway. My favorite books on the topic are "Women Who Love Too Much" by Robin Norwood, and anything written by Melody Beattie on Co-Dependency. If you read nothing else ever, please read these two authors.

If you discover yourself to be an addict/addictive type and/or a co-dependent (ahem, like, who isn't these days?), consider one of the many 12-Step programs available, for free, to all of us. Actually, don't consider them, just GO. 12-Step programs saved my life, spurred my healing and opened every single door I have walked through in the past 5 years. Every one. What more can I say about that?

7) Get in touch with your dreams.

I am not talking about your dreams of a happily ever after with MM. I am talking about YOUR dreams. They may be very simple. They may be grandiose. It doesn't matter as long as they are yours. Your dreams are priceless. They are the ideas you have about who you really are and truly can be.

Believe it or not, after EMR hell began, my only dream was finding peace. Once the pain set in with MM#1 (almost five years ago), I realized that nothing would matter to me unless I had inner peace. That became the primary focus of my journey. It then became clear that being OW would not allow me inner peace, and so the struggle to grow out of that role began.

If your dreams are all about new cars and big houses and lots of money, but contain nothing about the inner you, you have some work to do. That's OK. Use your dreams as a grounding point. Wake up every day and force yourself to define a clear notion of who you want to be (because that is who you are) and accept that you are becoming that person right now.

8) Say affirmations. They work.

If you dream of feeling safe and secure in the arms of a man, and feel lost and alone without him, say out loud, " I am safe, protected and secure all by myself!"

If you dream of having money enough to pay the bills and buy a house, say "I am rich and live in a world of abundance. Everything I need is always available to me!"

If you dream of feeling loved unconditionally by a man (probably MM, right?), say out loud: "I love myself unconditionally and I am loved unconditionally. I am worthy of unconditional love just by being me!"

This may seem SO SILLY, but saying affirmations shifted my focus from negative beliefs about myself to positive beliefs about me and my place in the world.

Look, if I can't say it, I can't live it. Saying affirmations out loud sends me and the world a clear message about who I am (in wacky talk it's called setting your intentions), and makes me responsible for becoming who I am.

Also, affirmations are excellent ways to get through addiction pains. For example, when he doesn't call and you are filled with that awful angsty hurty gnawing insecure dread, say "I am a whole and perfect human being. I have everything I need inside of me to be happy. There is nothing missing from my life!" I must have said that 4,000 times. It works.

There are great books with daily affirmations and meditations. Get them.

9) Up until now we haven't talked about your relationship with MM. Pretty interesting, huh?

OK. You love the man more than life itself and you are in pain when you feel rejected or when you feel you are less important to him than he is to you.

TAKE YOUR POWER BACK. - YOU CAN DO THIS ANY TIME.

If MM represents your security or self-worth or your loveability, you will, of course, be terrified if you perceive him pulling away. You will also be terrified to pull away from him.

That terror is indescribable. It is what keeps us where we are.

Unconsciously you have placed your Inner Self in his hands and said "Care for me and feed me please." That is the last thing the man can do. He is married. You are living in the crazy zone between what you wish for and what is real. It hurts.

If you've been reading, doing your affirmations, deciding to love yourself, going to therapy, going to 12 step meetings, etc., you have started to develop your own safety net. You have started to fill the space he occupies with support created by YOU that NEVER, EVER, EVER goes away. You are safe and you are beginning to know that.

You can change things in your relationship that will boost your self-esteem through the roof.

Decide that you cannot meet him one night when he is free. Decide you will not pick up the phone once when you know it is him. Decide that today you will wait until noon to call him. Decide that you can do ONE thing differently and do it.

You will feel VERY uncomfortable the first time. I felt like I was pulling the skin from my body. Saying no to an old action made me long for it EVEN MORE. The longing was INTENSE!!

I always tell the story of sitting in the middle of my living room floor when I was dying to call him, arms wrapped around my knees, praying for the strength to feel safe and secure without hearing his voice. Or of lying in bed with my fists clenched to my chest saying "I have everything I need inside of me" so as not to pick up the phone and call.

It's difficult at first. But if you can do it once, you will notice a change in yourself that will ASTOUND you!

If you succeed in doing one thing differently, add new things as you can.

10) Learn to pamper yourself. Treat yourself as you would a best friend or a child who is healing from a fatal disease.

I mean this. We ARE healing from a fatal disease. The disease of addiction, or the trauma of hitting emotional bottom after emotional bottom in an EMR has nearly killed our spirit. We are learning how to heal ourselves, one baby step at a time, to get back to a place of joy, laughter, life, and self-love.

How much compassion would you have for your best friend if she told you YOUR story? How much compassion would you have for your daughter or niece if she landed on your doorstep in YOUR state of emotional being?

What would you recommend they do?

This is you. Be gentle and loving with yourself, but firm about your daily practice of healing. Make sure healing yourself is a daily practice. That is how your baby steps lead to those joyous leaps and bounds into freedom.

If you fall at any time during this journey, never, ever beat yourself up for "going back". This is a journey. You do it at your own speed. Celebrate your progress every baby step of the way. As long as you have decided to do it, you cannot fail.

11) Help other people.

You have so much to share with the world. Do that. If it's online, or with your kids or your friends, or strangers, help other people. Force yourself to get out of your own head and give. Learn to value yourself for what you have to share.

If you are the type of person who caretakes others before caring for yourself, identify the difference between doing service for people and caretaking others for your own sense of self- worth. Big difference. Helping others who actually want your help feeds your soul while passing on precious gifts. Caretaking others before loving yourself leaves you feeling empty and unloved.

12) Stop all manipulative actions in your relationship.

Once you can pull back - even just a little - you need to get very clear on your motives for doing so. You are not ever pulling back in order to make him love you or want you more. You are pulling back because you want your power, self-esteem, and self-worth back.

Stop guessing what will make him react in certain ways and put that energy into figuring out what will make you love yourself.

Are you afraid to call him because he will think you are needy? Call him and tell him you are needy. Gage his response. Collect information on how he REALLY meets your needs. Be at peace with your neediness and figure out how to meet your own needs.

Are you afraid to not call him because he will think you don't love him? Ask yourself what you gain by not calling him. Will you gain a sense of self-control? Will you show yourself that you have more to your life than his phonecalls? Clench those fists, say those affirmations and get away from the phone.

The point is to stop doing things for him, and do everything - every little thing - for you. This is very empowering.

13) Deepen your journey.

If you have gotten to the point where you are taking your power back, little by little (or in one fell swoop, depending on your circumstances), you may find you have more energy and more self-Consciousness.

Use this energy for other activities that feed your mind, spirit and body. In my case I spent (honestly) a couple years reading nothing but "spiritual self-help" and 12 step literature. I couldn't digest anything else.

When you can't read one more of these books without barfing, the new you wants to grow. Do you want to draw, paint, dance, ice-skate, write, bird watch, go to the museum, take walks in nature, spend more time with your kids, make music, hear music blah blah? As the addictive energy dissipates, you may find that you want to do ALL of these things, and that you CAN.

By the way, you may still be involved with MM while doing all of this. We haven't spoken of saying goodbye to him, because in my opinion, that's not the point. In my opinion, it's important to build a self, fill that aching hole we perceive ourselves as having, with our own joys, so that saying goodbye becomes possible.

14) LOVE YOURSELF!

Just do it. Realize that the Inner You has just waged a Hezbollah (doesn't that mean Holy War?) with your Ego. Your ego has attached to something, or many things, that promised you love, happiness and fulfillment. The ego always attaches to "things" that promise but never, ever, ever, ever, ever deliver.

Your inner You is your Godself. Hopefully by now your journey through the bookstores has sent you on a spiritual path to your Godself. Hopefully you are filling yourself up with Love on a different level, from sources that are abundant, everpresent, and eternal, and you are experiencing an inner fulfillment and sense of self-worth that makes your relationship less important.

Hopefully you are starting to make choices and decisions that are not driven by that all- consuming, terrifying, chaotic, gnawing NEED for that THING out there.

So, just keep going. No matter where you are you are perfect.

Hugs - e

Do you agree or disagree with Emerald? Visit "The Last Word" and let her know what you think!

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