I've posted before about the 5 A's of love-in-action. These 5 A's represent what makes anybody feel loved in the context of their own important personal relationships. They are: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection, and Allowing. Allowing means that we are free, as in free to be our genuine selves, in our relationship life.
When you are in a close personal relationship with someone who you love and care about, each of these 5 A's are ideally flowing in both directions. This is true both for our important platonic relationships, and our romantic relationships. You "give" your person attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing....and they are able to do the same for you in return.
However, what we all tend to ignore and/or conveniently "forget" is that it is very difficult to actively love someone else when we don't practice actively loving ourselves in the first place! As such, practicing the Five A's in a self-directed manner may represent our greatest personal challenge to date. Today's blog post will help clarify what actively loving ourselves looks like in the context of the 5A's...
Attention:
Paying attention to yourself. What does that mean exactly? I don't know about you, but I certainly know that way too many of us do NOT pay proper and ongoing attention to our own bodies/health status as an act of self-love. So, that is the first way in which we might raise the bar regarding the ways we pay better attention---to our own physical condition!
Without turning today's blog post into a self-check form from the doctor's office, just allow yourself to think about what you do NOT do that you know you NEED to do to better pay attention AND actively love your physical self. What have you NOT been paying enough attention to? I don't know about you, but whenever I see a person my own age shuffling around like they are 87 instead of 67---I feel sad! Then again, did this person smoke their way through their adult life since turning 18? Did they eat wrong food, drink wrong substances, party like it was 1999 all the time? Or did they just get handed a really bad deck of genetic cards? Whatever the case, it's never too late to pay better attention to what we can do to improve our own physical condition/health status. For example, anyone who takes opioids for chronic pain, guess what? At some point, those pills you are taking are actually causing more intense pain instead of relieving it. I'm not making this up. It's called opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH). Did you know that? Why didn't you know that? Did your doctor talk to you about it? Did you do your research to find out why you hurt "more" now than you ever did after XX months or years popping Oxy or Norco or Vicodin or Somas? Yeah, it's like that. Pay better attention. That's how you actively love yourself better through this particular "A" of the 5 A's....
Paying better attention to our mental health is another area of self-care that far too many neglect in favor of whatever else takes higher priority. For example, if we already know that we are fast to heat up (with anger) and slow to cool down when triggered or offended by whatever and whenever---that's NOT "just the way it is" for the rest of your life! Or how about when you think you "know" what motivates someone to say something that you instantly interpret as a harsh judgement against you? So wow now you are the Amazing Kreskin? Spare me! Let's get real for a moment: do you really accept that way you roll as perfectly acceptable in a world getting goofier by the minute? Are you kidding me right now? There is always a treatment plan that can improve the status of your mental health challenges; more complicating challenges come when you decide you function best as your own doctor feel good! When you start vaping weed, doing other drugs or substances of choice (What's next? Dog doo doo?), drinking alcohol, eating more or eating nothing, gambling, cheating on your partner, stealing, lying, etc. to cope with your own dysfunctional self: this NOT paying better attention! This is pretending what you want to drink, eat, smoke, snort, or inject "works". Yet it doesn't. End of.
When it comes to loving yourself through the "A" of "Attention"...the bottom line is to practice treating yourself---body, mind, spirit, and social relationships---like the gold you are instead of like discarded junk lying and abandoned on the side of the road. How about that?
Acceptance:
When I was a kid, there was a kid on my block who definitely had a hard time living inside his own skin. He was often agitated (we called it being "hyper" back then!), angry, distracted, and friendless. I know these things to be true because his sister was my best friend at the time. I won't lie; a kid like that can be either an easy target---or the kid you want to stay away from at all costs. In my case, even though he was younger than me, he was a ticking time bomb. I learned that after he tore the tip of my finger off one summer, and nearly broke my hand another time. Needless to say, this kid was very difficult to be around. To imagine actively "loving" him utilizing the "A" of "Acceptance"...are YOU joking? Yet his mother often ordered his sister and I to take him with us when we would go to the local park, or up to our downtown shopping district. I'd go back home most often whenever that happened. He was too much like a lit firecracker. We didn't know when he would go off, but we knew he always did eventually. No thanks.
But what about him? Did he practice the "A" of self-acceptance as someone who others typically bullied or were bullied by? No, he did not. To me, it was clear that this kid really hated himself. He would pound his head against the ground when he was having one of his melt-downs which came often enough in my presence. He engaged in other self-injurious behaviors as well...but we didn't know to call it that at the time. So how does one practice Acceptance when we really and truly do NOT like who we are?
Self-acceptance begins by learning how to slow down enough to examine ways we "are" that we know (inherently or otherwise!) are judged harshly by a majority of others because...??? I know someone right now who was ready to burn her ex at the stake for divorcing her. On the other hand, she struggled deeply with self-loathing and self-incrimination AS IF "what happened" in her former marriage was entirely her own fault. Believe me, it was not. On the other hand, this same woman allowed herself to slow down and start thinking more clearly about "who" judged her harshly, "who" falsely accused her, and "who" scapegoated her since childhood in order for her to believe them about "who" she was as a person---instead of believing the God who created her as a self-professing Christian person? Once she was able to do this, she better accepted herself as is, as a work in progress through her own life, without treating herself like her whole identity was wrapped up in a big box and bow marked SHAME LIVES HERE. Stop! Another example? Why do you think the neurodivergent movement has gained such traction in recent years? It is because neurodivergent people were truly sick of being told "who" they are, and negatively so, by others who did not genuinely understand neurodivergence and what it means. Instead of living in shame and apologizing for their very existence, they are taking back their personal power and basically saying "Enough is enough!" to that part of the world who refuses to accept them as is.
In the case of my friend's younger brother, his life didn't turn out too great. I understand he's a hoarder living alone in another state, with more than a few marriages under his belt, and who hasn't worked in his chosen profession for over 30 years. That just isn't right. He could have should have but didn't get help as a kid when he most needed it. What he got was enough doses of "Here are all the reasons why you should hate yourself!"...and he grew to believe them 100%. How tragic. Don't let this happen to you in your own life now---or in your future!
Next post, we will address the A's of Appreciation, Affection, and Allowing....