By Daniel J. Benor, MD

If you’ve got love in your heart, whatever you do from that moment out is likely to be right. If you’ve got that one true note ringing inside you, then whatever you do is going to be OK. It’s love, always love.    
                     – Ken Kesey

On Valentine’s Day we focus on amorous love, seeking those special ways to express to someone close to us that we care for them. Oddly, loving and caring for others is often easier for many of us than feeling love and caring for ourselves.

Working as a psychotherapist, I have come to see and understand that this issue is often core to people’s overcoming their problems. Finding and strengthening love for ourselves is essential in finding our ways out of the deep holes of hurt we carry inside us that are frequently covered over with layers of fears, distrusts and angers. Love is one of the most powerful energies we can muster on our paths of recovery from our wounds.

The film, music and advertising industries, and pop culture in general have capitalized on our searches and struggles to find erotic love. This has been so successful that it has colored the word love in the Western world with overtones of sexuality that may get in the way of our even saying that we love ourselves, which could be misinterpreted into auto-erotic implications.

The Greeks had words for love other than erotic love (which they called eros), such as:

– agape : selfless love of one person for another without sexual implications, especially love that is spiritual in nature (The Free Web Dictionary by Farlex).

– philia : the (non-sexual) love one holds for a friend. Aristotle gives examples of philia including:    “young lovers, lifelong friends, cities with one another, political or business contacts, parents and children, fellow-voyagers and fellow-soldiers, members of the same religious society, or of the same tribe, a cobbler and the person who buys from him” (Wikipedia).

English, lacking terms for sub-categories of love, hyphenates the word love in order to identify these or other variants such as motherly-love, fatherly-love and brotherly-love. What I am addressing here is self-love. This is the unconditional acceptance of oneself, with all one’s faults, foibles and issues that invite forgiveness of oneself.

Releasing resentments, angers and fears one holds towards others is a major challenge in therapy. What is often more difficult, however, are these same feelings one holds about one’s own feelings and towards oneself.

The commonest example is in grief over the loss of someone close. Grief includes mixtures of feelings of sadness, abandonment and emptiness; anger and resentment; and guilt. These feelings alternate and may cycle through many repetitions, in unpredictable order.

‘Betty’ lost her father when she was 15 years old. He had a single-vehicle accident late at night, hitting a tree on a curve while driving home on wet roads from the bar. At first, Betty felt all of these feelings in relationship with her father: anger that he had finally ended a life marked by many previous alcohol-related misbehaviors and mishaps; anger that he had, essentially, abandoned her; guilt over having angry feelings towards her now dead father; sadness and grief that he was no longer there, in his sober moments, for paternal support and guidance;

After several months of sorting through and releasing these feelings, Betty came to a place of needing to forgive herself: for things she had said and done that might have added to his stress levels and perhaps contributed to his drinking more, and guilt over not having done more to be supportive to him; sadness over not having told him she loved and appreciated him for the ways he had cared for her; and angers at herself for her own quick temper. These self-blame issues were harder for Betty to process and release than her feelings about her father’s behaviors.

In the end, Betty came to a place of acceptance of her father and of herself. A major help to Betty were repeated affirmations of love for herself, and a feeling that she was loved unconditionally by God, regardless of what she had done or not done, said or not said.

If you are working on problems of any sort, with approaches of any sort, you will find much benefit from adding affirmations of loving yourself and of being loved by others, including a sense of Divine love. Not all therapies include this, but it is a simple matter to develop affirmations of these sorts for yourself. TWR invites users to include affirmations about self-love and Divine love in their self-healing.

Above all, remember that you have the power of love to help yourself as well as to help others.

There are many other aspects of Wholistic Healing that can contribute to changes in body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit. In my 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist, I have found this to be one of the most potent elements contributing to self-healing.

Your feedback on this article is welcomed.

Dan
[email protected]

You may reproduce all or parts of this article in your journal, magazine, ezine, blog or other web or paper publication on condition that you credit the source as follows: Copyright © 2008 Daniel J. Benor, MD, ABHM   All rights reserved. Original publication at WholisticHealingResearch.com where you will find many more related articles on this and similar subjects of wholistic healing.