{"id":827,"date":"2012-10-24T16:01:34","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T05:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.narcissismcured.com\/blog\/?p=827"},"modified":"2016-12-07T12:58:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T01:58:30","slug":"the-light-within-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/the-light-within-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Light Within – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/p>\n

Are You Addicted to Love?<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am so glad that everyone loved Gabor Mate\u00b4s TED talk (in Part One<\/a>) just as much as I did.<\/p>\n

I wonder how many people saw themselves in his description of what an addict is, and how many – like myself in the past – suffer from an overwhelming addiction to love and attention from your partner?<\/p>\n

‘The light within’, that Dr. Mate\u00b4speaks of, is the only cure for love addiction that I know of, and is so central to our program that I thought it worth another mention today.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I am accused of telling people that they are not doing the steps in our program properly instead of accepting that, for some people, (these critics say) our program just doesn’t work.<\/p>\n

I am not sure how to answer that criticism except to say that I know that what we teach here can be very hard to grasp. It also may NOT change your partner’s behavior, but in that event if you follow the steps you will certainly improve your own emotional regulation which, in turn, will improve your ability to deal with your situation whether you decide to stay or leave.<\/p>\n

Of this fact I am sure.<\/p>\n

Like what Gabor Mate\u00b4mentions in his Ted talk, ‘the light within’ is the same message that Jesus and Buddha both taught, and so it would be immodest of me to think that I could do better as a teacher, but still these two great teachers still obviously didn’t reach everyone with this truth.<\/p>\n

Metaphors abound when it comes to describing what Jesus called ‘the kingdom of heaven’ which he often described in such a way that it could be easier understood as a state of being more than a place.<\/p>\n

The book of Thomas says that if we bring forth what is within us it will save us but that if we don’t bring it forth it will destroy us – and to me it seems clear that this must be a reference to this very same light within.<\/p>\n

Another description Steve and I often use for this is ‘self soothing’.<\/p>\n

There are however some common problems people come up against finding this divine spark within themselves, especially when facing despair and needing it the most.<\/p>\n

Because you cannot connect to your ‘light within’ while you are still seeking that ‘external thing’ you habitually crave to fill your inner void.<\/p>\n

While the idea we like to use of you having a pair of magic scissors to disconnect from thinking about your partner can really help, it is a challenging leap of faith to let go of the longing that addiction causes and take those magic scissors and really use them.<\/p>\n

Another image I have sometimes used in the past is of me being an astronaut climbing on the outside of my rocket deep in space and then letting go and allowing myself to fall backwards into the dark void.<\/p>\n

Are you trying so hard to will your partner to call or show some concern for you that you feel exhausted from all that internal effort? It’s like believing that by a force of will your thoughts alone can keep the world turning and all of the airplanes in the sky.<\/p>\n

Just ‘letting go’ of trying to control the situation will give you some unexpected and instant relief.<\/p>\n

And once you have let go, that divine spark will be so much easier to feel inside yourself (it has always been there!) and if you breath and continue to let your troubled thoughts go and instead focus on something beautiful and positive – that spark will soon grow into a flame.<\/p>\n

This will make you much calmer and effective and will also make you more attractive – but there is a big catch with this too.<\/p>\n

Because although learning to self soothe and connect to your own inner light will make you infinitely more attractive<\/em>, you will not find it if that is the only reason why you are seeking it.<\/p>\n

That would be like entering a drug rehab center because you think you will find drugs there!<\/p>\n

So that is a very sad catch 22 – but it is true. You will not become the lovable person that you really are deep inside until you love yourself enough to no longer need or crave love and attention from outside yourself.<\/p>\n

So when you think about magic scissors and self soothing you need to ask yourself what you are seeking? Are you pushing down the hurt and just pretending to be happy in an ongoing attempt to please your partner and win their love? Because if that is your only reason to self soothe it is not going to work.<\/p>\n

Have you ever seen someone pretend to be happy and calm when really they are holding a lot of resentment inside?<\/p>\n

I bet you can see through that kind of pretence.<\/p>\n

This is because our brains are hard wired to pick up on other people’s emotional states and we will naturally shy away from people whose Amygdala (emotional brain) is firing, even if they are trying to hide it.<\/p>\n

One very good reason for this is because emotions are contagious and we don’t want to catch anyone else’s mania or bad mood.<\/p>\n

Some people are more susceptible to these ’emotional contagions’ than others, but really no matter how cool, calm and collected a person is, there is still a point where they will become rattled by someone else’s negative emotions – even when those emotions are not being displayed openly.<\/p>\n

So this is why Steve and I teach people something known as ’emotional regulation’ which is in effect you learning to recognise when your Amygdala has been triggered (and you have lost your connection with your inner calm or ‘light within’) and then to take note of what triggered that response as fast as possible (writing it down if you can) and call a ‘time out’ on yourself for a while until you have found your internal sense of calm again.<\/p>\n

Then later if what triggered the upset is something you assess as being an ongoing problem that needs attention, you can think about how you are going to go about dealing with that problem when it comes up again in the future.<\/p>\n

But this can’t be done by halves. You need to first use your magic scissors and cut off thinking about where you partner is and what they are doing\/thinking about and self soothe until you have truly found your own internal happiness again.<\/p>\n

Because this is not about pushing your anger down so that you stay calm and don’t rock the boat, and nor is it about you pretending to be happy while still you are hooked like an addict, constantly craving your partner’s love.<\/p>\n

In my case this meant that I didn’t win Steve’s love until I was ready to do the right thing by myself and my kids, even if that meant losing him. Back then I didn’t know that would change his attitude towards us but I am very happy that it did.<\/p>\n

Looking back on this change is very hard on me now – because in hindsight I can really see that the problem was not just Steve. My addiction to his love and attention and my obsession with it must have been horrible for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are You Addicted to Love?   I am so glad that everyone loved Gabor Mate\u00b4s TED talk (in Part One) just as much as I did. I wonder how many people saw themselves in his description of what an addict is, and how many – like myself in the past – suffer from an overwhelming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":321,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[320],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-narcissistic-personality-disorder","tag-gold-level-members","entry","no-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narcissismcured.com\/thelovesafetynet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}