Emancipation of Jing Jing
One of the important phase for my plan to recover and retrieve my faith is to first learn to love myself. Loving myself means I have given up the futile and endless search for a source of love outside of me, based on or drawn from external people or things. Self-love has meant discovering the limitless Source of love within me. I am no longer dependent upon externals to supply an unhealthy neediness for love, worth, or validation.
Ironically, part of what drove my neediness for love was a concrete assurance. My insecuirty grew from my acute awareness of assurance of my worth and value to another person. Because I was insecure, I therefore did not perceive myself as being a lovable or worthwhile person. My insecurity, in turn, resulted in low self-esteem and deeper depression.
A significant breakthrough occurred when I finally admitted my imperfection (both to myself and to another person). Admitting that fact liberated me from it.
Previously, I had worked very hard to deny both my imperfection and my low self-worth, because I desperately wanted to deny that low self-worth was one of my core issues. Because of the denial, it persisted—one feeding endlessly on the other. By denying these two, I remained bound to it. By admitting and acknowledging these two factors, and more importantly, accepting both as a part of myself, I released myself from the insecurity, freed myself to accept myself unconditionally, and gave myself permission to start loving and esteeming all of me.
Continued belief in myself as a lovable and worthwhile person no longer depends upon an external source or upon external affirmation. I no longer “need” another person to constantly affirm my worth or relieve my security by loving me (i.e., since no one loves me, I must not be worth loving). I can give myself all the affirmation and love I need. Since my need for love and external affirmation is no longer an issue, the insecuirty associated with my low self-worth is gone.
I am a lovable and worthwhile person!
Now I can affirm it and truly believe it. Equally important, I now have an abundance of genuine self-love, which I can draw upon and give away love to others.
To use an analogy, it’s just as if I had an empty account in my “love” bank. I was erroneously waiting and longing for someone else to make the needed deposits, unaware that I could have been making huge deposits for myself all along. Now I have an abundance of love to give away. Because I have love to give away, I am truly a love-able person. I am no longer needy; I am healthy, and thus, even more lovable. By embracing and accepting my imperfection and my low self-worth, I empowered myself to change. I have an infinite source and reserve of love and self-esteem for myself.
The paradox of learning self-love is this—the more love I give myself, the more love I have to give away. The love account is never depleted. I can now give healthy love from the abundance of my own love and my own wholeness. True recovery is about giving clean, healthy, unconditional love, not getting love. My life is now characterized by an ever-expanding circle of love, rather than a downward spiral deeper into our journey for security and assurance.
Finally, all this healthy self-love unlocks the door to true self-esteem. Self-esteem and self-love are co-requisite. Because I am able to love myself and others unconditionally, I esteem myself; I hold myself in high regard; I value myself; I perceive myself as an able-to-give-love, worthwhile person. The abundance of my self-love is the clean, healthy gift of unconditional love I can now bring to all my relationships.
