There are many definitions for love, but I want to talk about the non-romantic kind, as this platonic love is one we all experience whether we are in a relationship or not.
As I see it, to show love to others I should seek to be understanding, caring and patient, not demanding, nor hold a grudge. It means I am not envious, nor will I brag about myself for the purpose of feeling superior nor enjoy someone else’s pain. Treating others with respect is integral. Showing love is without being rude or arrogant. My motivation is grounded in integrity. This may seem like a tall order, and I often fail, but it is my aim when relating to others.
My parents taught me that the way to show love was to do things for them. So, I sought their approval for what I did so that I was assured of their love. I learned to work hard as an expression of love towards them. For dad, this meant achieving well and pleasing mum. For mum it meant doing things for her which made her life easier. When I left home, they told me I was doing nothing for them. As I was no longer able to prove my love, I felt abandoned. This taught me to show my love for others by doing things for them and not cease until they showed recognition for it. I spent much of my life trying to earn love.
Proving my love for my parents led me to be arrogant, resentful and demanding, because I was doing it with expectation. It made me competitive, and, in my envy, I found joy in knowing that other members of my family were suffering. Over the years I have learned that my expression of love differs from my parents’ expectations. For me, love is in giving my time, sharing my heart and caring. Doing things alone is not always love. Love involves my intentions, too.
Perhaps this sounds harsh, but changing the way I love has given me freedom. I know I have given with the best intention and that matters to me.
What is love to you and how were you taught to love?
In love, Jenny
Over my years of attending church, I often experienced bullying, usually by those in authority. Let’s face it, an obese woman with a low self-esteem did not fit in a church which was trying to impress the outside world. It did not want to attract people like me, after all I looked like a loser.
I was taught that regular church attendance, submission to its authority and confining myself to the relationships within the church was what God intended and the only way to be assured of a safe landing in heaven. That meant I had to put up with the way my church treated me to be a Christian.
Looking back, perhaps the mistreatment was a way to make me change or discourage me from attending, but it didn’t work. I was used to being bullied; it was part of my life as a child. I saw it as a necessary part of belonging in my family. Afterall, they paid my way, sent me to school and fed me, so it was just part of life.
Attending a church where I was mistreated seemed perfectly natural. And, believing in a god who used it as a tactic for submission seemed right. This god required that I attend two services on a Sunday, church events during the week and tithe for the privilege of belonging. He also looked down on psychologists, worldly music and television. I had to remain pure of mind. Demeaning treatment kept me submissive to the church doctrine and to those who were in control.
Over time, I began to question why love was not the modus-operandi of the church. I was told that it was a requirement for every Christian woman to be submissive to a man. My choice was submission to a male leader of the church, marry a man or submit to my father. At the time, none of these appealed to me, particularly if it meant more bullying.
Now I know that love would not expect me to endure bullying or any mistreatment for its sake and I have found permission to choose to remove myself from these situations.
Are you being bullied? Please don’t think that in enduring mistreatment you are doing good. Instead, you may be enabling abusive behaviour.
In love, Jenny
Narcissism seems to be a hot topic with some. But if we display behaviours which appear to be narcissistic, does that make us narcissists?
Narcissistic personality disorder is a diagnosable condition. The Mayo Clinic defines it this way: “Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.”
I know people who seem to have strong narcissistic tendencies, but that does not mean they have the condition. My guess is that those we are calling narcissists have never been diagnosed. I know I have done this before, more than once. And I can certainly see myself in the description above; I am sure we all can. Even recently my self-worth was low, and I found the need to brag and draw attention to myself. But does that mean I am a narcissist?
We all have narcissistic tendencies. It’s all about the degree and the consistency of the behaviour. Perhaps we are unfairly labelling people for being human, just like us. There is nothing like projecting our own behaviour on to others instead of facing the truth about ourselves. There is a phrase “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”, that is we should not criticise those who have the same faults as ourselves.
Looking back, my own self-centred behaviour was rooted in trauma. Seeking external affirmation and attention for my low self-esteem did not resolve the problem, because if I did not get the affirmation, my esteem plummeted further and the need for it increased. Learning what love is and that I was loved, satisfied this need in me and the behaviour has slowly vanished.
The way I see it, we are all immature in some way, and we all have unresolved trauma which blocks our growth. For me, learning how to love others and myself helps me face my unresolved trauma and helps me mature. At times, the behaviour exhibited towards me has been too much, so I removed myself from the situation. Because that’s what I think love would do.
In love, Jenny
Gabor Mate is a Canadian-Hungarian physician with a focus on trauma and its impact on our physical and mental health. I find his work meaningful as it resonates with my personal experience. Lately I have been listening to one of his courses in which he speaks about the issues surrounding attachment and authenticity.
This is an interesting topic as each of us have experienced the emotional tug between our need for attachment and our own authenticity. I struggle when my need to be myself threatens my need to belong. This was most obvious when I ventured out on my own in my early 20s.
Like many other country people at the time, I grew up in an insular environment. We were not active in the local community, except through business. Whereas others were a part of the local football club, church groups, or even met up at the local pub, by the time I came along my family did not interact socially. As we kept to ourselves, there was little influence on the way we saw the world. In our own way we lived by the gospel of the Marshalls.
My experience of the world when finding my own path changed my attitudes, and this posed a threat to the Marshall family gospel. The timing of my departure fell at the same time as my mother’s illness which meant the family focus was primarily on her. I was on my own, I saw life differently and experienced life differently. I was the first to attend university in the family and, started my career as an accountant at the beginning of the computer revolution. I was the only one to work in an office and to attend a church regularly.
This caused angst between myself other family members; my belongingness and attachment to them was threatened. But I had found my life, and as always with growth, there was no going back for me. At the time, relinquishing the attachment I had with my mother was excruciating. The rift between my family and myself has never resolved, but I have had to move on. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the support I received, and I long to belong as I once did, but it demanded a loyalty I could not give if I was to have my own life.
Have you experienced this? If you have, my heart goes out to you.
In love, Jenny
I am sure you have experienced times of great anxiety. Times when you are overwhelmed by fear. I know I have been frozen in fear and unable to make decisions. Fear is like that; it can be immobilising. With it comes other emotions such as guilt and shame, which are at the core of the immobilisation.
How often do we try to generate internal motivation by threatening ourselves? New year’s resolutions are fraught with this behaviour. We tell ourselves: the time to make a change is now, or else! But, over the days and months after the threat our motivation is lost.
Fear can only motivate for a short period of time, because fear is a response to impending doom, and we are not built to cope with this for an extended period. Think sabre-toothed tiger and imagine running from the fear. How long would you last? Only a short time, I’m sure.
So it is with our lives. I cannot make the distance with fear as the motivation. For me it ends up in a ball of shame and guilt. Guilt, because I have failed and shame because I see myself as inadequate as a person. Have you experienced this?
It surprises me how often this form of motivation is still used. Enter Fundamental Christianity, where the fear of God’s rejection is used to force the submission of its believers, who tense under the weight. What about those of us who have suffered from obesity? Again, friends and medical practitioners use shame and fear-based comments to motivate us to change our habits. But it doesn’t work, often because we are using food to comfort our fears, so shaming only deepens the habit.
Lately, I have gained a fresh understanding of my own core motivation. I feared that I was not loved as a child and carried this into adulthood. This was at the heart of my eating disorder. But when I discovered what real love was, my life changed forever, and I haven’t looked back. Love gave me hope and to this I clung. It reduced my stress and enabled me to believe in myself and make healthy decisions.
Are you still motivating yourself with fear?
In love, Jenny
I grew up with toxic relationships. The demeaning, competitive, manipulative and dishonest way of relating eventually destroyed the connection between the members of our family. Until her stroke, mum had kept the family together in a fragmented sort of way. But after her stroke when she lost the ability to grasp what was going on around her, the competition between my siblings and myself tore at the fabric of our connection and destroyed any bonds we had developed.
Visiting my family meant walking on eggshells. I feared saying, or doing something which could bring on a destructive reaction toward me. Initially, I held on in the hope that things would change for the better. But, with a lack of support, my mental health deteriorated, and I found it necessary to make my own way in life, leaving them behind. Despite the pain, it was a necessary thing to do for my own sanity.
So, what are the signs of a toxic relationship and what do we do about it?
Toxic relationships are those where you find yourself feeling (https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/blog/8-signs-of-a-toxic-relationship):
Toxic relationships are also characterised by jealousy of you or what you have, dishonesty, holding onto grudges and sarcasm.
Because of my early years, I have lived with guilt and shame. Guilt because my decisions, boundaries and relationships were not accepted. And shame because I thought there was nothing good about me. Over time my health, life decisions and posture were affected by my lack of self-care. Despite my efforts, I still live with the physical consequences of this.
My advice is that unless both parties involved are willing to accept their part in the toxicity, and stop blaming each other, then it is best to leave the relationship. In my case, I realised that the other members of my family were getting something they were unwilling to sacrifice for me, so I had no choice but to leave.
Remember, you are worth the effort.
In love, Jenny
Body image is a combination of the thoughts and feelings we have about our body. Our body image is influenced by factors such as our personality or our social environment. There are four aspects of body image – the way we see our body, the way we feel about it, the way we think about it and the way we behave because of these aspects. (https://nedc.com.au/eating-disorders/eating-disorders-explained/body-image)
I have struggled with a negative body image for as long as I can remember. As a child, I felt ashamed of my body, saw it as ugly and thought negatively of it. Because of my beliefs I punished it and developed an eating disorder by my early teens. My hatred of my body and what I thought it represented led to my weight ballooning to around 250 kg.
Looking back, I can see that my negative body image developed because of family messages about my appearance, gender and dislike of who I was as a child. From a child’s perspective, I assumed it was my fault. I figured I must be ugly, and it must be the way I looked. I saw no point in taking care of myself and sought comfort in the only way I knew, through food.
As an adult my body image was influenced negatively by how people reacted to my appearance. I learned that we all struggle at any age with this issue and there are those who will reinforce our own negative beliefs.
In my mid-thirties, I was fortunate to develop a strong bond with someone who managed to convince me that I was worth it, and I mattered. This was the beginning of the change in my body image. My friend could see beyond how I looked and saw me as a valuable.
Over the years, I have slowly developed a healthier relationship with my body. Although I am not satisfied with it, I can accept it. After all, it has brought me this far, and I am in awe of its ability to heal from the damage created by my behaviour. I learned that punishing myself for my looks and eating behaviours did not change me. But the slow change in my attitude towards my body led me to choose a healthy lifestyle, seek higher education and do what I could to help myself live my best life.
A healthy body image is an important part of self-acceptance, it influences how we feel about ourselves and every aspect of our life. For me, it has led to better life choices and behaviours relating to food and exercise.
What is your body image like?
In love, Jenny
As the child in my family who was much younger than my siblings, I have lived with the feeling that I am less than others. Always too young, too immature, and too late, I was left out of family decisions. Sadly, it has taken me many years to work out that while it may have been true in my younger years, it is no longer true now that I am lagging behind everyone else.
Through my journey out of these core beliefs I learned that we all have a facade which we present to others. I have pressured myself to live up to the image we all want the world to see rather than what lurks behind it. Each of us hides our true self in some way from others, some live entrenched in deep fear, presenting only a well refined image to those surrounding them. Many of these are the more successful, having used this technique to influence their way to the top of their careers, rather than developing the skills needed to perform in their position. I have envied these individuals, as I could never be as good as their façade, nor could I present myself in this way.
What I have discovered is that the pressure I have been putting on myself has been unnecessary because I have competed with an illusion, a projected image of who the person wanted to be rather than who they truly were. Enter the authentic self where we present what we really are underneath. Here there is no room for bluffing, manipulating, or lying. It is in this place that we are the person the world sees and there is no other self.
The point of this post is to say that if you are pressuring yourself to keep up with the Joneses, be aware that they are not revealing all the information behind their image. Instead of improving themselves, they choose to cover up their inadequacies.
Scratch beneath the surface and you will discover that we all have the same fears and insecurities.
With whom are you competing?
In love, Jenny
When I was 22, I lost mother I had always known. She was nearly 58 years old at the time and suffered a stroke which was the result of complications related to diabetes. Overnight her personality changed, her memory was lost and her ability to be a mother gone. Although she recognised me, our relationship was different. At the time, I was emotionally immature and dependent on her. My own identity was not yet fully developed, and it was as if I had lost myself. Not only had her stroke changed her life, but mine as well and everyone close to her.
She was now a shell which looked like my mother, but her behaviour was like someone I did not know: an imposter in my mother’s body. Something had changed within her, and no amount of effort could bring her back. She could no longer remember significant events from the previous 20 or so years, but she could remember the day of her marriage and what had happened earlier in her life. A section of her life was lost to her, and she never fully recovered it.
Her personality changed, too. Mum had rarely cried, but afterwards I sat many nights with her at hospital as she wept openly. Then, she changed again to become a giggly, immature person who took no responsibility for her actions. She was less interested in other’s emotions and focussed mostly on herself. She lost the ability to withhold her feelings and thoughts, often behaving inappropriately. Instead of considering the impact of her actions on others, she spoke without thought. In one instance, she gave a book about sex to a good church-going woman. This was given back to me in a brown paper bag!
This is the tragedy of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, the loss of someone you love without losing them physically. It is strange to recognise someone, but not know the person they have become. For me, the hardest thing to deal with is the misunderstanding of others. Experience is the only way to grasp dementia’s life-changing impact on the lives of those who are close.
It is the grief of life as it was, and the loss of the person you love although they are still with you bodily. For many people it also means responsibility for someone to whom they no longer feel close and no longer know.
For anyone who is going through this, your grief is real, and I know it is hard.
In love, Jenny
