“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your  love and affection.”                                                                                                   – Buddha

Do you like yourself, appreciate yourself, even love yourself to some extend? I hope so! Self- love is underestimated.

           A photographic illustration of self-love by monozygotic twins.

But honestly, the term self-love sounds very bad, egotistical, and selfish. Almost sickening and self-absorbed. Like Narcissus in the Greek myth, he fell in love with his own reflection in the pond.

Echo and Narcissus self-absorbed in mirroring himself at the pond.  by J.W. Waterhouse (1849 – 1917)

Superficial gratification

Much of today’s social life on the net seems to be driven by an urge to be seen, admired, even envied for looks and “outstanding achievements”. For many people, Facebook functions as a marketplace for exchanging looks, photos, travels, house, family, children, and recipes, for likes.

Actor Peter Sellers demonstrating unhealthy narcissism.

There may not be any problem in exchanging experiences, activities, and likes like this. The problem arises when this activity on the net, is the main channel we have, for self-assurance or self-confirmation.

“Me”, showing off to gain “your” acknowledgment and respect

Exchanging experiences like this are most often exchanging surface qualities. A beautiful smile, very white teeth, you and I standing on a stunning cliff overlooking a deep canyon. Me with dripping water from my well-exercised chest after a plunge from the diving board. You stunningly beautiful in your black and white evening dress at the pool with a glass of champagne in your hand.

  “You”,    doing the same to catch “my” attention   

Short-lived recognition.

Unfortunately, this way our deep craving for being loved will only be saturated for a very short period each time. Soon, “what’s up”, “what’s going on in your life”, – “anything new?”, will again force you to reproduce yourself as an ongoing and continuous success. That’s a must if you want to keep up your self-esteem and ranking in your social network.

Therefore, it’s only natural for me to advocate for a deeper kind of recognition than this. A recognition that goes beyond or below the surface. A type of acceptance that goes to your very inner core.

You’re of course lucky if you have people around you that know to love you, – come what may!

My teacher and mentor always reminded me of meeting our fellow-man with an open mind and a deep acceptance for the person in front of you. Always realizing that the person you meet is a product of birth, child-raising, environment, and of course struggle for life. Not least the person’s feelings, thoughts, and behavior is a result of the constant yearning for acceptance and love.

Children with backpacks symbolizing the “pack of love” given to us by our parents

However, unconditional love is very difficult to experience, if it’s not already there in your childhood’s backpack. Later from youth to maturity and old age and onwards, achieving love is a contingent phenomenon. You get acceptance and love if you do this and that, or have these and not those qualities as a person.

Friends forever

The exception from this pattern is hopefully your best friend. Through all kinds of situations and circumstances, – your very best and true friend, is at your side.

Best friends.

But even a best friend has his or her limitations. They have their lives, their ups, and downs, their daily toil. And they travel, work hard, get sick, have children and family themselves. I mean they are not always available.

 

Am I Your best friend?

Your own best friend!

The only person that you always carry with you everywhere, anywhere, all your life, – is yourself. I think that is the best reason for starting to be your very best friend in the world yourself.

Not only a casual friend, comrade, pal, or dude. But the very best and nice caring and loving person you can imagine. He or she that always stands at your side. He or she can see your limitations and comment on them, but never judge you negatively for that.

He or she that always encourages you to continue improving if you don’t succeed. He or she encourages you to continue working for the values you believe in and to realize your most important dreams.

    

In all kinds of weather…..

Your best friend in yourself is sincerely fond of you. Yes, he or she, really loves you and wants the best for you. He or she can hug you, embrace you and take high five with you. Your best friend in yourself recognizes and loves you, no matter what happens. And with this friendly, caring, and positive attitude inside you, you will never feel totally alone!

Deep thoughts about recognition and acceptance.

Recognition is an interesting concept, both philosophically and psychologically as well as legally! In foreign policy, your nation may recognize another nation, de facto, without recognizing it de jure. We accept (de facto) that you “Kabolia” exists as a separate nation in the world, even though we do not recognize your way of governing (de jure), your country.

In the great legacy of German philosopher W.F. Hegel, recognition is the keyword in understanding human relations or so-called interpersonal dialectics.  As for contemporary philosopher Axel Honneth “The Struggle for Recognition”( 1992) is considered to be a main motivational factor in human relations. (cf. The Frankfurter School’s Critical Theory, where recognition and human dignity is discussed)

Social psychologists like G.H. Mead (1934), and relational psychologists like Jessica Benjamin (1988), and A.L. Schibbye, (2009) also use the term and concept recognition as a major part of their intersubjective theories.

        

Can self-love be as healthy as healthy food?

 

“It’s surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you’re not comfortable within yourself, you can’t be comfortable with others.” – Sidney J. Harris

The dialectics of love.

When you love yourself it’s also easier to love and truly accept other people.

Imagine yourself saying and writing “I”. Look at the “I”. How does it appear? It seems like a vertical column with a very small bar at the top and bottom. Let us imagine that this “I” is a symbol of yourself and that the upper bar is your head and the lower bar is your feet. (stretch your imagination beyond the usual if it’s too difficult to see)

The letter “I” symbolizing the vertical relation between your head and your self and body

In between the little upper bar and the lower bar is your body. Your chest, heart, stomach, abdomen, thighs, knees, and legs. Imagine that your head has a psychological relation to all this below your neck. And that you send not only likes and thumbs up to this vertical body of yours. You send genuine recognition and love.

Unconditional love like a mother and father to their beloved daughter and son. As parents, they love this “creature” no matter how he or she is or what happens. And looking into his or her wonderful eyes of innocence and expectance, they just can’t help loving this child.

    

The open eyes of a child

Now it is your turn to practice this love vertically on yourself!

Say aloud or silent, that you are very fond of and even love this self that nature has given you. Remember no one else can live your life other than yourself, walk your path in life, make the choices you do, solutions you make. And no one else than you can be your psychological judge.

If it’s hard to generate this love for yourself, then ask why? Why do I experience it so hard to say; I love you. Perhaps you feel that you have never learned the art of self-recognition. Nobody has taught you. Shame on them!

Then don’t fall into the same ditch yourself by continuing not to send yourself acceptance and love. Do you say it’s egotistical? No, it is absolutely not egoistical or narcissistic! It’s accepting the whole person you are with the shortcomings the limitations and even some really bad traits of yours.

Not to accept yourself in spite of flaws and shortcomings is denying reality, and it is not trying hard enough in the art and dialectics of love. As I interpret Srecko Horvath in his reflections on love and politics, today very few people are prepared for or interested in the hard work of regenerating love, after the period of intense romance.

That goes for political ideas as well as partnership and marriage. People walk from one relationship to the next, on repeat! Or as I experience, stay put on the internet fishing for likes.

    

The letter”Y” symbolizing the horizontal relation between yourself and others

Now, if you manage to recognize and love yourself vertically, you will very soon experience an opening up of love horizontally towards others. This is the dialectics of relations and love.

What you do to yourself you will also, in some way, do to others. In our example, the vertical “I” that is loved, forms into a much more horizontal “Y “ in You, with bars that stretch like accepting hands towards the other. Strengthening your capacity for self-love will also strengthen your capacity for loving others.

Self- love in this variant is underestimated, I argued at the beginning of this text! Taking into consideration that we’re not talking about mere narcissism and blind self-infatuation, – do you agree?

Then do something with it this very day, and keep it up for the rest of your life.

 

 

 

What would our written world be today without the spacebar? Rather confusing and meaningless I would guess. Look at this sentence: Itisdifficulttounderstanditandyougettiredofreadin gverysoon.Youdoofcoursemanagetocomprehend,buttherearesomanylettersthatmakeyuconfused.

Transitional Space

The same principle applies for all our actions and reactions in our daily life. We need enough space to make life really meaningful. This psychological form of space separates the chain of events from each other. It gives us an opportunity to anchor our different chores in ourselves, and overview the situation we find ourselves in.

– When Space disappears

Most of us have days with few spaces to breathe in. Very easily the day becomes too narrow, already from the moment we wake up in the morning until we go to bed, answering the last emails, or updating us on facebook in bed. It’s almost as if we are forced into a sweater, blouse or shirt that is too small for our bodies, and that simply does not give room for us.

Is this how our daily life feels like?

We try to push and pull slightly in the sweater, while running off, but with no effect at all. It’s impossible to stretch time! We must get out of bed, into the bathroom, grab our kids, take our teen out of sleep, making breakfast, preparing packed lunches. Responding mother’s call about the old man who has fallen down the stairs again. Then it’s dropping in the cat, and out walking the dog.

– The unstoppable chain of events

Everybody forward on the starting line now; Up on the bike, out in the car. We must catch the bus, train, ferry, boat, plane, kindergarten, work, school university – we must catch life itself. Even those who have lost their jobs, feel this,- working full time to acquire new, or must have four odd jobs, to get food and pay the rent for living.

– Emptyness

When everything stops and we get home, – on sick pay, social security, or nothing, the entire life’s a space. This time gap feels just useless, empty and lonely. Too big for us really. Yet too cramped. It seems that everything of any value happens out there!

– Action and rest

If you are a top athlete, or only want to get fit, you must “lie down on the bench” after a long workout to rest. If not, the exercises will not work. Exercise is supposed to build muscles and strength. But without resting afterwards monomaniac intense exercise will break your body down. Soon she must put down her weight dumbells and rest on the bench

The catabolic processes, that valiant effort, must be compensated with anabolic processes, which rebuilds cells and expands muscle tissue.

A bridge in “the forbidden city” of Bejing.

Transitional Space, Potential Space and Psychological Space

Psychological space, is neither in the exercise activity, the action or in the rest! It is a third form of state between the two opposites forms of activity. Psychological Space can appear as a possibility on the  bridge between  two opposites.

An imaginary fantasy bridge in Amsterdam

 Psychological space is the difference. The difference between action and inaction, effort and rest, wakefulness and sleep, habit acts and originality. A bridge of awareness of being present in our life. A bridge where you can sense, think and reflect on what’s going on.

The collapse of time

Without transitional spaces, time itself changes. It seems to shrink as well, until it somewhat disappears, without making us able to be present in it. Then also our psychological universe contracts. There is no room, to sense and to know how we are. Or to listen to life that buzzes in and outside us.

Those who meditate creates a space in the queue of tasks. Those who sit on the bus and just close their eyes, or let the landscape be gliding past, without being online on any gadgets, also creates a space. Not necessarily a psychological space, but a transitional space, or potential space for psychological awareness.

The ride on the ferry provides transitional Space.

The same applies for the train or ferry. The picture above shows a ferry that glides quietly out from the pier. The ferry can stand as an image of the space, often between home and work in the morning, and job and home in the afternoon.

On the ferry, or the train you can take your morning coffee with waffles, maybe read the newspaper in peace and quiet, just enjoying the view, or you can stroll on the deck and smell the ocean, sea or the boat’s oily metal. Meanwhile knowing that right now, and for twenty minutes, it’s only here on the ferry you should be.

On the Shinkhansen bullet train i Japan

The universe is mostly space

The universe from micro to macro cosmos consists mostly of space. It’s an awesome distance between the nuclei of protons and neutrons, and the electrons floating around. The same applies to objects in the solar system and the stars and galaxies in outer space.

But even what we call the empty space is not completely empty. There is always something there, if only slight variations in the weak background radiation of the universe’s birth.

Of course, it’s not completely empty psychologically either, in the space we create for ourselves on the ferry, bus, train. or on the couch after work.

Body sensations, mind feelings, fleeting thoughts, images and associations cannot be removed without special meditative techniques. In this connection, I don’t think that we need to remove them either. We can let them have our inner attention almost like our children, eager to eventually receive our attention after a long time’s absence.

Winnicotts concept of potential space

Psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott, used the concept “potential space” as a name on the gap between a child’s inner world and the established reality outside the child. In this space, the child has the opportunity to build a bridge between itself and the outside world. Therefore, the phenomenon was given the concept “potential space”.

Potential Space is a  Psychological Space that enables the child to build a relatively smooth psychological bridge between inner life and the environment. The span of the bridge is so to speak held up by the child’s play and imagination.

It is necessary for the safe development of the child to have this psychological space. It functions not unlike the teddy bear(by Winnicott called “transitional object”). That is, it makes the child’s transition to the more intrusive external physical and cultural reality, more sliding and smooth. This external world implies a certain non-negotiable imperative, that the child eventually must subordinate itself.

For the philosopher Martin Buber, this gap was interpreted as the interpersonal space crucial for developing humans into responsible and moral individuals in the society.

To summon up this rather complex concept: Transitional Space and potential space is derived from Winnicott thinking that we live in three worlds; – the inner, the outer and the transition and space between them.

Smooth transitions.

I often think about how it is when we are born. Then we are commuting between deep sleep, light sleep, mindful alertness, motor active wakefulness, and weep.

In the first period of our lives, it is vital that we are piloted or helped carefully and gently through these transitions in consciousness. Otherwise, we easily get troubled, stressed and overwhelmed. This is so because we do not yet have the older child’s more established and balanced nervous system. Therefore abrupt transitions will trigger too many stress hormones, that affects the entire psyche and body negatively.

For grown ups these transitions are still important to pay attention to. Primarily when we are in our daily commuting between sleep and wakefulness, activity and rest. Likewise when we go from action inside, to action outside, making movements here and there, from meeting to meeting, from rural to city, – from effort to rest. Actually when we are in constant transit.

It’s also important to pause, and “seize the moment”,  when we are typing or keying along on our Macs and pc-s, iPhones, and Smartphones. Click click click click click. -> Send!

Lack of Transitonal and Psychological Space makes us stressed.

According to APA, the American Psychological Association 24% of Americans are experiencing extreme stress daily.75% of Americans experience moderate to high stress. And for one of every 75 Americans there is a person with panic attacks.

Lunch break has always been a diversion, a recess, or a space for resetting ourselves. But in Norway 44% of Norwegian workers feel stress during lunch break.

Lunch is not always free from stress.

Think of the spacebar next time you write something at work, or home or send an e-mail or sms to somebody. Your life is like letters in the words of a sentence. It needs the space between chains of events to be meaningful.

Psychological space that enables you to see and to sense yourself in the chains of events of your daily life, – is the only way to give you the possibility to choose your own life!

That is, by the way, – a main trait that separates a pre-programmed robot, from a reflecting human being!