The trick, I think, is to realize that in our own lives, we are all three of those. We get to know ourselves and how we "work", how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world and spend our time adjusting so we get an optimum "us". We are the best helpers of ourselves because we are the only ones in here/ourselves, the expert on Me.

Looking outside ourselves for help with our negative feelings, feeling needy and wanting others to behave toward us in certain ways is usually doomed because we have no hold or influence on other's lives, just as they do not on ours; we can't make them turn around and notice us, respond toward us the way we think we would like.

Likewise, jumping in and helping others often does not work because they are in charge of their own lives and hold the ultimate say in what is helpful to them so can reject our help as not what they want or think they need.

I believe we have to be self absorbed in a sense because we only have our selves to be, we cannot make another give support to us nor force them to accept our help when we think we see them hurting and wish we could help.

Relationships with others have to be shared to work and be satisfactory I think. If a friend or loved one (not necessarily the same) takes and does not give, why do we want them as a friend? If someone we love seems to ignore us and is occupied in their own life and does not seem to want to take time to be with us, they are not a friend and I do not want to be around such a person if all I feel is sadness or hurt when I am?

We can pick our friends, those we like, based on our own criteria of what we enjoy and want in our lives. Looking for people we enjoy being around and who appear to enjoy being around us works best for this. If our immediate surroundings don't show us people who exhibit characteristics consistent with what we consider a "friend" exhibits, we have to change surroundings in some way, find what we enjoy and go where that behavior is being exhibited.