The Abuse Within

I will forgive myself, I will educate myself in who I am, and take responsibilty for my behavior. I will learn how to love myself above all, and love my children who are part of my soul, and life. I will stop self-condemnation, self-blame, self inflicted wounds in my soul; and learn how to be a better person by releasing the pain that dwells in me, and releasing the people who have caused this emotional upheaval.

Good for you.
Gayle

When you love yourself, you can love your children much better!

when you stop blaming others its easier to love also

wow, thank you. This is what I need to do too.

I admire you for having the wisdom to try and be responsible for your behavior as it sometimes too few people in life can even do that, and I wish you God speed on that last part, since those who don't take responsibility for their actions can be the most horrible kind of abusers.
Loving yourself is a good step to take and I support it... but there has been some trends I've seen that could make that mind set innocently harmful and I just don't want you to feel the guilt I did when I tried to love myself.

That said... I don't thinking loving yourself is BS but I've heard it so many times that it's starting to feel like it's losing a lot of meaning. Too many people who already love themselves using it to feed their own ego.

That and my therapist and I were talking about it and we both agreed that it's almost too high a standard because the phrase implies that there shouldn't be any room for self loathing or you won't 'earn' the love that you need from others. Everyone has moments where they wish they weren't them, and it's worse with people with low self esteem and depression, who CAN'T love themselves without a LOT of help. It's the equivalent of telling a depressed person to 'buck up,' know what I mean? And when they fail they just feel worse for not being happy with themselves.

Also... I think Bill Cosby once said (to paraphrase): "When you're famous everyone pays a lot to have dinner with you. When you're a nobody you can't even get five cents for a hot dog." I think the Loving Yourself fad (not the true statement) kind of perpetuates this mentality of only rewarding people who need the least help and being unsympathetic to those who are just stuck. The rub of psychology is that no matter how much you know your inner problems need some intervention sometimes no?

With that said I just want to add an ammendum to that: Love yourself, even when you fail to do so. You can't always feel good about yourself but getting rid of the guilt will go farther and it's something I think needs to be said more.

So yeah that's it good luck otherwise.

Wish you the best, and that maybe one day I'll be able to do the same.

Best of luck to you.