Hello All!!
I tried out the Loving Kindness exercise and I found weird and hard to find "love and kindness" within myself. I always have a problem with finding forgiveness and love within myself. I think that is where my flaw really lies, I need to be at peace and calm with who I am. I think this exercise was beneficial and not beneficial. I say both because, it helped me realize that I need to be at peace with who I am, and love who I am. In the sense that it was not beneficial was because I could not put my mind at ease when it came to loving myself, however, loving others and sending and opening to my heart with love for loved ones or others was easier than finding love for myself.
I think this was a mental workout because, it made you concentrate on not the physical, which people tend to do, but the psychological and spiritual aspects of being human and accepting and loving who you are. I think that for someone like myself, I think I had to mentally work harder to find that peace and ease within myself. I think that this exercise, and exercises such as this one can be beneficial to psychologist and therapists because this can and will work for some, and others may have a harder time with and not really embrace what the exercise has to teach. I honestly think that therapists should do exercises such as this to at lease relax the client/patient.
I think you are doing better than you realize to even admit you don't feel love towards yourself is a huge step. I understand how you feel because that was me a few years ago, before inner healing. Perhaps you may want to consider looking into a program like that for yourself, it could change the way you think and feel about your self and in the end give you a lot of reasons to love yourself so that you can love others. Remember what Dacher said, you cannot give that which you don't have within you to give. Good luck to you!
ReplyDeleteKristy, I think you should keep practicing this exercise. Like everything we do it gets better with practice. That I think also holds true for finding that self love you are seeking. But I once has a person say to me, "You can't feed everyone else if you are hungry". The same is true for this exercise, you can't find the benefit of it if you don't give yourself the love you feel you are able to give to others. The recommendation for practice was twice a day for a week. Please let me know if you continue because I want to know how you feel about it after continued practice. Best to you!
ReplyDeleteTamara,
ReplyDeleteI think it is easier to love others than it is to love yourself. Even though most people say that you cannot love others if you don’t love yourself. I’m not sure I quite believe in this thought. I do agree with you that therapists and counselors should use these types of mental exercises with their patients. I have never been to a therapist but wonder if they do actually use these techniques with their patients. It would be interesting to find out this information. Good luck with the rest of the class and the aim to love yourself. You deserve it!!!