Healing Human Brokenness: It Begins with SELF!

Self-love is more than a haircut, new suit, spa treatments and vacations. It is also taking accountability for our individual healing.

Far too many human relationships are broken or tearing at the seams. Some before they even have the chance to begin. Not only romantic relationships. I’m speaking of friendships, companionships, working relationships and family relationships as well. The journey to mending or adjusting these broken relationships begins with one’s SELF.

Right now, I am reading “The Success Principles-How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer. The very first of the six principles in the book is “The Fundamentals of Success.” The very first sub-principle in this chapter is titled “Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life”. I believe that this instruction for professional success should also be the first in healing relationships. How can we be in healthy relationships with others if we are not in healthy relationship with ourselves?

I have some opinions about self-awareness and accountability for healthy human relationships. At the time that I am writing this essay, I am divorced and single, estranged from most of my family (including my youngest son) and I have just left my corporate job. I will write more about these experiences at another time, (undoubtedly in response to comments that will come after this statement).

I have learned self-love and the importance of it the hard way, and I hope to help others achieve the peace I now feel in my life. With this writing, I would like to offer some of what my experience and elders have taught me to achieve this peaceful part of my life journey.

Here are some of the reasons I believe that relationships are disconnected.:

• LACK OF SELF-LOVE

o Many of us are so busy trying to please people in our everyday lives, that we neglect the person whom we should love the most. Ourselves!

• LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS & RESPONSIBILITY

o Who are you, really? Too often people are so busy trying to be right and trying to people-please, that they lack the self-governance and awareness of their true selves. We must be able to self-identify and self-love to achieve healthy relationships with others.

• LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY

o When we are hurt, we tend to go into survival mode. Survival mode often places us in a constant state of defense. When someone hurts us and we forgive, but the person refuses to take accountability, trust is broken. When we forgive and are hurt again, we often put up barriers. When trust is broken, we find less reasons to forgive. When we are betrayed, we separate ourselves to avoid confrontation or to preserve our peace.

• TRAUMA

o Escaping trauma is like escaping raindrops in a rainstorm in this world. Most of us have suffered some form of trauma. Many of us try to escape trauma rather than heal from it. When that happens, instead of healing, we hurt. We hurt both ourselves and others. Hurt people hurt people. This is why healing is so important so that we can achieve relationship balance and free-loving humility toward each other.

• DYSFUNCTIONAL PARENTS/CAREGIVERS

Too often trauma is suffered by adults who were children, patterning themselves to the lives of their parents, elders, or caregivers. This cycle continues. For centuries, our compassion and grace has taken the backseat to pride, arrogance, ignorance, lack of compassion and understanding of our youth. The innocence of children has not been a priority over the comfort, needs, and evil deeds of many adults.

Without much guidance or desire to do better, many adults have resigned to simply doing the best that they can (or the best that they feel like doing).

Lack of desire to do our best by our youth and refusing to break toxic, dysfunctional cycles is detrimental to the overall health of a child. Every child deserves the best leadership and nurturing from their elders. Unfortunately, they don’t often receive it, because so many lack the emotional maturity or desire to try and learn how to be great elders. Children emulate the adults in their environment. They can't heal properly if they are trapped in a vicious cycle of trauma and abuse their elders refuse to heal from.

Elders have the responsibility to teach children love. But who has taught them? So, the responsibility to break cycles of toxicity and become better adults, then teach our children true love and compassion becomes our own.

LACK OF DIVERSITY ACCEPTANCE

o   Most of our issue is that we expect others to live and love like us. Often our selfish nature prevents us from acknowledging or even realizing this. However, I believe that if we do our best to put acceptance, communication, and the empathy toward others into daily practice, we have a better chance of sustaining beautiful relationships, romantic and otherwise.

• LACK OF SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

God is Love. Not a man. Not a woman. Nothing in between. God is LOVE. Love is all that is good and conducive to the peaceful and joyous sustenance and fluidity of the human spirit. If you call it corny, then maybe you haven’t recognized it. It’s in procreation. It’s in the new birth of a child. It’s in the fine tune of music. It’s in the vibrant color of a flower. It’s in the warmth of grandma’s arms. It’s in daddy’s protection and adoration. It’s in random acts of kindness.

It’s in acts of selfless sacrifice. It’s in a precious and innocent first kiss. It’s in the first sweet taste of honey. It’s in the air and water. All these things are often polluted by humankind’s lack of spiritual health and connection. Love is bypassed for selfishness, pride, ego, greed, gluttony, and all manner of sin.

We are imperfect beings. Therefore, it is important for us to practice daily the search and consumption of PURE LOVE within everything. This requires a spiritual connection with the God Within. Being in touch with our spiritual condition as we would our physical condition is important. If you bleed from a cut, you seek healing. The same should be for our spiritual condition. When God (or your center, purest and divine energy) is within, we are never without.

• RELIGION

Some religious people have good spiritual intentions and are sincerely committed to their faith and religion. I know people like this who exemplify the love of God and their faith in their lives. However, no matter the religion, there seems to be a common theme within them all. Do as we do or you are doomed. Quite often religious people focus on doctrine and theology without giving consideration for human evolution. Some religious people are very busy creating a hell for people who don’t follow them or their chosen faith.

Further, those people who are disingenuous about their religion (or have a great misunderstanding of it), manipulate or misinterpret the “grace” in divine scripture God grants if you only ask. Some use religion as an opportunity to run amuck all week and wash it all off on the weekend at church with supplication, prayer, and offerings.

Therefore, many people are simply awful humans because they believe it is their spiritual allowance. They don’t believe that “self-control” is their responsibility because whatever they do is acceptable, because “God’s grace is sufficient.” They believe that if we pray and ask for forgiveness, perform some cleansing ceremony, and confess, our sins are absolved – and we are free to start over again with new sins on Monday. I believe this to be blatant abuse of God’s sweet grace for us.

Being a society more concerned with pointing fingers and leaning on religion as an excuse for not practicing self-control and making healthy individual change, is it any wonder why we have such challenges in relationship with one another? Far more of us would rather side-step our accountability when we lack or lose self-control. It causes us to become self-righteous and judgmental people, living in glass houses with large motes in our eyes.

Having grown up in a religious environment, I have found more compassion in the world outside of any temple or church. What I can personally attest to is that I feel more like I survived my religious experience than gained much spiritual nourishment from it. I hope that religious people can learn to be more loving, welcoming, and understanding and less damning. The God within that never leaves us without is the God of compassion, the Highest God.

I reiterate, God is LOVE. Personally, I cannot believe in a God who sits on high just judging and picking and choosing whom to save and not. The God whom I serve is not a man or woman. The God I serve is Love. Love is never untrue in its complete and unadulterated form. It is what unites and heals us. Therefore, if God is the answer, doesn’t that mean so is Love?

•LACK OF DESIRE TO PERSONALLY HEAL!

o It is interesting to me how so many people can see the faults of others without checking their own mental and spiritual insides. Becoming self-aware and taking self-accountability to HEAL mentally and spiritually better equips us to sustain healthy relationships.

Many people frown on going to therapy or clergy for counseling. Opening up to a stranger can be scary. Also, if we are completely honest about it, speaking to a stranger who is taking notes about your life to psychoanalyze your thoughts and history can be daunting. In addition, we are still living in a world where professional mental and spiritual therapy remains stigmatized. This often causes our bravery to make that appointment take a backseat to our pain.

Receiving therapy many years ago while suffering deep depression helped me and provided me with tools to begin self-healing. I believe that seeing a licensed therapist or qualified clergy can be a true gateway to healing. It is so important not to isolate one’s self with pain as a confused mind and broken heart can convince us to move toward destruction. As I said though, most people don’t even have the desire to heal or deny the fact that they need healing. Hurt people hurt people. Therefore, if we don’t take time to heal ourselves, how on earth can we healthily relate to others?

Humans are in a constant recovery of mental, physical, and spiritual illness. We are trying to heal from traumas in a traumatic world, leaving us in continuous survival mode. Mental health remains a stigma in many ways, causing us to enter a revolving door of toxic relationships. Many of us are desperate for peace, but don’t know how to achieve it.

The food and water that we eat and drink is often bad for us or down right poison which has a direct impact on our physical and mental well-being. We have no time or motivation to focus on our health because we are too often burning ourselves out working long hours. Relationships suffer because we don’t have time to spend together, or have too much time to spend together. How then could there be balance between two or more people who have no goal or awareness of self-healing and reconnection? When we do find the desire, it is often a last cry for help at the door of disaster.

Absolutely no human is perfect and I am not without flaws. My desire is to share these lessons from my traumatic, confusing, hard battle with life and what I know works to achieve more peaceful relationships with other humans. My message is for all of us to become actively self-healing, self-loving, compassionate, considerate, communicative, and forgiving. We are not required to stay in relationship with those who continually harm us, whether it be physically, mentally, or spiritually.

However, I have learned that forgiveness is healthy, even if you must close the door on a relationship altogether.

Self-love is more than a haircut, new suit, spa treatments and vacations. It is also taking accountability for our individual healing. It is continually running toward the God within us that is pure LOVE. Then we must refine communication and relationships with our fellow human beings. Once we do that, we can begin to recognize the beauty of our diversity and create peace with others and in our environments.

It starts with me and you.