Being my Own Best Friend

Hi @Magoo

Thanks for your supportive reply - yes - I have been challenged through life - thinking about it since I saw my psychologist has been interesting - as we sometimes say - enough is enough but more obstacles appear before us and we continue and we have an inner voice that complains and maybe urges us on. We can get stuck - maybe for a while - maybe longer - but as life goes on so do we - there have to be times when we wonder if that dark cloud is permantently attached to us and follows us around

I'm sorry you can't see yourself as being your own best friend. It is a different state of being knowing that we care for ourselves. Sometimes it might seem selfish but I have been alone for 30 years next month and if I hadn't learned to put myself first and care for myself I would be lonely indeed. It wa a rocky start I do remember - I had to stop work and go onto disability - in the chilly January evenings I would walk along the windy beach and feel my loneliness and gradually turned my being alone into independence. I have found plenty to do with my life since then and it has been fruitful. I hope you can find that and access the benefits of it

What you said about birth touched me - fighting your way through birth and the fight continuing. I have the feeling I experienced something different. I was born in the winter in the middle of WW2 - and with the weather and the war I certainly didn't know about at the time I decided to stay where I was for as long as I could and my mother told me I was 2 weeks late - often - maybe I made the story up in self-defence - being told my mother must have loved me in her own way as always aggravated me because it would be wonderful for anyone to have their mother love them as they needed to be loved

Anway - regardless of your circumstances I think I understand the deep meaning behind what you have written. The fight goes on. Your survived your birth and birth is no fun for mother or child.

If I could I would bundle up resilience and hand it out in magic parcels and hope everyone could have a resource for self-care and self-appreciation that would never run out - I wish this for you now

This has been a great start - I read this first thing this morning - we can start a new thread and send our ideas out into the universe and hope for the best - I have seen some of the best this morning

All the best Maggie

Dec

Hi @Owlunar . What a thoughtful and interesting post. Being my own best friend is something I am not great at. While I am actually fine with my own company and rarely feel lonely, i am extremely self-critical and have very low self-worth. I am trying to work on this, but a lifetime of telling yourself how useless and worthless you are is very, very hard to break.

You're right that you need to be your own advocate. Not everyone has someone to advocate for them. It's a learned skill I think. Resilence is part of it too - getting through things teaches us lessons and skills we can use again. Sometimes the trauma can be too great and it may not be so apparent, but I believe it's in there.

Hi @Molliex

You are right - going through things teaches us lessons and skills we can use again. Sometimes it might be too much but we survived whatever it was - and we can and will survive again. I really believe this

I get along with my own company too - and rarely feel lonely - but having poor self-worth and being self-critical would be hard to break - it can though - I did - and I think it's really hard when a person feels worthless - that is not the case - we are all worth something even if it's only for ourselves

We do need to be our own advocate - sometimes we can find someone to do that for us. There is no rescue - at least I was told that - but I have a strange little story about a taxi-driver who saw me battling along with my suitcase looking lost - maybe I wasn't without resources in my own city near public transport but I was tired out that evening and that taxi driver rescued me and drove me home and yes - I paid the fare - but rescue is not always going to happen - which is why we learn to swim I think -

And not everyone has an advocate - I travel a lot and I have had to learn to elbow my way through airports - but if I waited for someone to go with me I would never get to go anywhere and I love flying.

Before I got married I had a firmly imprinted idea that my husband would support me when I had children - old idea - even quaint now - and that certainly didn't happen and I had to work at night or in the weekends - I remember feeling surprised that this happened but i was actually glad to get out of the house - and I think that being self-interested in my own future I couldn't see it being at home caring for the interests of my family and not my own. I was so young at the time - I finished my eduation and I have never felt bad about that - I was most likely a better mother because I did this but not "there all the time"

Maybe the idea is to always be there for ourselves - if we are then we are better able to be there for other peopole - I believe we have more to give when we value ourselves

I do wish you the best Molliex

Dec

Hi @outlander

I have the TV on about the fires right now and concerned about my grand-daughter who lives up on the Sunshine Coast - I have sent her a text but she has yet to reply - tomorrow is the bad day for them

I am glad your sisters are not in school today - a good day to have the schools closed in NSW today - it seems as if the whole state is at risk today.

You are part of a bushfire management team - good on yer - great to hear - and I understand about that eerie, quiet nature of things. I have felt that sometimes myself - as if everything is waiting and listening to see what is going to happen - actually I think the birds are quiet - maybe the fly away looking for a safe place - clever birds

All the best today Outlander - thinking of you and our sisters

Dec

"Maybe the idea is to always be there for ourselves - if we are then we are better able to be there for other peopole - I believe we have more to give when we value ourselves" - Totally agree with this notion @Owlunar, thank you for this conversation.

Thanks @Former-Member

Dec

Good morning @Owlunar ,

Such an important thing to learn, and great for sharing here where others- including me- can give some thoughts and insight to their own learning to be their own best friend.

For me, I think I have spent most of my life trying to do this, without realising it, and how interesting that I have said this very thing to my daughter in the past week after she broke up with her boyfriend.

I am so lucky to have a very close friend who is like a sister to me, and also my sister, with whom we share the experience of growing up without parents who were able to teach us to be this.

But even our very closest 'others'-partners or family, or close friends have times where they need to step back from supporting us in order to care for themselves.

I am finally realising this, and learning new ways to do this for myself, and more importantly, learning to step back from others to when I'm unable to be that person, in order to look after myself.

I have spent most of my life feeling alone after growing up with parents who didn't have this ability for themselves and thereby unable to teach us this.

And only in the past couple of years since seeing a psychologist have I learnt to be my own best friend because ultimately that's what we need to do.

Thanks for responding here @Tinsel - I only just opened this conversation on Monday I think - and I am still absorbing what people have added

Yes - we all do to step back from other people to tend to our own requirements at times and we need to be their 100% for ourselves and it is strange that our parents never taught us this - for me it was like - we are your parents and you will do what we say and vote for whomever we say and go to the doctor when we say etc and this is such a puzzle for young people - we get out into the world unprepared - and sometimes find ourselves to be parents to hopefully not repeat the past -

But where do we start?

It does start with self-care and so great that you have a sister-friend as well as a sister you can share your history with. We weren't taught to care about ourselves - in fact - it seemed to me I was punished for being a girl - maybe even for being born - and who made the choices about us? Not us - if it was our wven parents' after all

So we have to learn - luckily self-care is being taught to the public through different media - I am glad to say - but when I have been told to do something nice for myself - I have wondered what that would be - now I have a few ideas

Sometimes it's really easy like having a bubble bath - let's be practical this Christmas and buy a little present for myself. Preparing a meal just for myself is excelllent - I live alone and although some meals are basic now and again I do something really different and hopefully

I was annoyed when my mother told me to stay home and look after my family one day and the next to get a job to help my husband when actually I was working and I just ignored her and went on with my life - which included years doing my HSC and then a university degree part time - and - people kept telling me that this was all too much for me and to stop - I continued and now have an Honours Degree and none of those nay-sayers are in my satisfying life now - which included as lot of writing

So - it comes back to pleasing ourselves and often ingoring other people.

One dramatic thing I did was to change my name after I seperated from my husband - I took a different family name because it pleased me - I was not seeing my parents at the time and when they found out what I had done - it was WW3 - what a row - and I don't have any tats or other modern mysteries -

It's not easy to take a role in life to please ourselves even when it really isn't anyone else's business - or breaking the law or whatever - we might end up rather alone but a proverb reads "It's better to live on the roof than to share a house with a nagging wife"

I love that one

All the best Tinsel - I love your user-name btw

Dec