How Do I Handle a Relapse of Self Hate?

Hating oneself is an interesting proposition AND an interesting experience.

With the PPM (Personified Physique Method) we first look at the lesson that a negative persona teaches us. This lesson is something entirely personal and probably won't be the same for any two people.

My Hateful Persona
Here's what I learned from my Hateful Persona. To me, my Hateful Persona is the persona that says "NO!" the loudest. It says "NO!" in a way that leaves no doubt that my Hateful Persona is pushing everything and everyone out. "NO!" she says and makes everything around her black.

I learn from her that if I hate myself I am saying "NO!" to myself in every way. I am literally blocking myself out. It can be weird to consider that you are saying "NO!" to yourself in essential ways and that you are allowing deep personal unhappiness into your life. It is also strange to imagine that you would ever say "NO!" to your body, your mind, and/or your entire self, but this is indeed what my Hateful Persona revealed to me.

What could I (or you) possibly learn from this? One possible lesson is that we can learn (in a harsh way granted) how it feels to say "NO!" and block things or people out. It is a valuable skill to learn to say "no" and to put up walls and boundaries in some situations. Of course, maybe it would be nice to involve our Diplomatic Persona a bit more to balance our lives more carefuly but our Hateful Persona teaches us in a dramatic fashion, which is oftentimes preferable (in my opinion) to the dry sensibility and caution of diplomacy.

Dramatic Lessons and Experience
Dramatic lessons such as those provided by my Hateful Persona have a high level of emotion attached to them. High levels of emotion often make our experiences in life more memorable and thus often more impactful. Inside of some of us there may be a desire that craves the deep impact of high levels of emotion. Perhaps you are one of those people. Perhaps you need to act, sing, dance, create, or live in silent hate....it's all dramatic and maybe that's what you need. Granted, acting or singing is a far more pleasant experience than hate but drama doesn't care whether the drama is positive or negative; it just wants drama.

Try to imagine what this experience of hate would be like if you were primarily utilizing your Diplomatic Persona, your Stern Persona, or your Ungrateful Persona instead of your Hateful Persona. How would your personal experience be different? Pay attention to the energy you feel as you consider each of these personas inside of yourself. It may be that your Hateful Persona is the perfect persona to give you the drama of hateful experience and blocking everything out. Talk to your Hateful Persona and yell at it if you will.

Ask it why the hell it has arrived. And it will scream the fuck back at you.

How Do I Practice Self-Love?

I truly feel that I personally have learned a few valuable lessons about loving myself. I feel qualified to share these lessons because I didn't used to love myself and now I feel that I do.

What changed?

I Changed the Way I Listened to the Radio
Before I loved myself, I would often scoff at love songs that played on the radio. A wise friend once told me however that it was important that I believed someone could love me. Her wise words made me start to leave those "corny" love songs turned up loud. I would sing to them and imagine that someone somewhere would write those exact (or similar) words for me. After I made this practice a habit I started to realize that a very big part of myself really does believe that I deserve to be loved by someone who would write beautiful words....inspired by moi.

I Changed the Way I Viewed Myself
I put a photo of me as a two-year-old in my bedroom where I could see it before I go to sleep at night. Sometimes I take the photo and give it a kiss. I try to imagine how my life would have been if I was loving that child...if I were the parent of that younger version of myself. I try to imagine how different and how happy I would have been if I had parented myself. I realize when I look at that photo that the little girl in the picture has no faults. She is wonderful so why would I think any less of myself just because I've lived a few more years than she has?

I Changed What I Do
I love to dance more than anything. I used to tell myself I couldn't afford dancing lessons and that I was too old for dance. Now I say "Fuck that!" and I DANCE MY HEART OUT! There is something about doing what you love that ends up with you loving yourself.


I Don't Get Caught Up in the Philosophy, Psychology, or Science of Things
I used to worry about what was right and who was saying the right things. I used to worry about the facts and whether or not I was adhering to them. I used to worry about the metaphysics of things. Now, I view myself as a creator. I make the rules and even if I don't, who cares?! When I read or write in my journal I can go beneath the surface but otherwise I just love myself in simple ways.

Health
Taking care of your physical health and well being is a wonderful way to show you love yourself and one of the most difficult. If you can do this you will also see big opportunities for advancement in the mental and spiritual realms as well. Remember to get the right amount of sleep for you. You probably already know what that amount of time is. Dream time is a wonderful place to be yourself and to be free!

The First Question to Ask Yourself When You Do Something "Wrong", "Stupid", "Horrible", "Selfish"

All of us veer off the path that we'd like to travel. We make what we ourselves consider "mistakes." However, even if we know we are going to make mistakes sometime in the future, sometimes the emotion that comes with making a mistake can be intense and uncomfortable. Sometimes it's that exact emotion that can keep us stuck in old patterns that aren't good for our development and for the support of our own personal goals.....let alone our happiness and how we walk and thrive in life.

When you do somthing that you yourself don't feel good about and you start to feel emotions that are unpleasant try asking yourself the following?

1) Even though I've done this thing, am I still worth loving?
2) If someone else had made this mistake would I still think s/he was worth loving?
3) Do I believe that all people deserve love no matter what they've done? (This doesn't mean you have to excuse behavior that is destructive or allow it into your life....it's just a realization that life deserves love.)
4) If my child made this mistake would I still love him/her just as much?
5) Can I love myself as if I were my own child?

Remember, questions are tools. Questions act as the tools that open valuable windows (literally energetic windows open up new channels when you ask a question) of understanding that can change our lives and our life paths forever.

You are worth certainly worth loving. Practice love, especially with yourself.

Your Last Fight

When was your last fight or disagreement with someone? Yesterday? Three years ago? If you could describe what was going on energetically between you and your "opponent" how would you describe it.

In the Personified Physique Method we're constantly discussing the ability to be aware of what is going on underneath the surface. If you're screaming at someone of course you're angry. That's OBVIOUS. If they aren't taking responsibility for paying a bill or are consistently criticizing you then those behaviors are OBVIOUS as well....at least from your point of view.

What however might not be so obvious? Are you shifting in the way that you perceive the world? Are you noticing thoughts and behaviors that haven't emerged from you before? Do you remember a time you would have agreed with your "opponent" but no longer "see" the issues at hand as s/he does? Are you looking at the issues from your "opponent's point of view? Could it be that your new "self" is shifting the energy around you and you're rocking the boat?

Who knows?

It's important to remember that fights, disagreements, and friction in general aren't generally about bills, or criticisms. They are more about the energetic patterns we are accepting into our lives.

The Physicality of Confidence - Exploring Stacked Containers and Puppet People

In the Personified Physique Method the exploration of the Confident Persona is common. Confidence, like Courage, allows people to move forward through doors that they otherwise would have missed without the development of these personas.

As you begin to explore the Confident Persona you'll probably notice the emphasis on a sense of "sureness" or "surety." One of the aspects of a Confident Persona is that they are sure or seem very sure of whatever it is they are seeking after his/her life.

The Physicality of Being Sure
There are various physicalities that are generally associated with "sureness" or confidence. One of the physical aspects of being sure is having a firm physical foundation. Without a firm (yet flexible) foundation it's difficult to build on.

Stacking Your Containers and Finding the Puppet in You
Good posture and a firm foundation involves 1) the alignment of the physical body so that the feet, hips, rib cage and head can sit directly over one another and balance on one "plumb line." This imaginary line (or center line) can also be imagined from the head down as if the plumb line originated from above and held the body in suspension much as a puppet might hang from the hand that suspends it.

It is important to find the balance between stacking your containers from the feet upwards and in allowing a suspension from the head downward. This allows for oppositional energies to flow through the body and oppositional energies are necessary not only in exercise theory but in all theory.

Focusing on these energies will allow the body more space to align and stand tall. You'll naturall have a look of confidence and sureness by making a habit of the continual alignment/grounding/suspension of the body.

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Ugly vs. Sexy - Verbal Affirmations are Practical Affirmations

It continually amazes me how much words and especially verbal declarations can affect people in general.

Yesterday my ballroom dance teachers and I were working on a rumba routine and I suggested we try the routine while I said out loud, "I am ugly."

As soon as I said "I am ugly," I felt horrible. I do have a high level of body sensitivity but I think most people would feel a bit shorter, heavier and other sorts of feelings that work against movement.

After that I suggested I try the same routine while saying "I am sexy." The affect was quite dramatic and surprising even for me. I became taller and MUCH more focused. My teacher was surprised when I performed the hockey stick (a movement taught in the International Latin dance technique) with much more spunk and style. It was perhaps the best hockey stick I had ever "performed" with my body and I wasn't even thinking about the movement. Instead, I was saying "I am sexy." I joked with my teacher that I felt like going out and hunting myself a man....which frankly, didn't feel like much of a joke at the time. Saying you're sexy really works in a practical way. It's not just an exercise that can help you pretend that you're sexy. It actually builds your sexiness which, of course, can't help but shine through your body!

Verbal affirmations are highly powerful especially if you say them about yourself. People sometimes feel dishonest when saying what they don't believe themselves to be but the truth is that any characteristic you can see in someone else is something that you recognize because you have some level of understanding of that chracteristic already inside of YOU.

In the Personified Physique Method we use verbal affirmations in preparation for our real-time actions which are always performed, according to the method, with ease and enjoyment.

One Way to Block the Full Expression of a Persona

One of the goals of the Personified Physique Method is the full (or at least nearly full) expression of a feeling/emotion. Many counselors and psychologists would call this expression the "processing of an emotion."

The PPM provides many ways in which you can become aware of your emotions, accept those emotions, shift those emotions (with paradigm work), express the emotion in a personalized way, and get physically aligned and fit at the same time!

There are, of course, many "blocks" that can surface during the PPM process. This isn't to discourage anyone from expressing their emotions fully or from utilizing the PPM especially since these blocks are fairly easy to "get around" once you know how to spot them.

One of these blocks is insecurity. Fundamentally insecurity is a "shakiness" within a personal system and usually expresses itself in the body and in the mind which are the mental and physical systems of our being. These systems reflect each other.

In the mind insecurity sounds like this:

---What is wrong with me?
---Why doesn't s/he seem to like me?
---Why am I not good enough for this ________________?
---I'm not as smart as she is.
---I'm not as good looking as he is.
---Why does everything bad seem to happen to me?

All of these thoughts (which can zip through our minds at such a rapid speed sometimes we have to slow down to begin to hear them) have an inherent imbalance to them.

Consider this. All of the thoughts above are questions. Questions are inherently unstable propositions. The phrase "I don't know" can be a secure statement but in the case of the questions above there is an obvious shakiness to the queries.

Stand on one leg. Begin to ask yourself the questions above and see what happens. Do you feel secure? Try this with your eyes closed.

Notice the nature of insecurity in the physical being of other people who seem insecure to you. They are often shaky, jittery (even their eyes can be shaky), and they often talk quickly or seek for unreasonable control. There emotions are also very shaky and they can experience many sharp emotions within a short period of time that for them are very unpleasant.

Now, try balancing with open eyes and with closed eyes on one leg (preferably the same leg if it's not too tired while you say the following:

---Nothing is wrong with me. She may have different opinions but there is nothing wrong with me. I deserve love.
---I sense a strange energy between me and her. It's probably not good timing for us to communicate but later on it might be.
---I am good enough for ____________________.
---I'm smart and intelligent. I notice things that others don't seem to notice.
---I'm good looking. I like the way that I look.
---Why do so many good things happen to me?

And finally, try saying this: "It's not my job to make other people happy. It's not my job to make other people happy. It's not my job to make other people happy. I have faith that they have the strength, courage, and communicative abilities to grown in their own happiness." Say this several times and see how it feels to you when you say it. If you can say it in solitude (perhaps in your car) even better. You'll feel the energy of these words and your intentions as you say them. Words are powerful. They have history and they also have a present with you.

Gratitude
Also, remember, that one way to open the doors of full personal expression is to show gratitude. So ask yourself one more time, "Why do so many good things happen to me?"