New Acropolis Presents Reflections on Affective Neediness Lucia Helena Galvao - 2018 Painting: Carl SchweningerJr - Couple in the moonlight Music: James Taylor - You've got a friend Hello! Welcome to another lecture at my house. Today I chose a theme that has been requested by several people and I know it's pretty special.
I hope it's useful for you, which is about affective neediness from the point of view of philosophy. I know there are a number of other disciplines, a series of other views on the need of affection. All of them very important, but philosophy also has an angle that must be considered.
And I believe that one more look makes up and helps to deal with these delicate human problems that bring us so much suffering. So let's talk a little about this phenomenon. We know love is one of the elements that bring us the most fulfillment, but as something complex It also brings us great frustrations.
And one of them is the affective neediness. I brought you a small snippet of a text which belongs to an author named Maria Beatriz Marinho dos Anjos. She says the following: "That's what love is.
It doesn't hold, it doesn't squeeze, it doesn't suffocate. Because when it becomes a knot, it's no longer a bow. " A small text, a small fragment, but very interesting: "when it becomes a knot, it is no longer a bow!
" That is, it starts to get suffocating, asphyxiant, has already lost its purpose so noble to ensnare men, to make them bigger, to recover the unity in the multiplicity, as Sri Ram would say about love itself. So let's talk a little bit about the expression of feelings. Well, I'm a philosopher, I work with ideas, but necessarily the ideas will generate an immediate impact of emotions, of affective phenomena.
It's impossible for you to have an idea that doesn't cause an echo in the emotional world. Just like it's impossible for you to have an object that doesn't cast shadows. By casting light on him, he will have shadows.
All affective phenomena will be like tags hanging from ideas. This is an important element, we will even take up this point later. It is very important to know what idea our affective phenomena are linked.
Knowing when they're not nice, find out what mental formatting supports them. What thinking is behind sponsoring that? But then we talk about the need expressing our feelings and creating bonds.
Marcus Aurelius, who is a great Roman Stoic philosopher, - of which we have spoken many times and will speak more, I plan on doing a commented reading one day of the work "Meditations", by Marcus Aurelius - But finally, he says at a certain point in his work, that "Men were made for one another: Educate them or support them. " That alone would give a ton of reflections, but not very relevant to the topic. I will focus on this issue of "Men are made for each other.
" Indeed, man is a social being, he needs to relate. It completes itself, expands, enhances its possibilities, when working in the middle of the group. And even manage to win one of the biggest obstacles to its realization, which is selfishness, by expanding and creating bonds with as many people as he can.
One day the idea is that we will have bonds with all humanity. So affective expression is very important. And one of the most important affective expressions, what we were talking about at the beginning is love.
Love motivates, love is the impulse to relate, love creates bonds. But love needs a powerful companion. In Greek mythology we will call of Ares' union with Aphrodite, which is the will.
The will united with love will make us overcome obstacles and reach our hearts, reach our goals. So that's important, love is realized and walks together with the will and the intelligence. It's a tremendously important triad.
Now when we have the distortions, the shadows of love, and affective neediness is one of them, we realize that one of the things what weakens first is the will, and together, or soon after, intelligence. We started to create fantasies and illusions, and to be detained, imprisoned, caged in a feeling that was meant to set us free and open us to other possibilities, open ourselves to the other human being. So this element is important.
The effective lack often, including in its unfolding, ends up leading to depression, to a case of such depression of will, such a weakening of the human will, that he can't get out of there anymore. She has a series of symptoms and also a series of measures. that we can take in relation to them.
Let's start working on this idea very slowly. So, the erroneous assumptions of lack. First thing: the difficulty of loving yourself and to value yourself.
This love I should have for myself, as I don't have for some reason, a series of possibilities from my past or a misconception I have of life, someone has to supply this love that I don't have for myself. So in a normal healthy relationship between two people each would have a share of love to give the other. This quota is not enough.
'Cause I need you to fill me up because I don't love myself. So this element of the mistaken self-image, a certain contempt, a certain inferiority complex, a lot of elements make us want the other supply that dose of love that we should give ourselves. This is an element that is very present in the neediness.
Another thing that is very important is our inability to distribute our love for everything we do. When I gave my talk on love, I talked about it a lot. The human being has the need to relate, to find a point of union with the universe around you, and this relationship makes him, in a certain way, let your heart in everything he touches.
Everything he touches turns to gold, similar to King Midas there. In everything he leaves a printed piece of his heart there. So imagine a person who loves the place where he lives, love your street, love your community, loves his city, loves what he does, love your co-workers.
He expands and exercises this possibility of loving to such a degree that it is very difficult for him to miss it. Wherever he goes, he leaves the imprint of his heart. As Sri Ram once again said, you must lose your heart everyday and then look for it.
In the end you will find that your heart is the heart of all things. There's something strange about the affective neediness that makes the person close his heart, isolate himself and stay there keeping all that affection to dump on a single person, that this person is the one in charge, the one elected to supply all the affection he needs. This is matched with disproportionate affectivity.
It's as if you imagine a ray of light with the light emitted in 360 degrees, where all the light is concentrated on a single wire, a single beam of light, as if it were a laser ray. Of course this pierces anyone who stands before it, it's suffocating, it's desperate, makes the relationship a little sick, is a disproportion of feelings for a single cell, and by ignoring the rest of the body. Then life becomes cold, life becomes indifferent.
I don't want to be with anyone, nor being anywhere. Only that person is the source that brings me all the happiness and fulfillment in the world. It is evident that this person is not relating in the same way with the world, likes the world, wants to be with it, and that sometimes becomes a weight, a burden.
I brought some popular phrases that are found on the internet talking about this aspect of neediness, We'll see one of them soon. So it doesn't distribute love, it concentrates and suffocates, like a laser ray. Another aspect, another erroneous assumption is: There is no inner life.
So if there is no inner life, we don't have the internal approval for what we do. We are pending external approval, we need people all the time endorse what we did, because we have no inner endorsement. Imagine you what a great artist is, look through history.
There is one element that is quite common: hardly an artist has had recognition during his lifetime. Some did have it, but very late. Most of his life doing something no one approved of.
Why did they continue? Why did they go on? Because something internal validated that, something inward swooped in, saying "All right, keep going!
" This is inner life, this ability to withdraw, raise your consciousness, find yourself and make it so, before your inner eyes, seems fair, valid and good. With this seal, man proceeds independently of the world Maybe the world will only understand what he did a hundred years later, or a thousand years later, or maybe never. But he feels even with life, feels like it coincides with itself.
It has an inner life, it has a way of internally endorsing things, is much less pending than what exists around it, from the opinion of the people around you, which is not much of a guarantee. In fact, if we see some really good period composers, that were endorsed by all the people of their time, today they no longer mean anything. There are many cases like that.
Many artists considered very good for their context, today, history and time have shown that they were not so good. So external endorsement is no guarantee of anything. The internal, yes!
In other words, the least he gives us is a feeling of accomplishment, of peace and fulfillment, for respecting ourselves. "Reespicere" is knowing how to see, look once more, look at yourself, endorse what we do as valid, as fair, as good. Without needing or depending so much on outside opinions.
So the neediness has this element, we have no inner endorsement, we have no inner life. Another important element as an erroneous assumption. The needy doesn't have a clear meaning of life.
His sense of life is hierarchical, we'll see in a moment. I reserved a page just to talk about it, about the hierarchical and territorial meaning of life. And a sense that motivates you.
So I wonder sometimes how a person can get out of bed every day and feel motivated if this day is not a brick for a building that she already sees ready! As if it were the blueprint of a work that an architect makes. Every day the foreman arrives there with his team, the first thing he does is look at the plant, look to the future, and then starts laying, making and digging the foundations, build what corresponds to you today and looking to the future.
How difficult it would be, and I believe even impossible, for the master builder with his team work on something they don't know where they're going with it. No blueprint, no future, no vision of goals. This small thinking, this not believing in yourself, this reduction of the focus of consciousness that the neediness brings about, and how much it reduces us, how much it limits us, this will make it so that we don't have a good reason to get out of bed in the morning.
And this good reason, this ideal that is on the horizon, have a lot of energy to walk, have a lot of faith in ourselves, because if nature believed that we are capable to do something meaningful, I will not doubt nature. If she believes, so do I! I want to get somewhere, and my day today it always has to be a little brick that adds up in that direction.
Without it the days become a terrible monotony and has to be motivated by external appeals, for external pleasures, for an extra dose of love, that motivates me to walk is one more step. In other words, I'm practically towed by life outside. Drgged by life outside, by the affection that comes from outside and not from within, and not from the future, and not from my destiny, and not from my ideal.
I brought you this sentence, as I said, I picked up some random stuff on the internet and it looks like a little poem, which says the following: "A high degree of affective neediness in coexistence, reminds me of the drowned man's embrace. " I found it very funny and interesting. Have you ever seen the hug of the drowned?
Whoever is going to rescue a drowning person has to be careful you have to know how to catch it, because the hug is so desperate that risk drowning them both. So this desperate embrace, which wants the other to save it, that save him from himself, that save him from his complexes, the apathy of your life. That's hopeless in a relationship!
It's not a hug that offers affection, It's not a hug from someone who donates something, but it is someone who desperately needs to receive. So one of the elements that we can perceive, maybe it's a strong word but we cannot deny that neediness can lead to it, it's almost a vampirization of energies, a vampirization of wanting the other constantly save him, rescue him, take him from the high seas. At some point we have to learn to swim.
This is unbearable! We cannot live rescuing the other, sometimes we need to be rescued too, and we want a relationship that is harmonious and exchangeable. Remember there's an interesting phrase, attributed to Nietzsche, that he said: "My solitude can only be exchanged for good company, otherwise I prefer solitude.
" We have to be careful with that. A healthy relationship is an exchange relationship, and the neediness makes me unfeasible, uneven this relationship. Continuing.
. . Now let's talk about hierarchical and territorial orientation.
Who has watched my talk on how to overcome your inner limits, of that wonderful work that I like so much, which is "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield, there's a little bit. . .
it seems kind of insignificant, passes by, because it's right there at the end of the book, but he is fantastic. He says that human beings organize according to two formulas, according to two orientations. The first of these is the hierarchical orientation.
He says that when society becomes too big, this orientation starts to be practiced in limited groups, be it in a school, be it in a religion, in a social group and that ends up being transferred. What is hierarchical guidance? The person within your profession, whatever it is, she is always looking at who is above her and who is below.
Always watching so that the one below doesn't overcome and always trying to reach the rank of superior. And looking out, trying to see what people think of her, and meet that demand of the other. She doesn't meet her own soul's demand, she lives trying to meet the demand of the other.
He says that sort of thing is unbearable for someone who, for example, wants to create a work of art. Pressfield constantly talks about inspiration, the muses. He says: hierarchical guidance desecrates the muses.
Maybe you have a person who is successful this way, but in the end she has a loss, because she sold her muse, she sold her inspiration. This does not lead to legitimate inspiration and creation in any field. And then he proposes another order, another way of living, which is the territorial orientation.
Pay attention to it, because what he did there was a simplification and updating of very old teachings. This territorial orientation is very reminiscent of the middle way of several traditional classical works, the straight path. So what is territorial orientation?
I fulfill myself, say, by playing a piano. I go there, train for days on end, and I get to a level of expertise, of domain of that, which satisfies me tremendously, that there is my territory. If I have any problem of difficulties in life that I don't know how to overcome, where do i get energy from?
From my piano! If I'm down, I don't pick up the phone to talk to ten people and see what they think. I go to my piano.
He even quotes a gymnast, if he has a lot of difficulty in life, where will he get support from? From his gym, from his equipment, from where he usually trains! Our territory is like a battery.
You invested your best there. When you need, you go back there and it gives you back that energy you deposited. It has nothing to do with anyone, with what others think or fail to think.
You have your territory and in it you reign supreme. I perform here! Whether people will recognize it or not, whether people will like it or not, If there are better or worse people, I don't care!
This is my territory! And here I leave the best of me. And when I feel insecure, here I find myself!
This is very interesting. When a person suffers from emotional deficiency, he is incapable of thinking in a territorial orientation. Affective need deflates and projects you out.
All your affirmation comes from external canes, and not your own spine. You need external canes that support you, there's nothing that's really yours that can serve as a base of support. And that makes the person very empty, and naturally tending to a state of constant unhappiness.
So remember this story, territorial orientation, how much autonomy this would give us, how much we wouldn't depend on anything to be happy. We will not fail to consider the other in the sense of giving, but we will not expect the other to give us something back. This is ideal!
May we have a constant generosity, but not an expectation of return, otherwise it's not generosity, it's commerce, it's give-and-take! And that takes away the legitimacy of true generosity. Well, moving on.
. . Exactly this point that we just talked about, which is selfishness, It's also a very important thing to consider.
Neediness and selfishness are closely related. I want the other to give me a meaning in life, I want the other to give me a motivation, I want the other to recognize me, value me, love me. Come on, what do I want to give?
What do I want to add to the other's life? What do I want to add to the life of humanity? Because it is said that every human being came into the world to pronounce a musical note, as if the world were a symphony.
To make your contribution! I am a person who cancels myself, and I live for the other, and I hope he is the center of my life. .
. You don't find the center of your life outside of yourself! It is inside!
That story we got used to about the feeling of love, that comes from the radio, from popular songs that keep talking about love, but often they don't really know what they're saying, "you are all I need for me to be happy. . .
" This is crazy, people! Everything that is missing to be happy is inside of me. The other can walk beside me, but he can't give me what I do not find in myself.
"Ah. . .
we are half of the same coin" Not true! If you want to bond with someone, you have to be a complete bond, so that the other complete with you. I brought you a reading today, that we will do at the end, by Khalil Gibran, which shows this wonderfully.
We have to be complete beings, if we want to have mature and deep relationships, of donation, of wanting the other to grow. . .
without expectations! A good relationship requires people of integrity, that do not complete each other, but walk in parallel. So it's a very important element for us to consider.
There is a good deal of selfishness within the neediness. If we go back there, it's a bit. .
. vampirizing. It's definitely not what we would call love.
Sometimes when we come out of a slightly unhealthy relationship, We realized that it wasn't love, it was just neediness! And sometimes it generates highly complicated, difficult, problematic relationships. Well, another thing that we can consider within the neediness, still associated with this idea of selfishness, the person at a given time, when you have this lack of love for yourself, this lack of self-respect, she feels like life isn't worth living, life is only worth it if someone comes to rescue it.
Well, that would be a good time. Realize that everything in life gives us a double opportunity. You can leave to become a person who has a terrible emotional dependence and wants to be towed for life.
Well, at the same point, if my life is worthless. . .
I could depart for an act of great generosity. If my life is worthless, it's like a plate of food, a nice plate of wholesome and good food. If I don't want it for myself, because I'm not hungry, It's very selfish to throw it in the trash.
Donate to someone! Humanity is full of hungry people. In other words, if my life isn't worth it to me, why don't I give it away?
Why don't I start distributing my energy, for all those in need? Hardly a generous person feels a need, for from giving so much, he fills himself. So we can see that neediness is a selfish option, sometimes in the face of existential emptiness.
Generosity is an altruistic option, but in the face of the same stimulus. The existential emptiness can lead you to selfishness or it can lead you to generosity. Another element that is important to consider.
Do not think that neediness, or any other affective phenomenon, is devoid of an ideia. "No, it's a feeling! ", no way!
There's an idea behind. Usually a misconception, an idea forged for a distorted view of the world, that was born out of some traumatic situation, whatever it may be. There is an idea behind this.
If at a given moment, distancing a little from the stimulus, letting the fire go down, as they say popularly, look at this situation coldly and mentally - emotions are hot, mind is cold - you can even find out what is the mental sponsor of this kind of emotion. "It's such a thought. I don't agree with that.
" And change the mental sponsor of your emotions. "Ah, I think I'm a very inferior person", Not true! So I won't allow myself that kind of thinking.
When I teach philosophy, I always highlight a detail, which I find interesting. The mind is faster than the emotions, realize that. When I think "So-and-so did something wrong to me", there is a split second for me to feel angry or hurt.
In that split second, you can act mentally faster. "No! Not that.
", And puts a positive thing. Quickly don't accept that kind of mental form and put a positive thing. Before it echoes in the emotional.
The emotional is slower, more difficult to clean. The emotional is like an overturned ink bottle. A deep anger, a deep hurt, sometimes it's a whole day, a whole week or even a lifetime to clean.
So before wrong thoughts echo in the emotional and spill the ink bottle, you can banish them, put a mental law, "I don't accept to think that way. " boom! I put a positive mindset in place, something you like, something that is higher, more wholesome.
boom! It's like you've cut a play from a ball. This doesn't go in, bam!
And put a positive thing in place. Of course the universe is said to be circular, and this mental form, will rotate, will come back to you, but you will already find yourself very strengthened. You will already find yourself more and more resistant.
So it's this question of thinking what's behind of negative emotional forms. One element that I think is interesting to highlight for you, I am a philosopher, and several times in my life I've had the opportunity to see. Philosopher heals with ideas.
You are sick, you are suffering. . .
come father, mother, uncle, neighbor. . .
give lap, shoulder, do this, do that. Well, you feel pampered, but when all that ceases, the same pain returns. Philosopher needs an idea.
When he notices an idea that shows he's supported in misperceptions, with an idea. . .
he manages to get out! It's no use, you can console a philosopher, but to heal. .
. only the ideas. And who is not a philosopher?
Every human being has the philosophical potential within them. You have to find a different posture, change your position. I find this interesting.
I was talking to you recently about the phenomenon of dispersion, and this dispersion is related to almost all our problems, including shortages. One of these days I was walking down my street, at a certain moment I stopped, walking, I stopped and said: "Wow, this angle of my street is wonderful. " "Look at the trees, look at that flower.
. . look at this, look at that.
" Then I realized that when I took a step, it was already another panel, another scenario. It had a few different details, but it wasn't such an interesting angle anymore. like the one before, and later another angle.
. . I believe all of them, every angle of view of my street must have something important to be noticed, some degree of beauty always differentiated, but the problem is, as I don't sit still, I can't understand everything that's filled in that scene, everything that is there.
I don't keep quiet! Then the scenes change and I don't see any of them. I realized that internally it is like that too, we don't sit still to see our problems.
The mind doesn't stop, we are scattered all over the place, so every time we look we don't apprehend everything life is trying to show us. That is, this mental reflection that I am proposing to you is to stop a little quiet and look at your problem of affective neediness from its highest principles, and see that they are a shadow of a distorted object, and no longer accept the presence of this distorted object on your mental plane. Deep down is mental musculature, a little training to master your own mind.
Remember that inner life is mind control. So realize that if we stop moving around so much, and look at our problem from a high point of view, let's see that the neediness is poorly supported. And we need ideas, only they really transform us!
Well, another interesting thing is to be careful with the fashion that we live in our days. And fashion is the poor thing, the weak, the victim. Of course, sometimes we are really victims, but seeing ourselves that way is not good for our recovery.
It doesn't help the people around us who also need our example to resist. To be seen as weak, as a pain, as a weakling. .
. this is bad for our conscience. It does not awaken our will, it does not sharpen our intelligence, we are in a position of wanting to be rescued, like the one drowned in the middle of the sea.
So dignity and modesty are very important elements to develop. I'm not weak, I had a fall, but I'll get up! I'm not weak, I'm not at rock bottom, I slipped but still perfectly reach the edge.
Not wanting to aggravate your emotional situation, not take pleasure in feeling weak. The ode to weakness is terrible for you to channel will with this identity. It is an identity that undermines any possibility of reaction.
Don't forget what I always say, the will is like a funnel, you get into trouble in different ways, but to get out, only through the channeling of the will. There's no way! It doesn't matter how I got in, to leave, I have to leave looking to the future and wanting to leave.
And having discipline, resistance and character for it, that is, will! Seeing himself as a weakling and as a poor thing definitely doesn't help. Have a certain modesty, as Plato said.
He said that modesty is positive. Shame is negative, but modesty is positive. When we make certain mistakes and are ashamed of them, it means that there is still a certain sense, there is a certain character.
When we expose our mistakes in the window, modesty is gone! That's difficult. .
. That's a very serious moral wound and much harder to reverse. Moving on!
Another phrase that I got from the internet for you, which I also found quite interesting. "I'm so you that I miss myself. " Isn't that interesting?
I am so you that I miss myself. So to fulfill myself, I live for a partner or partner. I live for the purpose of making him realize his dream, I live in function of giving everything to him.
Why? Because he loves me, he gives me security. Look!
There comes a point when it becomes unbearable, because the human being needs to find himself within himself. This donation of the needy, living for someone, you will realize that at a certain moment charge will be displayed. And it's not right that you do or that the other accepts.
No one can accept as tribute the annulment of someone's life to promote it. This is not moral, this will generate a charge and a high price later. So beware of this element of symbiotic relationships where one gives her whole life for the other to realize his own life.
This is not moral, this should not be accepted. So "I'm so you that I miss myself", if you are missing it is a good symptom. Go after yourself, because being a good partner it is not canceling your life to give everything to the other.
This is a dangerous symbiosis that often ends badly. Another important element, that in a way we already talked about when I talked about the funnel, of life's troubles, that you come through from several doors and leaves at will. Often the affective neediness comes from past problems.
There are countless situations, childhood trauma, sometimes severe trauma, and I don't think it's wrong for the person to want to know Why did you have these problems? Why does it have the neediness, where it is grounded in terms of the facts of the past. But beware, 'cause only turn out and for the past, that is, who did something to me and when.
. . will not necessarily give you the strength to do what is necessary, which is turning inward, channeling your will, look to the future and say, "It doesn't matter how I got here, but I'm going there.
That's my destiny! " Sometimes turning so much to the past makes you find blame and settle for the future. Your mistakes continue.
. . and you say: "Well, but that wasn't my fault, it was so-and-so's fault.
I am the weak, I am the victim. " Forever I won't recover, and when someone says and points out my faults, I'll say "but it was so-and-so! " That is, looking for guilty instead of looking for a way out of our problem, because we don't want to be that, it's not healthy.
This question of analysis turned to the past and forward-looking synthesis, It is important to balance these two elements very well. Beware of exaggerations! When we realize that the person does not react, it's not good to find blame for her to be what she is.
It's good to say it doesn't matter how you got here, but it matters that you have to get there. And that's up to you, no matter where they came from these problems in the past. Obviously when the neediness develops to the point of depression, which is another subject, a complex subject, you may need a multidisciplinary team to assist you in this.
But this does not take away the obligation to remain motivated towards the future. To build the will to reach the future. It will take time, you will need support for sure, but the way out is still there.
People can relieve us of our pain, but to propel towards the future each one will have to do with himself. And for that you need to channel will. So it's important to balance these two elements well.
Analysis focused on the past and synthesis projected for the future. Continuing. .
. as we said before, unattended neediness is progressive erosion of the will, and it can reach the pathological level. .
. and has often arrived. It is enough to look a little at the situations that surround us in today's world.
With certain untreated disorders of the psychic plane, reach the pathological level more and more quickly, and the cases are more and more numerous. We have to understand when we lose the thread of common sense, when we lose possession of ourselves, when we are dramatizing, when we are with a certain masochism of liking to be bad, to be small, to be pampered and taken care of by everyone. Watch out!
No one will tell you that you have it, you have to realize within yourself. And there's another element I'd like to talk about absence of affection breeds neediness. It is true.
But sometimes too much too! Too much affection, too much attention, we have to realize at what moment misadjusting, be the child, be the partner, whoever it is. Realize at what moment we are misfitting that person for life.
There is a traditional basic precept in education, to educate is to frame the person in the laws of life, and one of the laws is cause and effect. Without generating any cause, if you take a student and gives him all the effects, all the affection, all the attention, you break the logic of life and he will insert himself into life wanting it to be so. That without doing absolutely nothing, he receives all the attention of the world, that has a permanent spotlight on him.
This is not so! You have misfitted him from the law of life. So just like the need of affection, Excess affection can also generate a chronic need in the future.
Watch this! As the Stoics said, nothing in excess! Another sentence I've been picking up around of these popular ones, which I found very interesting.
Which says the following: "Needy people don't fall in love. They take hostages! " I thought that was great!
Needy people don't fall in love, they take hostages. That is, it makes the other hostage to my need, hostage to my weakness, hostage to my pain, he will have to eternally take care of me. And develops a whole feeling of guilt in the other if he has to go your way, if he has to walk away, because it's making a person so fragile.
Stop being fragile! Nobody can settle for being fragile for life out there. We perceive countless men who were born with physical weaknesses, innumerable problems, and they did great things.
It's not fair for someone to conform to some fragility. Act on it! Either learn to live with it or get over it!
But don't settle for the image of the sick and the weak that has to be carried for the rest of your life. This we could say, without great doubt, that makes a healthy relationship unfeasible. And if the healthy becomes unfeasible, what will it generate?
A range of unhealthy relationships, where one feels dependent and sometimes it catches another one that exploits this situation. And then we know that many things arise, don't we? It's the story of wanting to be loved at any price.
A needy one has it! The thing I want most is for someone to love me, so I pay any price, it's all worth it. Develops illusions about the partner, develops fantasies, unworthy situations.
Because I need to be loved. Choices without criteria. .
. get involved with companions who are often not mature enough for a relationship, or people who don't have a basic character. That is, he is asking to be explored, because he is predisposed to accept anyone who loves him, or that seems to love him.
So sometimes it creates disastrous relationship situations, sometimes dangerous. Neediness, jealousy. .
. this idea of nullifying one's life for the other always ends in disaster. Anxieties.
. . always waiting for the other to give you, and the other manipulating this situation many times.
Expectations. . .
remember that fairy tale story of the princess and the frog. This we can interpret from the point of view of lack, it's not the only angle, but we can interpret it. When a needy person sees someone who is willing to pay attention, is always a prince charming.
Everyone says, "It's a frog! " "No, he's a prince! ", and will keep insisting that he is a prince, because she created an illusion.
She does not live with the real human being, she lives with an illusion. And is eternally waiting that this illusion materializes in a being of truth, because it often doesn't happen! I could even say that in most cases it doesn't happen, because illusion does not transform anyone.
So expectations, constant frustration, makes this person feel more and more: "I don't deserve someone to love me! " People are bad, people are cruel. .
. and then you isolate yourself. Creates a gloomy expectation of the world around you.
You feel like a victim absolutely incapable of being rescued and isolate yourself. It's important, in my solitude lecture I talk a lot about it, Don't confuse solitude with isolation. Isolation is denying the other or being empty of any possibility of responding to life's situations and circumstances.
Be afraid of the other. So he isolates himself, remains needy, continues to suffer, he still needs the other, but he doesn't want to risk it. Solitude has nothing to do with it.
Solitude is that very healthy moment of being with ourselves. So that when others arrive, we have something to offer. It's that song I always like to quote: "I want a house in the countryside, where I can receive my friends, my books, my children.
" That is, when others come, I have something to offer. Solitude is that moment where we turn inward to find the one who should be our greatest companion, which is our very essence. It is even a necessary moment of inner life.
You have to learn to be alone to know how to be with the other. I know this is kind of commonplace. But reflect.
Not because it is commonplace it means that it was well understood. Antidote to all this. First place, prolonging, making a parody of the famous philosophical maxim "Know yourself".
I would say to someone in need: "Know, respect and fulfill yourself. " Once that's done, you'll be standing and solid enough. to relate to someone in a healthy way.
It's not crawling, do not consider yourself the worst of beings, don't ask the other to drag you through life. He knows how to walk with his own legs. Then know, respect and realize yourself, and take it as a life mission.
Second, practice healthy solitude. Learning to dialogue with yourself, developing an inner life, enjoy your own thoughts, your reflections, read a good book and be willing to extract what did you learn from him, or when watching a movie. .
. Any information that comes from outside. Take a moment to reflect, to talk to yourself, to assimilate the things that life is giving you, to pass through a sieve of your own discernment and see what you have to learn from it, and what you have to deny.
In other words, having an internal dialogue, an inner life. Practicing healthy solitude is extremely necessary. The needy in general are very afraid of loneliness.
It is a moment where he would have to necessarily meet himself, and he despises himself, therefore he lives looking for the other as a way to escape from himself. Another element, distributing love in all directions. Propose to love all that you necessarily have to live.
Enjoy, do it the best way possible. Put creativity, do a little better than you've been doing so far. Enjoy, notice every moment.
Learn to realize that your street is the most beautiful in the neighborhood, not out of vanity, but because you noticed every detail of it. Enjoy your neighbors, with their quirks, with their characteristics. See the bright side of all things!
Enjoy your work, notice the good people there needing to develop a friendship, needing to see more than just a mechanicity of doing things, needing to do it themselves. In any environment we can be at work building ourselves. That is, your entire daily life trajectory, until the path you take.
. . Enjoy!
Good thing there's traffic jams here every day, because it allows me to go through this place and have a better look. If I was stressed, I wouldn't see it. So put love in all things, you will realize that there is little space left for affective neediness.
Who gives a lot. . .
is also a jargon, a common place, but we know that's how one works! Who gives a lot usually lacks nothing. Has affection for itself and is stocked to distribute affection wherever he went.
Cultivate generosity and willingness. This is a basic element. .
. basic! The more I think only of myself, but the weakness increases.
That is, every time I tend to think in my troubles, in my pain, I remember the pain of humanity, I remember such people who are suffering this, I remember such a person who is suffering that. . .
and are passing with dignity. Such a place in the world where people suffer like that. And nature.
. . and animals.
. . and the pain that surrounds you, and you concentrated on top of your little problem.
Have more empathy, put yourself in the other's shoes, feel the pain of the other, commit to it. You will see that generosity is a wonder to combat affective neediness. As I said, it is a twin sister of selfishness!
So generosity, will and determination, what I set out to do, even if it is something very simple, "Every morning I will water all the plants. " Do it! "Oh, today I woke up very depressed.
" It doesn't matter, do it anyway. In the act of doing, of carrying out, of changing circumstances, you realize that you are regaining the reins of your life. Know how to overcome imaginary limits.
It doesn't matter! I'm bad, but I'm really bad. I'm going to water all my plants.
And when I'm done, I'm probably not so bad anymore. Will is a powerful antidote to lack! And last but not least: Dedicate yourself to an ideal, something that is bigger than this personal problem.
Realize that if we think a little big, Marcus Aurelius talked a lot about it, take death as a counselor before a life as a whole, if we think a little bigger, whether or not I was needy on such a day, whether someone loved or not loved my personality, it won't make much difference. What will make the difference? If I knew how to think about the other, if I knew how to give my best for him, if I made a difference in my life and in the lives of those around me, if I was a sum factor.
. . This is becoming commonplace, isn't it?
Because I speak at every lecture. But it is really important! I have an ideal.
. . My ideal is to enlighten people, to take care of the elderly, is to give affection to children who are at risk, it's taking care of animals.
. . I have an ideal.
It makes me think more about someone else's pain than my own. Helena Blavatsky in one of her most famous phrases, where she referred to a master as if it were the very ideal of your life, the wise, wisdom. She says, "Whenever I think of myself, I forget about the master.
Whenever I think of the master, I forget about myself. " So think of need, human need, and you tend to forget yours. This is very natural, it is to be expected!
So these are some pretty powerful antidotes. Finally, I brought you. .
. I know I've read this book many times, including all chapters in a series, but there are certain things in Gibran which are fantastic, and are very effective. And this passage from the prophet about marriage, see how it is an infallible recipe, how he punctually locates the issue of lack and the solutions it indicates for this.
"Let your love be like a sea: in motion between the shores of your souls. I filled each other's cup, but do not drink from another's cup. Give one another of your bread, but I didn't eat from the same piece.
Sing and dance together and be cheerful, but let each one be alone. As the strings of a lyre are alone, despite vibrating with the same music. Give your hearts, but not for the other to keep, for only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stay together, but not too close, for the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak and the cypress do not grow in each other's shade. " That is, this healthy space between one and the other, like the strings of a musical instrument, vibrate in the same tune, but there is a space between them. So that each one vibrates.
Being together is not being glued. Preserve your own identity, realize it It's the best we can do for each other! The best we can do for others is to grow as human beings.
And consequently, it's the best we can do for ourselves too. And that's it! Thank you so much once again your presence here in my house, and we will meet at another time.
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