Self-Protection & Self-Love

All of our actions and all of our defenses are motivated by self-protection and self-love. Even actions that appear to be motivated by vengeance, greed and jealousy are all motivated by self-love. This is good news because it affirms that, at every point in your life, you have only done the best you knew how to do to protect and love your self at that time.

If we believe that we are not loving enough to receive what we want or need fromothers, we will usemanipulative behavior to get our wants or needs met. This is because our self-loving intention is to survive and thrive.

I’d like to share the story of another past client. ―Brad‖ was in his late twenties, a single dad who held a responsible job. Due to being raised by troubled parents, Brad grew up believing that hewas nota good and deserving person.When Brad found himself overwhelmed with responsibilities, he would complain that everything alwaysfellon hisshoulders. His schedule was hectic, consisting of dressing and feeding his two youngsters each morning then dropping one off at day care and one at grammar school and getting himself to work on time.

When I inquired as to whether he could ask any of his friends to give him a hand, he answered that they were all too busy. I asked him if he had actually asked any of them and been told that they were too busy to help him. He said that he had not asked anyone because he expected that they would say no and that that would be too painful for him to hear. Brad did not believe he was really worthy of people’s help, and he projected that belief onto his friends. I asked Brad if he had ever had any friends give him help in the past. With a sad expression, he answered that, yes, friends had helped him but, he believed, only because he had manipulated them into helping him by promising them things or making them feel sorry for him and therefore guilty if they did not help.

For Brad to ask for help directly, without offering to pay for it or manipulate a yes answer through guilt, was too threatening to him. To hear a no answer would feel like a validation of his belief that he was undeserving, and this would cause him too much pain. He felt the risk of simply asking for help outright was too great for him to take. Manipulating his friends, however, would keep him from the anticipated pain of rejection and satisfy his needs as well. This behavior prevented him from seeing that his friends really did care about him and did believe that he deserved theirsupport. This form ofsurvival keeps a personstuck in their painful beliefs and away frompeace

The good news is that Brad, upon exploring his fearful belief in more depth, decided he could, with my support, begin to counterthe internal voice thatsaid hewas unworthy to receive support. He decided to ask a friend to help him with a half-completed and time-consuming household project—without the use of bribery or manipulation. His friend said yes without hesitation. This was Brad’s first step on the road to correcting the negative message he had received as a child.

No matter why we grow up with negative self-beliefs, when we carry them around within us, those beliefs influence how we treat ourselves, how we treat others, and how we allow others to treat us. These negative beliefs create in us a sense of not being safe. They might cause us to avoid intimacy, become offensively defensive, withdraw or manipulate and sometimes hurt others as a way to self-protect