Seeking Balance: Self-Care or Selfish. Helping or Enabling

Seeking Balance: Self-Care or Selfish. Helping or Enabling.

Balancing mental and physical health, fun, learning, stress, relaxation, boundaries, tolerance, giving, receiving are the elements of maturity and are essential ingredients needed to negotiate life, to have fun, not get bored, grow but without punishing your Self. Balance is not static; it is perpetual motion that changes sometimes even moment to moment. It is a lifestyle, an art form and balance is different for every individual. Balance points change as life circumstances change, as you change, as those around you change, as the conditions of the world change.  At first balance may seem overwhelming and time consuming but it does even out as you master skills and the benefits of being balanced a majority of the time bring magic into your daily life.

Healthy self-care and healthy giving and being of service begins with you forming a relationship with your Self. The art of balance cannot be learned or mastered until you have first become familiar with listening to your inner child, actually develop an ongoing relationship with your inner child and are able to listen to and hear and feel your body’s signals. You cannot practice self-care if you don’t know who you are. You cannot practice balance, which is part of self-care if you have no idea who you are inside. How can your offer care to your Self if your Self is a stranger? You cannot. You can only guess at what to do and when to do it. First steps in working on balance are inner child work, self-parenting skills, and mindfulness so you can develop self-awareness and tune into how you are feeling emotionally, energetically, and physically.

Giving to others versus self-care is a big topic for people who are on a Spiritual Path and are familiar with and drawn to selfless service or at least the façade or “politically correct” language of “giving”.  How do you know if you are over giving or giving from your Wounded Self versus truly giving from a balanced and connected energy?  If you are energy blind, you will not know the difference. In the 12-step program Codependents Anonymous (CODA) this would be called being in denial, the inability to see your addiction to giving. People addicted to giving (many if not most New Age people) give in order to soothe their own emotions of pain or emptiness. If I give to someone and they thank me, worship me, adore me, and give me that melting look of gratitude or adoration, I am going to feel better, at least for a bit of time. It is better than alcohol or drugs. Giving from your wounds means ultimately that you are bargaining: I give to you to get something back, your attention. This is also what we call enabling. You will encourage people in order to “get” their attention and what feels like love for you.  You will do anything to make the other person feel good, even if s/he is destroying his/herself, because if s/he feels good, that will make you feel good. Enabling.

At some point the wounded giver will flip and then keep flipping. The flip side of giving in order to not feel your own wounds is to then become selfish and self-centered. Typically wounded people either over give or become incredible self-absorbed, self-centered and selfish. The backlash of a wounded person going into their “I deserve it” energy can range from fits of anger to full out lawsuits.  The wounded seek to wound, that is all they know, hammer or nail. There are no skills for finding balance.

In this era, the wounded victim is a hero so most people gravitate towards the “I deserve it” vibration. “I deserve it” is not self-care; it is the reaction of an immature wounded person to not getting what s/he wants.  You planned this life before you came here; you planned to “get” everything you “deserve” when you were a ball of light with your Guides. Self-care means you need to profoundly know your Self in order to care for your Sacred beautiful Self.  There is no question of deserving or not deserving something. You do not walk your dog because she deserves it; you walk your dog because it is necessary for her emotional and physical well-being and it is your special time of bonding.

On the other side 12-Step programs and psychology know from research that being of service, giving, is an essential part of recovery, including if you are a co-dependent.  Giving to others is also a healthy part of a mature and balanced lifestyle. Giving to get recognition, adoration, or as a means of control because now people “owe” you for your giving something to them are all signs of a wounded inner child. Until you wake up, you will probably not be able to recognize this is what you are doing.  Many people in service industries and definitely many self-proclaimed new age healer type people give in order to feel better about themselves. With this kind of giving, people will say and do anything to get a smile or a hug from you. Enabling someone is when you give to someone in order to make yourself feel better and to avoid conflict. Codependents, enablers, give to people in order to feel loved. Sometimes they do it to build a career, to gather “followers”.  Enabling is a self-centered, self-aggrandizing, self-serving act of an empty person.  In order to give or be of service in a healthy balanced fashion, you paradoxically need to have a Self to be of Selfless service. On every Spiritual Path, you learn to first have a healthy ego (healing from your childhood) then you learn to let that ego go. Both parts are necessary.  

This short article can at best, hopefully, make you look more closely at your own healing and development.  These are complex topics that require reading and practicing of new skills in order to live a more  balanced, mindful, self-aware life.

Journey On