Is Your Healing Motivated By Self-Love Or Self-Hate?

If your healing efforts are subconsciously motivated by self-hate, it will end up perpetuating your pain and not providing you with the deep healing impact you desire. It is very important to understand your real motivation for healing.

Transcript

Hello, My name is Noah Elkrief, And today I would like to talk to you about the difference between healing being motivated by self-love versus healing being motivated by self-hate. So, As you can imagine, There's a very, Very big difference between the two. Yet most people, The vast majority of people, Don't realize that they're actually healing out of a motivation of self-hatred. And even if your intention is to heal, If you're trying to heal, If you're spending time healing, But it's secretly, Subtly, Subconsciously motivated by self-hate, It ends up not being as effective, And it ends up causing a lot of pain and hurting you in shadow ways. So, Let's get into it. So, Here's the difference. I'll give you an example. Imagine that you have anxiety, Okay? And then you start to heal. You know, You look up videos of how to heal your anxiety. You read books of how to heal your anxiety. You go to therapy to try to heal your anxiety. Of course, It's a beautiful thing. You're trying to feel better. However, For a very high percentage of people, What I've noticed through my over a decade of helping people in counseling sessions is that such a high percentage of people are actually trying to get rid of their anxiety because they think it makes them unlovable. Okay? So, They think to have anxiety means I'm damaged, Or I'm weak, Or I'm unlovable, Or people won't like me, Or people will judge me. So, In other words, My anxiety is a bad quality about myself, An unlovable and unlikable quality about myself, And I need to heal to get rid of this bad quality. Yeah? And that is self-hate. That is hating a part of yourself because the anxiety is an anxious part of you, A stressed part of you, A nervous part of you. And when you're trying to get rid of it because it's bad, You're hating, Rejecting, Judging, Hurting a part of yourself. Okay? And before I get into the impact of that, I want to talk about the alternative. And that is if we have anxiety and we see, Okay, Of course, I'm lovable while I have anxiety. My family will love me. My friends will love me. Romantic partners will love me. But it just doesn't feel nice. And I want to feel better. I deserve to feel better. I want to take care of myself. I want to be able to enjoy interactions in a different way and open my heart in a different way. So, I want to care for my anxious part and take care of my anxious part so that I can feel nicer and so my anxious part can relax and enjoy life a little more. I hope that difference is clear. I'll give you more examples later. But the difference in the impact when you heal being motivated by rejection and self-hate versus when you're healing being motivated by self-love and self-care is so massive. So, If I have anxiety and I'm trying to get rid of that part, I don't like it. I don't want it. It's not welcome here. What you're actually doing is rejecting a part of yourself. And when you reject a part of yourself, Even if you get rid of the symptom, So you manage to suppress that part or heal something to get rid of that part, What you're doing is a variety of different things. So, One is you're reinforcing I have to be perfect in order to be lovable. You're reinforcing that I'm not good enough as I am. You're reinforcing the patterns that were put on to you by your teachers, Your parents, Your society, That there are many things that are bad about myself and I'm not lovable and I'm not good enough unless I get rid of all the bad things. And as you can imagine, That's not very relaxing. It's maintaining, Strengthening, And perpetuating unworthiness and inadequacy and creating internal conflict, Endless fight, And endless healing, Basically. Because when we're operating from the programs of our childhood of if I have any quality that's not perfect according to my parents, Then I have to get rid of it and make it better. We're always finding and looking for something about ourselves that isn't good enough. So, We end up on a lifetime of self-improvement, Not being motivated by care and passion and interest, But a lifetime of self-improvement to get rid of all the bad inadequate parts of ourselves. And then inside ourselves, We can't ever really relax. Can't really ever be gentle to ourselves, Enjoy ourselves, Love ourselves in the doing of nothing or in the doing of something that's not productive because we're not enough as we are. So, In other words, When we're motivated to heal through this self-hatred, Self-rejection, We can never truly be happy within ourselves. On the outside, It might seem like we're improving, We're getting better, We have less of these bad emotional symptoms, Or maybe we're improving our life, We're improving our money, We're improving our success, We're improving our house, Whatever. But inside, It's endless inadequacy. We're always looking for something that's not good enough about ourselves, Consciously or unconsciously, Which blocks us from loving ourselves, Liking ourselves, Enjoying our own company. Because it's like there's always this part there trying to improve you and make you better, Always feeling like you're not enough. So even if you get rid of the anxiety, Okay, The next moment is a different anxiety. The next moment, It's a subtler anxiety. The next moment, It's your loneliness you have to get rid of or your whatever it is next. Do you understand what I mean? The alternative is care, To really have care for the anxious part in you, To have care for the lonely part in you, To have care for the frustrated, Sad part in you. That when there's an emotion there that you don't like, The first step is to meet it and transform your relationship to it so you can accept yourself while having it and love yourself while having it. So if you notice that there's anxiousness, Stop. Am I trying to hide that from people? Why? Only because I think it's unlovable. Am I trying to get rid of it? Why? Is it just because I think it's unlikable, A sign of weakness, A sign of that I'm not perfect, Perfectly healed, Perfectly strong? The first step is to be able to meet it with love, To meet it with care, As if because every unwanted emotion in you is actually a part of yourself, A part of you from your childhood. So maybe that's the anxious you in social settings. It's like a seven-year-old you. And so when you're saying, I hate this anxiety. I don't like this anxiety. Why is it here? I'm weak. I'm no good. What you're actually doing is telling the little girl or boy you, The little seven-year-old, You're weak. You're no good. I hate you. Get away. And as you can imagine, That's not nice for your internal system because that little seven-year-old anxious one is a part of you. So I'm here to sort of stand for healing out of self-love and care. I stand for being kind to the different parts of yourself, Even if your first instinct and impulse is to get rid of it and it's bad. I have to fix it and heal it and improve it. You're allowed to have anger or sadness or pain or addiction or whatever it is. None of that makes you unlikable or unlovable. You deserve love, Even if you have pain and trauma and all this stuff. So before you work on trying to get rid of the bad things about yourself, Maybe it's worthwhile to see if you can love yourself while having it first, To have compassion for yourself while having it. Yeah. I'll give you another example. It's like the difference of having a child, A seven-year-old child in front of you, And they injure themselves. Okay. And they can't walk well right now. And so you could help them from two different motivations for simplicity. One is I'm embarrassed walking around with my kid like this. They have a limp, You know, People are going to judge them. They can't play sports. No boys or girls are going to like them. Right. So it's all this, Like rejection. It's bad. It's no good. People don't like them. I don't like them. I hate seeing them with a limp. They can't even run. They're not having fun. It's like this, Like subtle rejection, Judgment, Fear. It's not okay. It's not welcome. So I have to take them to physical therapy and do all the things for them so that they get better. Cause this is really not okay. Like I don't like it versus like, I see my child is hurt and I don't like seeing my child hurt. They're in pain and I love them and I want to support them to feel better. This is the difference in how we want to treat ourselves. And if we have some unwanted emotion or unwanted pattern or habit, Instead of I have to get rid of this bad habit, You know, That I'm eating unhealthy food or I'm yelling at somebody. I have to get rid of it. I'm terrible. I'm horrible. Wait, Stop. You deserve compassion for that bad habit, Forgiveness for that bad habit, Acceptance for that bad habit from yourself. And then work on healing from that care, From that compassion. I'm so sorry you have this. I'm so sorry. It's hurting you. I'm so sorry. It's getting in the way of love and, And happiness and ease and contentment. How can I help you? And then miraculously healing from love, Healing from care is much more effective and efficient because when we're trying to improve, Right, From this self-hatred, Non-self-acceptance part, It's like this tension. I have to get rid of it. It's bad. I don't like it. And it's like a pushing and it's a forcing. And, And when we're pushing and forcing, We have less capacity to hear and to listen. And listening is a big part of healing. In addition, Vulnerable parts of ourselves are less likely to make themselves known to us and show themselves to us to be healed when they feel we're coming from a place of rejection. Because in order to have very deep healing and very big transformations, A lot of the time, We need deep, Deep safety. Right? So if you come to me, If I have some pattern, Some anxiety, Or maybe some physical pattern, Like I'm eating junk food all the time. And you say, I'm going to help you. You suck. You're terrible. I'm going to help you fix this. It's going to be very hard to open to the depths of my inner child pain when my dad rejected me and my mom hated me and all of this stuff. I don't feel safe enough with you to open to the depths of my, My being to the deepest pains and vulnerabilities. Whereas if you come to me, And you're like, I see you, I see you that you're struggling and in pain. And I want to help you. I want to support you to achieve to feel to exist how you wish to. Then all of a sudden, I'm like, Oh, I can open, Maybe I can reveal the truth, The deepest truth, Maybe I wouldn't, I never knew was inside of me. So this is how we want to speak to ourselves and explore ourselves. So if I'm in pain, If I have anxiety, If I fear if I have loneliness, If I have unworthiness, If I have some habit, That's hurting me, I want to meet that part of myself and say, I see you. How can I help you? What's going on? What is this pain you're in? And when I approached these, These inner painful parts, With this love and care and acceptance, These parts can open to me easier, Share with me easier, Reveal deeper truths and subtle hidden pains that have been suppressed for decades easier. And that invites and allows for larger transformations more quickly. Okay. I hope that's clear. And if you want support with that sort of thing, You're welcome to contact me for sessions, Check out my other videos, Check out my courses or whatever else. I hope you have a beautiful day. And I hope this video really supports you to be kinder towards yourself and to start healing more out of a self-love and self-care motivation rather than a self-hate and self-improvement motivation. Bye.

Reviews

I see I have been motivated by the later recently. I’m so ashamed of both my triggers and my responses. I just feel things relax as I listened. Thank you ❤️

Spot on, thank you 🙏🏻❤️

What an important distinction to make! Love it

Beautiful! I needed to hear this! 🙏🌞💚🌟

Wow, this hit the spot and triggered an emotional reaction - I think I have some work to do to change my motivation for healing. Thanks for sharing your insights, they always seem to cut through to the core of what I am feeling and help me refocus. ❤️🙏