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July/August 2008 Article by Kathy Love & Limits with Self for Creating the Life you Desire Allowing Peace, Success, & Happiness by Creating & Holding a Container for Self-Love & Limits You are the Container for your Life. Your container is made up of Love & Limits. You get to decide how big and how strong the container is. Self-Love is like the plant food, good soil and care that nourishes your plant or flowers. If you withhold water or plant food, or healthy aeration from your plant it will suffer in its health. Likewise, when you consistently take care of your plant with plant food, good soil, and plenty of water, it will thrive and offer much beauty to the environment! Limits are like the container that holds your plant. It is steady, strong, provides some ability to retain moisture. If the container is broken and all of the water leaks out, or there is no protection for the roots of the plant, your plant is likely to become diseased and die. It needs the container as much as it needs the water, plant food, and aeration.     Self-Love Part I Just as it does not help to tell a child or teen or loved one to “get over it” when they are experiencing some sort of upset, it is also not helpful to ignore or “stuff” our own difficult feelings. Just as for most plants, it is important that they not sit in water, but have aeration, we too, need a process for allowing our feelings and experiences to move within and through us. Holding a container for yourself that provides Self-Love will support you in continuing to blossom and to live with peace and good health. It also means you must place absolute importance on returning to feelings of openness, calm, and safety in your nervous system through unconditional self-love, self-nurture & care. Learn how to continually return to openness in your body, mind, and spirit. This does not mean ignoring or stuffing difficult feelings…No, quite the opposite! What it does mean is that when difficult emotions arise, you make time and space to feel those feelings and sensations in your body. Staying attuned and present to your feelings in your body provides a very natural opportunity to allow such experiences to be honored and thus expressed so they may move through you fully. It is only when we are not holding difficult emotions and pain in our body that we are truly free and open to invite and receive the desires of our heart into our lives fully. If you're not sure how to create these conditions for yourself, let's work on that in your therapy or coaching. Upcoming articles will also go further into the Practice of Self-Love. *Important to note here is that if the same difficult emotions and body sensations are unceasingly showing up over time, even with the above practice, you may be experiencing symptoms of being “triggered” which results from the anxiety / fear / dysregulated stress hormones in the body that are leftover from trauma. It is important to attend to this with a professional who is well-versed in trauma work, to support you in your path toward full health and peace. Talk therapy does not relieve trauma symptoms and an experienced trauma therapist will know this and will be using other proven therapies for trauma, such as EMDR, somatic experiencing, etc. The longer you wait to get help with trauma symptoms, the longer the process often is in relieving this kind of suffering. I encourage you to get help now : It is not necessary for you to suffer with ongoing and persistent trauma symptoms. You can find relief! Self-Love means attending to what is calling for healing. You would not wait to take a child to the doctor who possibly needed stitches. Use that same Love and Care toward yourself now. Benefits of Healthy Self & Emotional Regulation  read more... back to top of page