Boundaries and the True Self Blueprint™

Boundaries and the True Self Blueprint™




A boundary is the space between you and another person; like your property line.

The term over-used term "boundaries" is too limited for the intricate way I wish to convey the separateness, yet relatedness of the true self for purposes of healing self love and self worth.  

So, today I'm coining a new phrase to help define the self.

My new term is the True Self Blueprint. Those of you who know, I'm a real estate broker by profession, and in real estate, we use something called a "survey" to tangibly show on paper and legally to determine the location of a piece of property. In SelfLoveU, we shall use the term "True Self Blueprint" when talking about the distinction of your true and separate self relative to the rest of the world.

The True Self Blue Print has many attributes, including boundaries, easements (where people can get through), fences and structures. The most important thing to understand is that you own something--you have full 100% rights and use of YOU. You are responsible for yourself and to yourself. You are responsible for guarding yourself, tending to yourself and expanding your territory.

When you are born,you became an owner of YOU. When you were born, out of your mother's womb, you took a breath. That breath automatically gave you inherent worth. This inherent worth comes with it's own territory. You own this territory, and this is your True Self Blueprint. I'm using this term for the purpose of healing and recovering self worth and self love.

You own yourself. You have rights to yourself. Think of it this way: You are an energetic structure, and you have ownership rights to do with yourself what you need to do to be true to you.

Aspects of Your True Self

• Your thoughts, feelings
• Your goals and desires
• Your skills, talents and abilities
• Your goals, dreams and visions
• Your beliefs and opinions
• Your past experiences
• Your current experience
• Your Presence
• Your values
• Your empathy
• Your energy and time 
• Your inner healing 

The list could go on, but hopefully you're getting the point. You are separate. Yes, we are all one at the base level, but for purposes of self worth, self esteem and self love, it's vital that you understand this very tangible quality that you have, which is yourself. Using the idea of a blueprint is a helpful visualization of your existence, potentials and limitations. 

Your True Self Blueprint is Who You are

Your True Self is who you are, not who other people want you to be. Your True Self is who you are beneath all the trauma, abuse, false notions, misconceptions, mistakes and wrong turns. Your True Self is always True and can never be destroyed. So long as you have breath in you, you own your True Self. No one has the right to take it away, and only you can allow others to tell you how to execute your rights on your own property, which is you. 

As the owner of your life, it is your responsibility to tend to your property, which is you. Of course, you are not a literal object, but this is merely an analogy to help you understand that you exist, that you have worth, and that you are equal to any other property out there, because you exist, you have ownership and existence rights. 

What Exists on Your BluePrint?

- Walls, Boundaries, Property Borders, Fences, Gates

- Livestock, Crops

- Buildings, Barns, 

- Ponds, Wooded Areas, Pasture 

- Wells, Septic

- Streets, Roads

Your True Self Blueprint is YOU. And you get to enjoy all the rights inherent to ownership of yourself. You do not have to allow yourself to be run over by weeds. You do not have to allow foxes in to steal the eggs your hens lay. You do not have to let relatives squat in your guest house. Your property is your property and it is your personal responsibility to tend to the items represented by your True Self Blueprint. 

YOU HAVE RIGHTS!!! 

7 Ways to Be a True Friend to Your TRUE SELF

The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. If you want to draw and attract healthy, good solid relationships into your life, then you must first create a healthy, good, solid relationship with your TRUE SELF.

Please note, I'm not talking about the FALSE SELF which seeks validation through external means such as looks, money, unsatisfying relationships, social climbing, fame or material gains. I'm talking about your True Self which endures beneath all the fake stuff. I'm talking about your True Self, which holds the key to life and freedom; the doorway out of the illusion of happiness (unreachable fantasy)... to the reality of true peace and well being.

1. Take time to be alone.

If you Love Yourself and want the best for you, then you must take time with yourself. Spending quality time with yourself, and allowing you to just "be" who you are--whatever that may be... even if it's painful, depressing, sad or happy or glad. Taking time to be there for you with no one else around is crucial. Not being able to be alone with yourself is a sign that you haven't discovered how beautiful you are, and can skew your ability to be there for others, keeping you from equal, healthy relationships.

The reverse is true, if you tend to isolate, then it's important for you to start taking risks and allow your true self to be seen around safe people. CODA Meetings are a great way to start doing this if you have any nearby.  

2. Protect yourself from the Inner Critic's shaming statements.

The Inner Critic is formed from the messages you received from not getting your dependency needs met as a child. A child has no boundaries and receives all unmet dependency needs as messages-- whether intended or not from caretakers--as messages of his or her worthlessness. These messages form the inner critic that stays with the person until it is dismounted and reparented in adulthood through soul work. In order to have a good relationship with yourself, you have to do soul work which will protect your Inner Critic from harming your true self. Books to help you with this process include, "Healing the Shame that Binds You" by John Bradshaw and "Soul without Shame" by Byron Brown.

3. Reparent your inner child.

You have to reconnect and take notice of your inner child. If you have trouble being there for yourself and getting into negative, painful relationships, or avoiding closeness altogether, then it is evident that you are abandoning your inner child (as you were conditioned to do by no fault of your own). We learn to hide, criticize, abuse our inner child for the rest of our lives. Our inner child goes into hiding as a way to survive, but it never goes away. As an adult, if you want to heal your relationship with yourself, and thereby heal your relationship to others, to God and to life, then you must meet your sweet, innocent, precious inner child face to face. This can be done through therapy, meditation, guided imagery, visualization, journaling, art and sleeping with a Teddy Bear. :)

4.  Get in touch with your real feelings.

Getting in touch with your real feelings involves going deeper than you are right now to figure out what you're really feeling inside. When I first started understanding this concept, I was shocked to discover that I had no idea how I really felt. I may have been angry with someone, but felt depressed and paralyzed to take action. I may have felt sad, but focused on being a workaholic instead. I may have been afraid, but drank alcohol to soothe my fears. For many years I turned to Christianity to hide from how I really felt. Getting in touch with your real feelings involves naming how you're really feeling so you can reconcile yourself with yourself. Remember, there are 6 basic feelings, Anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise. Try staying congruent with yourself and getting to your core feelings. A therapist can help you with this process.

5. Listen to yourself to determine your needs.

This was a hard one for me. Learning to listen to yourself in order to determine the true need. I never knew what a need was, or that I had a right to have any needs. When I was little I was shamed for my needs, so access to the messaging system in my psyche that I have a specific need was lost along the way. Thankfully you can get the knowledge back and learn the language of your own intuition, your own needs. Your needs express themselves in a variety of ways, from thoughts, to feelings to body sensations. Learning the language of your own needs is crucial to being your own best friend. I can't tell you the relief I've felt when I finally recognized a need of my True Self and was able to meet that need. Whew! It is worth the effort to figure this out.

6. Meet your own emotional needs.

Meeting your own emotional needs involves recognizing your needs in the first place. Taking action to meet your actual needs rather than running to your nearest addiction is a huge step towards befriending your true self. Meeting your own emotional needs is not easy in the beginning because you may have been blocked from getting your needs met for so long; however, it is possible to get some relief by meeting your own needs today. Meet your own emotional needs by taking action, getting out of the house, positive affirmations, visualization, tending to your inner child, making friends with someone safe, allowing some gray area. Just being there for you, sitting with your pain, sharing your pain with your counselor. This deserves it's own article.

 7. Take action on your behalf.

Every time you take action to heal, to be alone with yourself, to relate to safe others, to take care of your physical body, to journal, to get in touch with your needs, to meet your needs--every time you do anything for yourself, you are opening the way for your TRUE SELF to come out and shine. Any time you TAKE ACTION to meet your own emotional needs, to take care of yourself, you are being a friend to your True Self. Taking care of you paves the way for loving relationships with yourself, with others, with the universe and with life. Every time you answer the call of your own heart to be there instead of rushing to the nearest external source of validation, you are being a friend to yourself and allowing your True Self to come into the light where you belong.

Your TRUE SELF has likely gone into hiding, especially in our culture today which is based on the notion that people are sinful and need to be punished. Generations before have passed along a legacy of toxic shame and self hatred. We have been raised to be unconscious and self-harming. We've paid a huge price for the ignorance of our parents and our parent's, parents, et al. This abandonment of the true self has led to addictions such as workaholism, alcoholism, sex addiction, love addiction, gambling addiction, internet addiction, porn addiction and a number of other serious assaults to the true self and to true feelings of aliveness. If we are to combat the pain of self annihilation through healing, we must begin by finding our true selves and being our own best friend.

The benefits are endless.

Counterfeit Love

What is counterfeit love? This term captured me as I was reading quotes from one of my favorite psychology authors, John Bradshaw posted on this article. I know what counterfeit love is, I know it all too well.

There are two kinds of love, real love and false love--just like there is your true self and your false self. False love produces the false self and true love produces the true self in others. Those who are accustomed to being loved for who they really are, and validated as children are more able to function in their true and natural state in adulthood. Unfortunately, those who were loved wrongly--and for the wrong reasons--develop a false self that covers and hides the true self with toxic shame.

So what is the difference? I know I've written about it before... the difference is that false love is love that may look like love, but isn't really love at all. False love is about being loved for being what someone else wants, needs or expects you to be--not, however, for being who you really are. True love is being loved for who you really are, even when that means you are not pleasing and complying.

True Love - Loving another for who they are, even when they are disappointing or make mistakes. Loving that person in their reality, as they experience life without trying to mold them, manipulate them, shape them and form them into anything other than who they are. True love is about receiving acceptance, validation and compassion for another as they unfold in their own way without expecting them to meet your needs or serve as an extension of your will and desires. True love is love that gives space and grace to the other, offering room for mistakes and all manner of vulnerability. This is true love. True love feels good; freeing; within true love we can grow and become all that we were born to become on this planet.

False Love - False love is being told directly or indirectly that who you really are is unacceptable, shameful, bad or wrong. It's being conditioned to believe that you must please the love object in order to GET love. It is a sense that you don't know who you are, you don't know what's best for you. False love teaches that your own experiences and reality are questionable, and that you should disregard your own gut and follow the whims of the one who is in control. False love is about power and control, manipulation, greed. It's about making the person into what is needed by the parent or lover instead of allowing the person to simply be who they are created to be.

If you've grown up in an environment that is less-than-nurturing, then you may not have ever in your life experienced true love. In fact, you may be operating out of your FALSE SELF without any inkling of who you really are. This False Self is a self that is a people pleaser which is always trying to seek validation externally. The False Self is at the core of narcissism, and at the other end of the same plane--it is at the core of codependency. (Codependency & narcissism being polar opposites on the same vibrational level). The False Self is fake and portrays itself as perfect, however, in reality it holds the ultimate flaw. The false self can never be satisfied and is forever relegated to the prison of addiction: sex, gambling, alcohol, relationships, love, shopping, eating, electronics--name your poison.

The False Self is narcissism. It's the part of us all that our culture is rabidly cultivating with imagery and idealism that can never deliver on its promises. The False Self craves the perfect body, the perfect home, the perfect career, perfect family, cars, vacations. All of these things promise to fulfill, but leave the core of the person--the true self starving for truth...

The True Self is truth. It doesn't give a shit about the kind of car you drive. It doesn't care if you eat spaghetti and wear a size 7. The True Self doesn't parade itself because it's not searching for anything because it already knows it is loved. It is impossible to function as the true self unless you know the truth of who you are--which is love. True love exactly as you are without outward adornments. You are love and there is nothing you can do to add to that fact, or take it away. This is the true self.

So we must keep the right perspective as we go about our lives and label and identify false premises from which we are living our lives. Any lies we believe will produce more of the false self... the feeling of toxic shame that we are inherently flawed, not good enough, wrong, bad. If we don't keep ourselves in check, we will feel ashamed and guilty for being who we are, and continue to try to cover up our shame by more purchases, more addictions or worse--suicide.

We must remind ourselves who we really are, every moment of the day. We must combat the voices that tell us we're not good enough. We must reparent ourselves and provide ourselves with true love and empathy for the inner child within that has been squashed and forgotten beneath layers and layers of falsity--of someone else's opinion of who we should be. We must curb our greed for material items which lie to us and promise the world but fail to deliver. We must stop making the mistake of believing that anything outside ourselves can add to or take away from our precious existence.

There is no other way.

True Self/False Self Playlist

Very good explanation of True Self/False Self.

Notes:

Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio
False Self is part of yourself that has adapted to a threat. It is the "part of you that has adapted to threats but no longer recognizes the adaptation or the threat."

God's disapproval - Threat. Damnation by God to hell.

Spanking, beating, bed without supper

Requires kids to adapt. No greater disparity in power than between parent and child. If parent making threats, child must adapt to those threats. Out of fear, children surrender to abuse.

Begin the process of pretending that a threat is not a threat.

My parents hit me because I was such a mess. Changed threat into a necessary virtue. Adapting themselves to a threat and forgetting adaptation and threat. Conformed to good behavior. Not I conformed to a threat. (Basically, we're lying to ourselves.) 

Defense must be 100% if threat 100% - Causes the two to merge. Defense of immorality arises deep defense. Very hard to dislodge. Once the True Self 

Defenses so merged with attacker. Abuser internalize. Inner child cannot be recovered. Defense is terminal to True Self.  Our defenses hardened unless we work to break free.







 

Your True Self Knows the Truth

Your True Self knows who you are. Your True Self knows your value, that you're connected with the Source of all creation. Your True Self knows that you are Love at the core of your being. This attitude of worthlessness is merely your False Self that you erected as a psychological defense to childhood abuse and neglect. 

This false self saved your ass and kept you sane as a child, but as an adult, it is no longer healthy. You've got to break through this barrier of lies, pain, false beliefs and get down to the wound, heal the wound through your presence and then your mind will untwist and you'll see your true essence on the other side. 

How to Find Your Core Truth

Group Member asked: "I still don't know what my truth is though. How do you get in touch with your core truth? One 'truth' to me is just as true and another 'truth'. This is where I am stuck in my recovery."
My Answer: Your core truth is the core of who you are. It is that part of you that no one can ever take away. Your truth is beneath your wounds, your false beliefs, your codependency, your symptoms. It is the truth of who you are, connected with the source of life, your higher power. Your truth is all knowing. Inside your heart you hold the answers to everything you need to function. Your core truth is pure love, pure joy, pure bliss.

This truth can be hidden, but it cannot be destroyed. This is the hope of recovery, to find this truth buried on the inside of you, beneath the pain, the maladaption, the addictions and mental illness. The goal of healing is to find this truth in all its forms and manifestations and to live from it, rather than attaching to outside sources or from your wounded layers. 

Those of us who suffer from codependency have not been taught to access our truth. We were taught to hide our truth, that our truth is nonexistent, that our cognitions and view of reality is wrong. We were invalidated. We were taught to mistrust ourselves and to give our power over to our caretakers (who were likely taught the same faulty way).

You can find your truth by being aware that you have a truth, and trusting that you do have truth inside of you. Your True Self. You may need a therapist to help you figure this part out, that is, how you feel, what you believe and whether your feelings are based in now or are pent-up emotions that are frozen inside.

When I did this process, that of unfolding my true self, it was one of the most magical part of my healing. I could literally picture my true self buried in the treasure chest of my heart, beneath the pain, anger, hurt and confusion. I pictured the real me banging on the sides of the box that held me down. I imagined myself unfolding and coming to life... which means, expressing and feeling my authentic truth for the first time.

It is an ongoing endeavor to locate your truth when you've gone through the things we've gone through. I learn new parts of myself every day that I never realized I had. Your truth holds things that you need to function appropriately in all facets of life. When you release bits of your truth from the captivity of hiding, suddenly you find that you're able to function in areas that you never could before.

As you go beyond your initial awakening and move into proper functioning you encounter lots of bleeps along the way. I now know that any issues or difficulties I'm having stems from my disconnection from my own truth. Lately I'm learning (through mindfulness) to listen to the voice inside myself. Not only to listen, but to HEED, validate and honor my gut instincts.

Learn to Know to Your Truth

Deviating from your truth even for a millisecond can have dire consequences for your life. Your intuition, your gut, your truth, your voice... the one that may be muzzled, or silenced-- this is a voice you must learn to listen to. You must learn to heed what you feel at the core of who you are. Deviate from this truth, and you will end up lost, hurt, and in pain. Your truth will never lead you the wrong way. It always protects, always knows what it needs, always loves , if you will stay tuned in to your truth you will find clarity. Learn to recognize the voice of you inside. Learn to heed your own voice. Not the wounded voice of desperation, but the voice of wisdom and truth. That voice will lead you out and help you recover.

The False Self

The False Self.  I've come to understand the False Self as a part of yourself that tries to be something other than who you are in effort to gain acceptance and approval from others. This is the heart of codependence. When you're more concerned with what others think of you than following your own truth, you are codependent on outside input.

Another term for this condition is having an external locus of control. This state is very painful because one can never control the actions and reactions of others. If you're self-love and identity hinges on what others think, you're self worth fluctuates depending on whether you're accepted, rejected, approved or disregarded.

The False Self is the part of you that is playing a part. Your mask. It's the part that is trying to earn approval, to get love. The False Self cannot ever get love because true love flows from within, from your very essence. The False Self can only get false love which is conditional and leaves you feeling invisible and empty. ~ jlr 


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Sharing our wounded ego selves is sharing who we have created ourselves to be to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. There is no reality, no truth, no authenticity to our ego wounded self. Authentic connection is not possible from an inauthentic part of ourselves. No matter how much you may want the joy of authentic connection with your partner or others, it cannot occur until you authentically connect with yourself.

~ Dr. Marget Paul

Uncovering Perfectionism

What a relief!!! Perfectionism seeps into the crevices of life, lurking in places you never realized. Some people are perfectly sloppy or perfectly messed-up... It's not just for those with clean houses and tight bodies. Look for it any time you find yourself feeling unworthy. Perfectionism is you striving to attain approval from an internal construct that lives in your mind from childhood somewhere; it's a negative core belief based on a lie you accidentally swallowed. Maybe it was passed-down? People deny it all the time. 

The need to be perfect may seem to benefit you, of course, or you wouldn't do it--but in the end, it ravages your life and leaves you destitute. Any time I'm feeling off, I search my thoughts for hidden perfectionism... What mistakes am I afraid to know about? What humiliation am I avoiding by hiding my weaknesses? You'd be surprised where you'll find it. Uncovering it and exposing your true self underneath is liberating, but takes work and practice. Every day I have to remind myself--"Face it, you're not perfect and you never ever will be, so stop holding yourself back and just be who you really are..." It takes A LOT more courage to be you than it does to be perfect.