Transcription
[Music] Hello, my name is Dr. Franchesca Pirikova. Today I have the good fortune and the pleasure to continue discussions with my business partner, Holly Harris. Last time, we did an introduction to core problem analysis. And today, Holly and I will be discussing one of the core senses, the sense of self-love. Holly, welcome.
All right. Well, um, once again, this is really fun to be kind of marching through, uh, CPA with you and doing these deeper dives now. And, um, as you said, last time you covered all the major points of core problem analysis, aka CPA, and now we're going to do some shorter but deeper dives into the three core senses, starting with the sense of self-love. So, um, if you haven't seen the first introductory video, um, we suggest that you watch that first to ground the discussion that we're about to have about self-love. And, um, why don't we just dive right into the questions? So, the first question is, uh, let's start at the beginning. What is self-love? What is self-love?
Well, self-love is an instinct of self-preservation. Nature doesn't care if we're happy. Nature cares if we survive long enough to procreate, right? And therefore, whatever it is, whatever instincts and reflexes are built into our hardware, this is about survival. And there are times in our life when we are going through all kinds of crises. Um, it can be, you know, really, really dramatic events of our life, losing loved ones, losing possessions, going through war, people going through torture, concentration camps, significant crises. And in those moments, we can be buried under the hopelessness and helplessness and just want to just let go and die. In those moments, our instinct of self-preservation starts screaming at us, so to speak, and we have this undeniable thirst for life. No matter what, no matter how, we need to get through. We need to love ourselves enough to want to survive, regardless of the circumstances of life. So, self-love is an instinct of self-preservation.
Okay. Then, what is the sense of self-love versus self-love itself?
Right. So, uh, when Holly and I did our original interview last, last, last, um, last time, we talked about there are three core senses, right? And the primary functions of all of our reactions, be them adaptive or maladaptive, are about decreasing vulnerabilities in our sense of self-love, sense of safety, sense of belonging. Now, self-love and sense of self-love are two different things. As I said, self-love is an instinct of self-preservation. This is something that is embedded. This is something that's pre-programmed. We come with it with our, we call it hardware, being that a biological computer. We come with hardware, right? All kinds of pre-programmed stuff in there, including our, um, um, self-love as that instinct. Sense of self-love is actually an ability to connect to self-love at will, just because, without requirements, without any kind of conditions attached to it. The issue is that between all of those moments when we are overwhelmed, stressed out to the degree where our instinct of self-preservation needs to kick in, self-love is dormant. It's like a heartbeat. When you are sitting and you are in a resting, uh, uh, you're resting, right? Do you experience your heart beating? Nope. No. People, most people don't. Some people still do, but most people don't. So, we need to do something to experience our heart beating, like go for a run, or take your hand, put it on your chest, right? Or your fingers on your wrist. Now, sense of self-love is this ability to experience your self-love when you're not in a crisis mode. When you are indeed in between regular living situations. Now, we all want to experience our self-love. We just don't know how. We never learned how. Nobody tells us how. And you know what we do? We start to create conditions of good enoughness. In order for me to be at peace with me and love myself and feel myself love, I need to be tall enough, thin enough, you know, loved enough by other people, um, I don't know, smart enough, successful enough, good enoughness. So, what are we doing here is very interesting. We're assigning conditions to achieve something that's unconditional. We're born with it. We don't need to satisfy any conditions. We just need to know how to connect to that self-love. Just like when we decide to experience our heart beating, take your hand, put it on your chest. There's also a way to connect to self-love at will that we are actually teaching in CPA.
Okay. Wow. What an important distinction. And I have a follow-up question for you. So, is the sense of self-love different than self-esteem or self-worth?
Excellent. So, a little bit of a bird's-eye view. This world is dialectical. Two sides to everything. And these sides are not the same. They're complimentary. Day, night, life, death, yin, yang. Right? Now, our existence is also dialectical: conditional side of existence and unconditional side of existence. Now, the conditional side of existence is my relationship with the external environment, with other people. If-then contingencies, right? If this happens, I feel this, I think this, right? I do that, right? Something triggers it. The unconditional side is my relationship with me, as it's supposed to be. I just am. Neither good nor bad. I'm just an entity of human beings, like the sun is an entity of stars and Earth is an entity of planets. Right? I am an entity of human beings. And then the dialectical balance is, I just am. Neither good nor bad. And I succeed, I fail. People like me, people don't. Right? That's an end. Now, self-worth, number one, does not exist. Ding, ding, ding. We are not born with price tags. There is no such thing as a worthy or worthless human being. We just are. The sun cannot be assigned a worth to. Earth cannot be assigned a worth to. We just are. So, I know that a lot of the time, we treat a lot of things that are not actually real as if they are real. For example, the concept of fairness. There's no such thing as fairness. Why? Because this world is based on things being complimentary, not the same. Fairness will only be indeed existent if things were to be the same. But it's complimentary. We can decide to be fair to other people, ourselves, but we cannot expect fairness, and we know that we see the empirical evidence of that everywhere, but we still insist on our ways, right? Now, the same is here. We think we treat the concept of self-worth as if it is, but it's not. Again, because we are entities. Now, self-esteem is different. Self-respect is different. Those are real things. However, they exist on a conditional side. You need to do something. You need to accomplish something to feel self-esteem, to feel self-respect, right? To acquire self-efficacy. Beautiful, wonderful things, just have nothing to do with self-love, because self-love exists on the unconditional. I was born with it. I don't need to do anything to earn it. I need to do something to earn my self-respect. I need to do nothing to earn my self-love, because love is unconditional. I have it. I was born with it. I just need to learn how to connect to it in between crisis situations when it comes out, undeniable and loud thirst for life. That's a learning that hopefully a lot of people will be interested in getting, because it's not just about ourselves. It's also helpful for our children to learn how to do that.
Okay. That brings up more follow-up questions. Um, and the first one is, I'm going to, I'm going to flip it and ask you, what happens when we can't connect to self-love?
Mmm. Well, most of us can't connect to self-love. Actually, I would say 99% of the population can't connect to self-love because we did, we never learned how to do it. Also, we're treating self-love as something as a conditional, again, assigning conditions of good enoughness. Also, the information field in which we exist does something, programs says all kinds of things that are not necessarily real, such as the definition of self-love for us is what. And I like to use Google, and I always ask people to use Google for multiple things, because Google is a great representation of our collective understanding of things. So, Holly, can you please take your phone right now and Google synonyms to self-love?
Okay. Synonyms to self-love. What are you going to see?
Okay, stand by. Self-love. Definitely synonyms. No, no synonyms to self. Okay. Okay. Here we are doing this in real time. Okay. Synonyms. Wow. U. Okay. Here's what I'm looking at. All right. Out loud. Selfish. Egotistical. Narcissistic. Egocentric. Ego-maniacal, if that's such a word, and self-centered. Wow. Amazing, right? This is our collective understanding of what is self-love. Indeed, people are taught that if you love yourself, you are selfish. Somehow, you're supposed to love other people and be nice and giving to other people while not loving yourself. How can that be? We can only give to others what we give to ourselves. I cannot give love to other people if I don't love me. I have the instrument for that. This is this is the way it is. We can only give to others what we have. It's very easy to see what a person has inside. Just see what they're doing outside to other people. If I'm self-critical, I'll be critical to others. If I have pain inside, I'll spread pain. I have happiness inside, I'll spread happiness. I'll give what I have. I cannot give what I don't have. So, if I want to be loving, accepting to other people, non-judgmental, non-critical, I first need to start with me. And when people don't know how to love themselves, right? How to connect to their self-love that we are all born with, each and every one of us are born with that instinct. Now, even instincts can crumble. Nothing too extreme, right? If you hate yourself enough, you'll become suicidal. So, even instincts can crumble. However, we are born with it. Just need to learn how to connect to it for free, at will, just because, right? So, what happens when people can't? Number one, they start to accumulate all the conditions of good enoughness. I need to be tall enough, smart enough, you know, successful enough. Now, and what happens with that? Nothing, because you cannot achieve something that's unconditional by satisfying conditions. It's insane, but that's exactly what we do. Exactly what we do. And therefore, my relationship with me becomes dependent on what? Relationship with other people and how well I fare in life, because I don't treat myself as an unconditional being. I treat myself with all of those notions of self-worth and self-value, and all of those other, you know, insane notions that don't really exist. And then it becomes, what? Everything becomes merged to the conditional side. And then I succeed, I'm good. I fail, I am bad. People like me, I'm good. People don't, I am bad. My relationship with me becomes dependent on other people, dependent on how well I fare in life. That is suffering all day long, sometimes on an allowable basis. Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad, good, bad, good, bad. What happens with that? Instead of understanding this and learning this and separating these two sides and being indeed able to be present in this dialectical balance between, I just am, and I succeed, people. I succeed, fail. People like me, people don't. Everything is merged. People start to do what? Decrease fluctuations of life so they don't go under this roller coaster. Good, bad, good, bad, right? How? Avoidance of life, or forcing other people. Don't stand there. Don't do that. If only you gave me what I wanted, I would not have had that, that reaction. Or using force against themselves. Self-harm, suicidality, you know, self-punishment, drug, alcohol use, all of those things. And of course, they cannot teach their children how to love themselves, how to be this dialectical balance, right?
Yeah. Yeah. That, that's the perfect segue into, um, you know, clearly CPA, or, uh, your formulation of CPA, core problem analysis, evolved out of your work with, uh, adults and with children. And so that makes me want to ask you, uh, what happens when parents cannot connect to their self-love? How does that impact children?
If I, as a parent, cannot connect to my self-love, treat self-love as that being selfish, right? What am I going to do? Number one, I cannot teach my child to treat themselves as an entity to be in this, you know, dialectical balance, to not connect the relationship with self to what other people are thinking and how well I do. Because very importantly, we have to remember that my relationship with me is unconditional. Meaning, what other people think, whether they're happy or unhappy with me, whether I succeed or fail, has no link to my relationship with me. I forever ever just am. And therefore, can always be at peace with me, regardless of what happens. If I say I am good, I can also be bad. No peace, right? Peace is neither. And then, because we cannot achieve that balance, cannot achieve that peace, we're going to be incapable of being in a position to be effective in life. We're going to be again bringing in conditions to my relationship with me. We're going to be attached to outcomes. How else can it be if my relationship with me is, if, you know, depends on the outcome of how well I do? Of course, I'll be attached to the outcomes, right? And we need to remember one more time, my relationship with me is not dependent on my relationship with other people. However, my relationship with other people is dependent on my relationship with me. So, if a child doesn't learn how to be giving to self, how to be, how to be self-loving, self-reinforcing, self-validating, and all of the other aspects of giving to self, how can they, you know, initiate and most importantly, maintain healthy relationships with other people? So, being able to learn it yourself and being able to teach it to your child is extremely important. The other thing that parents have, you know, and and struggle with a lot is this notion that they have is that, you know, um, they know better what is good for their kid. Meaning what? That they don't treat their child as this wonderful, beautiful, um, creation, right? You know, uh, you know, this piece of art created by God, universe, nature, whatever you believe in, right? We call it David. Michelangelo's David. They don't see the David in their child. They start to impose on the David of their child. Actually bringing the situation into the day-to-day interactions in which the child learns through the "shoulds" imposed by the parent. "My child should be different. My child should do this. My child should not do that." What happens with that child? Learns, "I am not indeed even good enough for my parents to love me," and they're supposed to love him by definition of me being there, right? Meaning that the child has significant difficulties, starting to develop significant difficulties in relationship with self. So, it is imperative for parents to see their child as that David. And we actually have all kinds of ways in which we explain it to the parents.
It sounds like there's a backstory on this metaphor of using Michelangelo's David. Is there, uh, where did that come from?
Yes. So, uh, thank you, Holly, for reminding me. Um, the metaphor, and we use a lot of metaphors, of Michelangelo's David, came from one of my clients. You know, his father, you know, very, very smart man, CEO of multiple companies, and he had this idea that his child needs to be an athlete. And he would go and he would like sign up his child for all kinds of sport teams, and he would coach all of those teams, and he would be really praising himself because he was a very busy man. Uh, he would be praising himself for how much time he was giving to his child. Now, the problem with that situation is this child was tripping over his own feet. You know, he was interested in poetry. He was interested in reading. He was interested in creating things and, you know, understanding things conceptually. He was not a person who was born to be an athlete. And of course, he would get a lot of negative feedback from his peers, from his team, because he really was not good. And then, on top of that, negative feedback from his father. And I would tell the father, like, leave him alone. You know, you wanted him to be the the athlete, but it doesn't look like he wants it or has has that in his David, in his, but that was before the David metaphor, has his in his hardware, right? You know, what he came in in terms of his talents, being an athlete is just not one of his talents. It wasn't pre-programmed in him. And this father said, "Franchesca, you like metaphors." I said, "Yes, I do." He's like, "I'm going to give you a metaphor." I'm like, "All right, go ahead." And then he said, "I see," he said, "I see children as being born these blocks of marble, and I am entrusted to be this Michelangelo to take a chisel and a hammer and make a David out of this block of marble." And I jumped up in the air and I said, "Oh my god, that's such a fantastic metaphor. I'm going to steal it from you. I'm going to tell it to everybody with one little tiny caveat." I think I know what you're going to say. What am I going to say? I think you're going to say it's not at all about creating what the image that that parent had in his head. It's actually the complete opposite. It's uncovering it. Exactly. The caveat that I told that dad was, children are born Davids, beautiful, wonderful creations in the image and shape of somebody much bigger than us. And parents, we are entrusted to see the David in that child, love the David as that child is, without "shoulds." "Shoulds" means I want that child to be in my shape and image, how I want that child to be, right? So, we are entrusted to see the David in a child, love the David in the child, and help the child see the David in them, love that David in them unconditionally, just as you are, and live that David, meaning self-actualize the talents the child has. So, in many ways, what we are entrusted to do is help the child understand their talents, understand their predispositions, their proclivities, right? Actualize what they were given, the talents that they came in with, and learn how to connect to their self-love and loving that David as you are, no conditions, no requirements, because that is going to allow you not needing definitions from other people and not being crumbled by the definitions of other people. Because unfortunately, parents and other people indeed, and teachers do take a chisel and a hammer and do try to make another David out of an already existing David. And the only thing you're going to get is damaged existing David. That's the only thing. So, our job is to help our children learn how to love themselves as they are, so they don't allow other people's definitions to crumble them, and don't try to define themselves by, in order to try to fit in with groups that they don't fit in with, trying to impress other people, trying to be superior to other people, or dominant to other people, thinking that whatever they have, whatever their David is, is just not good enough. So, being able to be at peace with you and love yourself as you are is one of the ways in which we can help our children and ourselves create this force field against the external reality, external information field that keeps bombarding us with all kinds of crazy notions, such as self-love is something that's selfish, right? Or the concept of fairness, or all other things that we then suffer from, such as the concept of worthiness or worthlessness. We can't have our children shielded from other people talking to them, from the internet, from books, from movies, right? We can't, like, turn it off. They're going to be in that environment. We can't control what our children necessarily consume information-wise. What we can do is help them create a force field around them that will indeed prevent those influences coming through, or once they come through, the child knows what to do with it. And listen, we parents are foundational programmers, and we are the unquestionable authority. Therefore, we're the most important ones that can help our child create such a force field. But first, and that goes to your question about why parents need to learn how to self-love themselves, we need to do it ourselves. Because if you don't know how to do it, if you don't practice it yourself, you cannot teach your child, and you cannot help your child continue to refine the way that they understand it and use it.
Okay. Well, so many thoughts going on. Um, this whole, the analogy of programming technology makes me think about, uh, the increase in AI and AI companions and building a force field, um, around the impacts of all of this use of AI and, uh, yeah, the AI companions and social media that is continually challenging us in our self-love, right? Our sense of self-love, right? Clearly, that's for another conversation slash, you know, writing a blog post, but wanted to bring it up, uh, under the context of the discussion we're having.
Absolutely. Talk about, you know, all of that allows, you know, allows for so many opportunities to get influenced by, defined by other people, right? You know, they do this, they do this, like, I want to be like that, I want to be like this. Oh, this is cool. This is not cool. And letting other people define who I am. And usually, or large language models at this point, being defined by not even right, but a lot of the time, we allow other people to define us for a purpose of, that's talking about the function, right? What is the function behind it? Because we have a condition: if other people love me, then I am good enough to love myself. Therefore, they will allow other people to define us. Like, I will do what you want, I will say what you want, I will feel what you want. And in my mind, that will make me more interesting or lovable to you. And then I'll get, okay, I was loved by that person, therefore I'm good enough to love myself. No, whether other people love you or not has no bearing on your ability to connect to your self-love, because you were born with it. It's a gift. It's not an accomplishment. We treat it as an accomplishment, but it is a gift. We just need to learn how to connect to it. It's actually very simple. Now, this is insane. To think that other people's love is an absolutely necessary requirement for me to love me. This is like saying, in order for my heart to continue to beat, you know, this person needs to love me. No, your heart will continue to beat even if that person doesn't love you. You need the love of that other person, including your parents, for your relationship with them. You don't need it for your relationship with you. You need all of those accomplishments of being smart and productive and successful for your relationship with the external environment. You don't need it for your relationship with you. This is an example of dialectics. Two things happening at the same time. The same thing you need it for this. You don't need it for that. Relationship with me is not conditional on relationship with other people. Relationship with me. Relationship with other people is conditional on my relationship with me, right? All of those are examples of dialectics that are ever present in our life. And therefore, the paradox is the only norm of our existence. Everything is simple, not easy, including connecting to self-love. The process of that is very, very simple. I teach that to to to children as young as four and a half. At least that was the one that the youngest ever so far for me. Tell them what to do. They close their little eyes and they connect to self-love immediately. So, not easy in the sense of learning and understanding how all of this works, right? Uh, and you'll need to have some foundation of knowledge in order to appreciate and understand the mechanisms behind how to connect to your self-love.
All right. I think that's a wrap on our deep dive discussion on self-love, and, um, I look forward to our next discussions on, uh, sense of belonging and sense of safety.
Excellent. Thank you, Holly, for bridging all of this, and thank you for being here today and for this lovely, lovely discussion.
All right. To be continued.
To be continued. Bye-bye.
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