Balancing Self Love vs Narcissism

Embracing self-worth and self-love and exploring how to maintain a healthy balance between loving oneself and avoiding narcissism is today’s episode. We discuss the importance of recognizing one's needs, the balance of giving and receiving love, and the distinction between healthy self-love and narcissism. Techniques for cultivating self-love are shared, emphasizing the significance of maturity in personal growth and emotional health.

The hosts Teresa and Tom are joined by Tiger Coll, D. D. as they delve into the spiritual need for self love.  "Love your neighbor as yourself."  They contrast the spiritual perspective versus the confusion of narcissism.  They go over ways people sometimes hold back on feelings of self love and fulfillment.  They emphasize the significance of maturity in these areas for personal evolution and better relationships with others. 

They share on being able to accept love and it is needed to freely give love to others, as well as for personal healing.  Without it we just go through the motions of our (intellectual) concepts of love, giving with hooks, etc. without feeling it fully.   A technique for greater positive self acceptance is shared during the conversation.  

• Loving oneself is essential for personal evolution.
• Healthy self-love differs from narcissism.
• Balancing true feelings with intellect is the key.
• Self acceptance allows for authentic expression and true leadership.
• Allowing acknowledgement of the personal fulfillment around personal accomplishments is one key.
• Societal concepts on self-love influence personal beliefs and expressions of love can be used for control or manipulation.
• Looking outside oneself only for expressions of love

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Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring Self-Worth and Love
• 6:08 The Balance of Giving and Receiving
• 12:30 Understanding Needs and Self-Love
• 18:07 Narcissism vs. Healthy Self-Love
• 22:27 Techniques for Cultivating Self-Love
• 27:20 Maturity and Self-Worth

Transcript

TNT SpiritWorks (00:01)
Hey, welcome to enthusiastically spiritual. ⁓ today we have tiger Teresa and Tom to talk to you about self-worth and having a conversation. mean Thomas? Yeah. Well, we're going to talk with each other and talk to you. And one of the, ⁓ I love a phrase that we came up with a little earlier today, which is that, you know, how do I maintain that love for myself without it turning into narcissism?

Or something like that. think how is it that people don't call it narcissism when I do love myself? Yes. That's it. Right. Yeah. So self-worth is probably what we're talking about. So as I was reflecting the other day, that, uh, one of the ways that I become more aware in working with my guidance is I was moving through my day as I was accomplishing a little tasks around the house and, uh, projects and so forth. And I just had this awareness that.

you know, I might say to myself, okay, good job, or I get, you know, that thought, like, why don't you tell yourself you had a good job? And then intellectually, I'll go, ⁓ good job. Okay, I got that done. Great. But I don't allow myself to just feel like that was a good job. And that feel that ⁓ or except I was sitting in the chair meditating one morning, and just briefly, and I kind of noticed that ⁓

You know, I don't, guess my guidance gave me this hint that this is how it happened. I mean, they gave me that hint that, you know, there's things about my life I really love. I love my body. I love my house that I'm in. I love my friends. I love the opportunities that I have. And that if I'm honest with myself, ⁓ I really love it. You know, it's...

certain areas and 80 or 90 % of the day, I love that day. It's but I tend to focus on the 10 % or the 5%. I can when I'm out of balance, focus on the negative and it seems like a big deal or the one transaction in business that was a little tough. I'll focus on instead of the the 10 others that were beautiful and fun and, you know, met lovely people and that kind of thing. What's your take on this Tiger? Yeah, the self worth.

this is, ⁓ a ⁓ very important thing for myself. And when I share with people, ⁓ particularly cause you know, as someone who's aware of my environment, aware of people, I'm alert to it. I'm sensitive to it. use that term a lot. making sure I know where I begin and end, making sure that I, I am giving myself what I want to give to others.

So am I, am I treating myself with the same reverence, respect and love that I'm giving to others, which is ⁓ very typical for me. So am I doing that for myself? And one of the things that we share about a lot is the ability to give and receive with equal pleasure, right? As opposed to one side being a little out of whack.

Right. And so if I'm doing that, then I've, I can build on that, right? Even if it's not the level I want to be, I can build on that when I'm back in balance, I know that I need to give and receive with equal pleasure with equal level of involvement. So that's the big key is am I giving myself what I give to others? And from that pivot point,

Then I can start to truly love myself. can truly be okay with who I am. I'm perfect to be able to say the phrase. I am perfect for what I come to do and feel it to mean it. The, the other component of it is the big picture of, can't give anything that I don't already have. So if I'm not truly loving myself, which is

you what I'm getting from what you're saying, Tom is if I'm not truly loving myself, then I may think I'm giving love or sharing love with people, but actually I'm just sharing the idea of love with people. Boy, that's a really good point to underline. Just sharing the idea or the concept. Not the feeling. That's right. so am I truly respecting myself?

Right? Is there true self respect? Because if not, I'm giving the idea of respect to other people. Right? So bottom line is, just to get us started, am I treating myself at the level that I would treat someone for which I totally honor and respect and love? Am I giving that to myself? Interesting. So for myself,

⁓ self love has been something that I really honor and I, cause I do love myself. I love my body. I love my journey. Kind like what you're saying, Tom, I love the house. I meant, I love my friends. I love what I'm doing. The problem I have as a sensitive person is I've gotten caught up with the victim card of others or the others that are very close to me that do not have self love for themselves.

That's the part that I noticed for myself that's been very challenging because then I hold back. Then I'm not fully into my self love because how can I, you know, love myself. They're going know, what are they going to think or that kind of crap. Right. Right. And so that for myself has been a big, a big challenge because I do love myself so much and many people, especially the ones closest to me over the years and through the, you know, the decades I've been on the planet haven't.

Yeah, I was just reminded, I watched a podcast or a YouTube video the other day. And, you know, the, ⁓ the person who was sharing said, you know, and that old, the old Christian ethic, love your neighbor as yourself, you know, is a biggie. And among spiritual people, we, you know, we like to highlight that as yourself, I've got to love myself first for the love to flow out in some respects. I really like how you made a point of it's ⁓

know, when I get caught in my religious concepts, then I start using my intellect to show love. what, you know, or what other people define as love, you know, so, for example, in saving relatives or saving loved ones, rather than respecting, they're going to have their journey or see them as mountain to mountain ⁓ as a soul, you know, ⁓ that's

there's a prescriptive, as we call it, in other words, a procedure of how to do that. And in our society, in the greater society, there's ⁓ a procedure as to how you show that you're loving each other in your environment, you know, and then that's where the political, you know, concepts fight each other, you know, because one has this concept, we need to save everybody. And this one is, no, we need to be totally self-reliant. And

you know, where the truth is probably somewhere, you know, in the middle or with some balance and that kind of thing. So, but really I'm just talking about myself and getting through my daily life. And, you know, I have a great, I acknowledge that I have a great, I mean, this is, but my training or you in my first seven years, you know, I picked up a lot of concepts like, don't, don't, and it's Australia. They say, don't big note yourself. You can't be too happy. You got to play a little bit of

You got to be a battler like me or in my Catholic upbringing, know, was, ⁓ you know, you got to suffer for other people, you know, to, get to heaven. And, ⁓ you know, I released that, because it's through love, but, know, it's funny. I know that I even know those two ideas. I have those concepts clear in my mind, you know,

What's interesting for me was that I was becoming aware of how I don't really move from my feelings in that area, that I was still not allowing myself I'd say to myself, that was a great job. You fixed that hole in the wall and but I didn't feel the feeling of wow, it's filled in, you know, I feels complete. I have looked forward to painting it, you know, and that kind of thing more opportunity to heal the house that I'm in, you know, sort of a thing.

What do you feel about that? Well, it's interesting. My feeling about that is that I watch a lot of documentaries and I was just watching one their day on Victoria Beckham who just came out on Netflix. And it was interesting because I've noticed this in many, many other ⁓ documentaries about famous people. And when they get to a certain point where they're really loving what they're doing, confusion comes in. People put them down. They see things written about them or people

you know, our haters on them and it's, happens all the time. And so that's very prevalent in our society and in our upbringing. And like you said, the first seven years of, know, like, like cutting people down, like, know, how dare you love yourself? How dare you, you know, think or feel that you're doing a great job because I'm not, and I, know, I'm It's what they are. They're like, like, throwing their stuff on the other person.

And it just really struck me when I was watching the Victoria Beckham, because I was like, my God, like the energy that was really coming at her at a certain point when she was at a height, she was really, you know, doing well was was it was really crazy and it was very chaotic. So I just noticed that. And that's back to what I was saying earlier about how I've held back many times when I've wanted to express, well, you know, I'm really happy with what I've done or proud of how far I've come or what I've learned. And

Yeah, I'm not going to say that because you know, the people come at me. Yeah. You know what I'm getting at in what we brought up a little bit earlier has to do with needs. And ⁓ this is a need. This is not a want. And if I'm not clear on that, I will deny myself one way or another. I'll find a way to deny myself and recognizing what are my needs, right?

I think the best way it was ever described to me was basically my needs are physical survival and my spiritual. And that includes, you know, air and nourishment and water and, and health and shelter and sex. ⁓ These are needs. They're not, they're not wants their needs. And I need to fulfill them at some level that, and ideally in a way that I feel good.

You know, or, or probably, ⁓ particularly when we start getting more to that, you know, exciting part where we start talking about sex or something like that, the key word is respect, right? Am I working with that energy in a way that's respectful for myself and the other people in my life? And if it is now there can be more of an openness or relaxness, ⁓ can be courteous, right? Without being vulgar.

And things like that. So to me, coming back to what I hear you sharing is it's about needs. And if I don't realize these are needs, I will start getting caught up in the other people's stuff. It is the law of gravity because I'm around people. I'm going to be influenced if I, in a negative way, if I don't have my needs clear. And as a further point to what you're bringing up, I relate to that a lot.

Because it is amazing how quickly I can go look outside or someone can go look outside. ⁓ and you brought this up in another podcast. We were talking about, they don't, you know, they have too much money or, know, maybe on the other side of it, well, they're, know, to do something, you've got to be poor, right? To, get close to God, you know, it's always about something out there.

some excuse for me to start complaining and gossiping or bitching about something out there. ⁓ Those people are doing this so they're bad and here's the common one, money.

The crazy thing about it is people have this up and down thing about it like, no, you can't have too much. Or I don't have enough. Right? It's like, you got too much. this the richest barons and the oil people and all this kind of stuff. The air, you know, if you have all the oil Arabs and all that kind of stuff, or the, you know, the Elon Musk or the all these other billionaires. that's too much money. And yet we want money.

And yet we want money, we would like to be rich at some level, right? So this becomes this weird class game of something out there, right? And so that's the weird thing. I cut my own needs off by playing that game. Why should I worry about what someone else has got? Hey, how did you do it? I want some of that. ⁓ I see that that person is really connected with spirit.

I want to do that. It doesn't necessarily have to do with whether they have money or not. You know that that's what I want. And how do I do it? That's coming home to my needs. Otherwise, I will never get to my needs. I'll be playing outside with my wants thinking I'm satisfying my needs. Well, that's pretty deep stuff. You had a situation recently, right, Tom, with your needs?

Or you recognize one of the things that I realized is that the wear and tear, you know, on my physical body, that's what keeps spirits reminding me of as you guys were sharing was that, okay, so the next step is that if I'm not going to acknowledge and allow myself to feel the fulfillment, you know, so I guess what I'm talking about is I sort of think the fulfillment, but I don't feel it like, good job, you've done your duty, good boy. But if I don't allow myself to feel it,

And so, you know, for me, this is just, ⁓ you know, can dive deep and go into, well, what happened when my first seven years and what's the fear there and that kind of thing and help release that, or I can just start to go, Hey, ⁓ just really feel that pat on the back or really feel that sense of accomplishment. And then I'm meeting my needs and the wear and tear, you know, the physical body will.

I have a feeling is just going to slow right down. So I think we are probably in an epidemic, like what I'm observing of unhealthy people on our planet, know, that you're just observing in America and in America. Yeah. Well, in Western culture, you know, there's so there's this epidemic of it and the wear and tear. And again, it's always looking for something outer to fulfill me rather than just that inner.

you know, that inner self acceptance, self worth kind of a thing. And I suppose I'd like to get to, you know, so when we hear a lot about narcissists, you know, that's if you put on your YouTube video that you're going to talk about the evil narcissist in your life and how you maneuvered them, you'll get a lot of views. know, there's the whole victim thing. a big buzzword. It's a big buzzword. And, and so I'd like to say that what I'm

sharing about for me is an awareness of where I'm in balance with my self worth or with my out of balance. And my default because of my probably lifetimes of experience of that is to default into this almost pseudo humbleness and not allowing myself to feel the full fulfillment of even a little task. just to add to that,

Because because that buzzword is so big and just from a spiritual perspective or the root that really what we're talking about is it's the energy of greed. Yeah, that that's the key part. But when when you actually go get the the root of what narcissists is all about, what's the actual core? It's an unhealthy love for self. No, it's not.

That's what the root is about. it's, you have to have a love for self. It's defining the word. If you go into the dictionary, you have to have a love for self, but it's an unhealthy love for self. said. Yeah. So that's, that's the key to the whole thing. But the problem with it for me is you still get into perspectives of, well, that's not healthy.

Right. Because individual. That's exactly right. Everyone's individual. that's right. Tom's giving himself all this great accolades. Well, that's not right. Why is he doing that? Yeah. You never should, especially in Australia, never say anything good about yourself in front of anybody else. They're supposed to say it or not. Not at all. Isn't that crazy? Whereas here in America, what's interesting is if you don't blow your own horn, nobody else will. And we were very accepting of it.

we're very much more so, know, to a point, right? To a point. Yeah. So I want to back into your, needs again. And, the, you had mentioned how, you know, there's so many people that are obviously, not into not getting their needs met. That's right. So then that's, you know, goes to the reproductive area, the genitalia, people having, you know, infertilities at the highest ever. People can't get pregnant. Like there's so,

endometriosis, there's so many things in that area. erectile dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, sex lives, all that it's it and you know, all of that plays a part with how much is your self love back to you know, your self love and getting that need met. That's right. It's almost like I feel like it's like on on my plate of I need to have I need to eat that. That's right. So you know what? That's right. So then you get into let me say it this way.

mental masturbation, you got to look for a thrill ⁓ or thoughts that help your brain want to feel comfortable or feel something, you know, and it's it's an intellectual, we all kind of know what that means, you know, ⁓ that how what that what that experience is like when I'm caught in that mental, you know, gymnastics, gymnastics, or, you know,

But if I allow myself just to feel the fulfillment and allow that full love to flow. And it's just a moment. I'm not talking about laying there for 20 minutes, you know, although that if that's what's needed, you know, for a healing or something, that's great. But it can be quick. just saying in the moment and yeah, I'm not overindulging. I'm just relaxed because there's a point where it turns into a mental thing. If I overindulge and

What I was going to say about narcissism is like, really, we're just talking about being out of balance, being in balance or out of balance. And but if I cut off that part of my feelings, ⁓ you know, of that self satisfaction, then I'm going to create this ease, you know, over time, it's going to be wear and tear. So let's talk about a technique for self love, working with our guidance, you bet.

Okay, well, there's, there's different ones we can do, but the one that we've been talking about, we can do something called love feast. It's a common technique that we do in, our program and group work and so forth. But basically for this one, since we're a little, the little team here and, and, people y'all can participate to is

What we're going to do is we're just going to relax, get ourselves personally cleansed. That's just about you coming to the moment. Just taking a couple of deep breaths and just be in the present, right? Just feel yourself where you are. Not someplace else, not thinking about anything else, not where you need to go. Just right here at the moment and just take a couple of deep breaths and let yourself be open to that bigger picture, to the universe, to your spiritual helpers. Just be open to that.

And now when you're there, ask your higher self, ask your guidance, the universe, ask them to give you one key word for a positive quality that you have. Guidance, spirit, what is a positive quality you'd like to share with me that I have? Just take a deep breath and let it out and let the word come.

And then come on back. And then what we'll do is we'll go around and just share what that keyword was from spirit and what that means to you. So my keyword that I received was acceptance. And the visual I had about that word was that I, I really self love and accept myself. And I'm at a place now in my life where, having been here several decades that I really am.

embracing that fully or more than I have in the past. So that's the key word I got. got leader and I got images of how when I'm relaxed, I know that I naturally will lead and leadership for me is just doing my part. It doesn't mean that I'm completely in charge of anybody or or everything and everybody. It just means that I, I lead with for example, you know, I came up with this topic.

today, or this from my experience. And that leadership, that's just leadership. So my guidance is helping me. I was seeing in my mind's eye, like, just accept it, like, except that's your part. And ⁓ it doesn't, it doesn't seem grandiose to me. It's just like in this area, at that particular time, I worked with my leadership and acknowledge it. And if I don't acknowledge it,

you know, by acknowledging it, I can help it flourish in the right place at the right time. Like the key word that my guidance gave me was the keyword love. And this was a great one, because I kind of there was a part of me that kind of like what love what what you know, I was expecting a word, because there's a different word, you know. So it's a good reminder to me that

I, when I'm in my niche, when I'm just being myself, it, it's pretty natural for me to be in that feeling in that vibe or energy, if you will. And it's very pretty natural when I'm relaxed to just share that feeling with other people and whether it's a hello, good morning, you know, this is that love energy that, ⁓ my guidance are reminding me.

that I have that's it's a quality that they sense and see in me. And just like we were doing, if that's something that you need to do now also with what you pick up is then just kind of regroup it for yourself of how what what they're trying to say to you and then how you can work with it. And that's a very simple technique. It's a simple technique. You can do it anytime, anywhere. And ⁓ we we just did that what it just took us a couple seconds, you know, just to get back to that pivot point.

But anyway, that to me, all this comes back to my needs and that self worth energy. And and just to and to add a little bit here before we move on is how much those needs and self worth, how that builds maturity that that if I don't take care of my needs, if I don't live in that world, I'm not building maturity.

Like one of the things that we talk about, we have the chakra profile that we do under where the reproductive center is, which is the needs. It talks about maturity. One of the other phrases is maturity there and building that. So to me, that's another key point of, of respecting myself, respecting others. If I don't take care of my needs, I'm going to walk around like my whole life, like a teenager.

I'm never going to mature into really getting the love and the passion I need out of things and, being able to move forward. I'm just going to go hopping from one thing to the other and repeating the same. It's like getting married, divorced, getting married, divorced, getting married, divorced. It becomes the same cycle rather than, okay, I'm moving forward. It's that maturity that kicks in so that I can take care of myself.

Yeah, my last words are final words on self love is that the importance of recognizing that when I do love myself and I'm able to move out into the world, I resonate that echo in everything I do. And so there are people that I that I'm around that may not have that in them. But for me to resonate that they're going to gain some insights for themselves and energy of maybe lifting up their game to

Yeah, what strikes me is ⁓ it really helps me keep it all in balance when I allow myself to feel it and work with my guidance in that area. You know, because ⁓ I enjoy being a leader, but there's times when I pull back and I won't. And by reinforcing by my self-worth and my self-love, I expand that quality in a positive, balanced way, you know, to be of service.

So cheers to self love. And thank you for listening to another episode of enthusiastically spiritual. We hope that you got some insights and a little technique to work with your guidance on gaining a little love fest for yourself, love feast and a way to really amplify that self love. So remember until next time that life is too short to not be enthusiastic about your unique journey.