UNCONDITIONALLY LOVING PRINCIPLES

Love Without Conditions – what does that look like?

• Patience and kindness
• Love the ones you’re with
• Deep listening – without trying to think of a response while the other person is talking
• No expectations, no conditions (un-conditional)
• No disappointment, anger, frustration
• No shame or blame
• Loving starts with caring about yourself

Get Loved

Without a foundation of love, behavioral skills and techniques are not enough. In addition to feeling loved, we need to take steps and action to change lifelong, unhealthy habits. It’s very hard to do this work alone – allowing others to support us on this journey will help us feel connected. Now we get to have other people to reach out to, which we did not have for most of our lives.

• Find people who can love you unconditionally. 
• Tell the truth about yourself to people. Those who are willing to listen without trying to change you are likely to be able to love you unconditionally.
• People who encourage complaining, whining and criticizing are not truly supporting you.
• Practice being radically honest about yourself with people who can accept you just as you are.

Build Awareness

• Learn about your coping behaviors and why you developed them.
• Realize that you and everyone else always did the best they could.
• Start changing your behaviors – move towards more loving, honest, and more responsible behaviors.

Practice Radical Responsibility

• Become aware of your behaviors
• Create intentions to change unloving and irresponsible behaviors
• Tell the truth about your own actions
• Keep your word

Coping Behaviors

Most of us had a lot of reasons to protect ourselves in some way from the pain, fear, and loneliness of childhood.  We also arrived at adulthood with an overwhelming belief that we were not good enough or worthwhile enough to receive unconditional love from our parents and other caregivers.  In response to that pain and fear we developed “Coping Behaviors” early on, which helped us survive and cope with life.  Some of these behaviors helped us feel “ok”, some served to preserve the small amount of safety we had.  The typical Coping Behaviors are:

• Pleasing
• Clinging
• Controlling
• Lying
• Attacking, Bullying
• Withdrawing, Avoiding
• Acting like a Victim

Understand the Toxicity of Anger

• Anger strips away Love – anger and love cannot coexist at the same time
• Anger permeates a room, a situation.  The constant presence of anger induces PTSD.
• The various forms of anger:
  • Irritation
  • Annoyance
  • Impatience
  • Exasperation
  • Loud sighing
• Fear often leads to Anger
• We often get angry when we’re feeling trapped, cornered, or out of options.
• Being right.  Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?  Being right gives us emotional currency that feels good in the absence of real connection.
• Defending is all about being right – “Defense is the first act of war” (Byron Katie).

Wanting to Change and Control Others

As you learn about Unconditional Love, there may be a feeling to want your friends, partner, or family members to learn about Unconditional Love. This is a kind thought but tread lightly. The best teaching is just being loving yourself and let them ask you about what they might feel is different about you. Deciding what someone else “needs” or “should do” is really very arrogant. It also makes the other person feel that you do not love and accept them exactly as they are, a feeling we have had way too much in our lives. And actually, the truth of the matter is that we cannot change another person, only ourselves, and that actually often changes a relationship of any kind.