I’ve sat with this image and its essences for a few days… noticing how at various times as my energy ebbs and flows that there’s a “need” for these different flavors of self-talk.
This morning the Your Best Friend stands out.
You rock! I’m so proud of you.
What are you needing to hear this Now?
I appreciate the variety of voices!
A good portion of the work I do with clients includes helping shift their various inner voices to be kinder and more compassionate with themselves… and, it’s so true that there are many ways of doing that!
And, it can be hard to find those voices when we most need them – especially if we lacked similar supportive voices in our early years, when our own inner voice was forming.
It’s also helpful to PAUSE and notice the tone of voice we’re using with ourselves, and the energy underneath it, more than just the words. Sometimes words skim the surface and miss the mark, if the tone or emotional energy behind them isn’t resonant.
Also, good to notice how the various parts of ourselves feel in response to those voices and tones…
Do we receive the support, empathy, encouragement, appreciation of ourselves well?
Or is there resistance to some?
Where does the resistance live in our bodies? What does it have to say?
For instance, it’s pretty common for some part of ourselves not to trust another part offering admiration or empathy, if we haven’t had a lot of it in other facets of our lives… and it usually seems that those parts need more loving care first, before they can receive the energy being offered, as we cultivate more flavors of supportive self-talk.
(For more on Bringing our Parts into Right Relationship, click here.)
For the moment, I’m appreciating how much easier it is to speak lovingly toward myself when so many people around me speak lovingly too!
And sending extra love to those who may currently be missing that piece. 
Wednesday I had a dentist appointment for cleaning and to see if my tooth needed to be pulled. I had been dreading this. But out of the blue on Tuesday, the thought was I just wanted to get it behind me. Let’s just get this over with. I talked to my inner child who doesn’t like dentist appointments any more than I do. I told her that we aren’t going to the hospital, we aren’t going to school, we were only going to the dentist and it will be over soon and we won’t have to think about it anymore. Then soon we can go get our new phones. It helped and I told her we’d do this together. It was easy and I get to keep my tooth for a little while longer. I think she would like to play with “you’re the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” We could giggle over that.
I’m most needing the child voice right now, but I notice I struggle to believe the I won’t leave you alone part. Just listened to a Tara Brach podcast where she talks about letting in the love. I struggle with truly accepting love from myself and others. I want to really feel it but it’s hard.
Hugs @Dru 
I notice, too, that sometimes it’s less about the voice we have when talking to our inner child, and more about allowing them to speak and be deeply seen and heard…
If there is resistance, or it feels hard to accept or trust love, where does that live in our bodies?
What does that part of ourselves need to say, or feel, or experience?
What’s the underlying unmet need?
If there was a form of abandonment or deep lack of safety early on, it’s natural for this to be more challenging… and then sometimes it’s better to begin by just allowing gentle acceptance, compassion, and appreciation for all those parts of ourselves that experienced that hardship… Sometimes jumping to “love” feels like too big a leap, without meeting other basic needs for safety and respect and acceptance first.
Oftentimes simple gentleness and internal spaciousness and deep listening are precursors to love!
Curious how any of that lands in your body, and what your various parts have to say… or what they might need to feel able to open to a bit more love and trust.
“I struggle with truly accepting love from myself and others. I want to really feel it but it’s hard.”
Me, too, Dru. It’s like I don’t really believe it and I wonder when it’s going to be taken away.
As a parent, one of the core roles I take VERY seriously is to help my children go from a need fo unconditional love to mean that I/we respond to every single cry for help… to helping my kids know that LOVE is a verb, indeed, that takes action – gives appreciation, attention, presence, service, touch, and more – and it is also a state of being.
LOVE as a verb translated into some kind of action/presence does change… “goes away.” I take the dirty diaper to the trashcan and Adira feels I am leaving her. WAAAAHHHH!
In physical form I am leaving her. I am “going away.” In the deeper truth, I am with her. There’s a beingness that radiates a Love for her and my other kids that doesn’t actually falter.
The sun “goes away” it seems – yet it is still radiating even if not seen or felt directly. In my model, in what I have come to know in myself as an adult, is that Love as a state of being is all around me. It’s like the “connecting energy” of all that helps me to thrive.
Even more so, there are generous people who really do LOVE. They radiate it. It’s there. One can count on it even!
To me, you are such a person. I feel that radiate from you, and it feels like it will last even if your life path takes you “away” from us. It’s palpable, and… I’d say I feel that through the same channel where I know MYSELF to be such a person.
It’s really intensely hard to activate this awareness, deep in our core, when our parents were neither one love radiators. We often find it through furry friends, and then through select people who show up with this kind of knowing (and who recognize us as love radiators ourselves).
Love to you always all ways! Thanks for being so real (and love radiating),
Rick
I’ve had this in my inbox and keep coming back to it like homework. I can’t find it in my body. I’ve tried. The closest thing I felt was this past weekend when I got a massage for the first time in a year and a half. I was nervous and talking as I was settling in and suddenly I felt the therapist’s calming energy over my head. He wasn’t touching me yet but he was grounding himself and or me… I felt it so intensely like a calming flow. I felt something coming in. Relief. Powerful to realize I could receive such loving energy in my body from a complete stranger. And I was able to allow it. Closest thing I’ve found to an answer so far.
This reminds me of the Hafiz poem:
“Even after all this time,
The Sun never says to the Earth
“You owe me”
Look what happens with a love like that
It lights up the whole sky.”
Love you.
Love those who radiate love and light up our world and We-Space — even if not always aware of it! It makes a difference. 
Beautiful!!
May you receive more such love, @Dru!
And yes, it is actually quite common for us to be able to receive love from total strangers in ways we may not be able to from our “closest” loved ones… especially if we had issues of broken trust or safety with people close to us when we were young.
In Chinese medicine, part of that is related to the Pericardium or Heart Protector, trying to keep us safe from heartache. Its role is kind of like a gate to keep the Heart safe (as the residence of our spirit) — but if we’ve had painful experiences with loved ones in the past, it sometimes tries to close the door on love itself… keeping out the good stuff as well as the pain.
But the Heart Protector is meant to be a semi-permeable membrane, that only filters out the bad stuff, but lets in all the good, so we can be nourished. It’s unfortunately common for this to be off-kilter — but it can be brought back to balance too!
With so much protection of the inner sanctum (usually due to past trauma or pain), one way of working with healing this Inner border gate is to go to the Outer border gate (that’s actually the point name!) — which is more accessible with people we are not intimately close to. Perfect strangers can help open this up, and remind the heart that it’s ok to receive love!
(This is one reason I was so glad acupuncturists were considered “essential” in our state in the pandemic — this is exactly the kind of work we do, and it’s so important for many people’s well-being!)
Having a massage therapist or other professional bodyworker can be profoundly healing for our hearts and bodies, in ways intimate partners may not be able to access —precisely because we feel too close to them…
A degree of distance can help us feel safe enough to open to love. It can allow us to build our capacity to receive love in ways that can deepen to more intimate love, as we keep practicing.
It can help to start with a stranger and grow that therapeutic relationship over time — they gradually feel closer and safer, and we naturally grow our capacity to open to that, without the higher stakes and complexity of an intimate love relationship! (Or of all the many parts within ourselves…)
Right distance, right depth… it’s always a dance!
Wishing you deeper peace with opening to love. 
(Also, there are plenty of embodiment practices to support this deepening of love for ourselves and with others, too! Because whatever pain taught us to shut down is still held in the body somewhere, and it’s through working with the body that it is most likely to resolve thoroughly!) 
