A child's self-esteem effects how they live their life.
High self-esteem is a child's quiet comfort in their own self image.
High self-esteem is based on a child's belief that they are lovable and worthwhile.

YOUR CHILD'S SELF ESTEEM

Strong self-respect is based on two main convictions:
" I am lovable,"
("I matter and have value because I exist.")
and
" I am worthwhile."
("I can handle myself and my environment with competence.
I know I have something to offer others.")

Dorothy Cobkille Briggs, a member of Phi Beta Kappa and other honoraries, has worked as a teacher of both children and adults; dean of girls; school psychologist; and marriage, family, and child counselor during the last twenty-five years. Since 1958 she has taught parent-education courses and training in communication and resolution of conflicts.

OUR CULTURE'S OVERSIGHT

For decades psychologists have focused on mental illness and its cure. But the pervasiveness of psychological disorders is so extensive that there simply are not enough professional people' to handle the afflicted. One study of 175,000 people in New York City showed that only 18.5 percent were free of the symptoms of mental illness.

The number who limp through life in inner turmoil and whose potentials are mired in unhealthy defenses is of epidemic proportions. Neurotic hangups have become a way of life.

This is a staggering indictment of an unfortunate oversight in our culture:
we parents are not trained for our job. Vast sums are spent to teach academic and vocational skills, but the art of becoming a nurturing parent is left to chance and a few scattered classes.

And yet, paradoxically, we regard children as our most important national resource!

We turn freely to the medical and educational professions to check on our children's physical and intellectual progress. But for guidance on nurturing children to emotional health, we are left largely on our own. Even when symptoms appear, many parents regard consulting a psychologist as an admission of defeat. It is a last ditch resort.

The discrepancy between our valuing children on the one hand and our failure to give parents specific training for their job on the other hand seems to be based on the assumption that if you are a human being you should know how to raise one.

But, becoming a parent does not automatically confer upon any of us the knowledge and skills to raise youngsters who are confident and steady and able to live as fully-functioning persons who lead meaningful lives.

In short, preventing mental illness has not been given its proper emphasis. Yet, prevention remains our best hope for alleviating the high incidence of emotional disorder.

Most of us do our best, but much of the time we simply fly by the seat of our pants. The fact remains, however, that we, as well as our children, have to live with the results of our unintentional mistakes. And these mistakes have a way of being passed on to future generations. The impact of our culture's oversight is to some degree felt by all of us.

In our search for guidelines we parents have turned to the many books available on child-rearing. But here we find the important issues facing us treated on the whole as separate, isolated topics. We have not been given a cohesive, basic frame­work [the child's self-esteem] into which we may place each important facet of living with children.

This book gives just such a framework. Here is a new way of looking at child development: seeing all growth and behavior against the backdrop of the child's search for identity and self-respect.

Step by step, you will be shown specifically how to build a solid sense of self-worth in your child. Then, your youngster is slated for personal happiness in all areas of his life. Unless you fully understand the nature of the human fabric and work with it, you travel blindly and may pay the price.

This book has been written because of my firm conviction, born of twenty-five years work in psychology and education as well as from my experiences as a mother, that parenthood is too important for the "by-guess-and-by-golly" approach.

Awareness of the facts can help you discharge your responsibilities toward those entrusted to your care, give you confidence as a parent, and point the way to your own personal development.

Over the years, parents in my classes have reported exciting changes in themselves and their children as they began to apply some of the ideas in this book. They have made statements such as the following about their experiences:

" This way of seeing children's growth has given me new confidence. I find I am a freer person, not so afraid of the responsibility of parenthood."

" Our whole family has become much closer and there is far less conflict. As my attitudes changed, so much smoothed out at home."

" I'm more relaxed and patient—even my husband has noticed it."

" I've learned to see myself and my children in a new light; I feel so much more understanding. It has brought my husband and me closer together indirectly."

" I've learned to live with my children instead of in spite of them!"

" As a father, I thought it was ridiculous to have a class about raising kids. I never realized how blind I've been. A whole new world has been opened to me. I only wish I'd known all this before I had children."

***

The evidence is strong. Knowing what you are doing and having a basic framework as a guide can help you live with your child so that he (or she) is emotionally healthy. Then, you don't need to worry; he has his feet on solid ground.

The fact that you are reading this book says that you care about your youngsters and your relationship with them. It suggests that you want your intentions for them to be fully-functioning persons to materialize. This caring, coupled with your interest in reaching out for new ideas, heads both you and your children in the direction of positive growth.

Mother and Child

CHECKLIST OF BASIC IDEAS

Here are the kernel ideas we've talked about. Such a check­list has proven popular with parents in my classes for a quick review of the nurturing they provide. It can be a roadmap for increasing your effectiveness.

The Basis of Emotional Health

1. How your child feels about himself affects how he lives his life.
2. High self-esteem is based on your child's belief that he is lovable and worthwhile.
3. Your child must know that he matters just because he exists.
4. He needs to feel competent to handle himself and his environment. He needs to feel he has something to offer others.
5. High self-esteem is not conceit; it is your child's quiet comfort about being who he is.

Mirrors Create Self-images

1. Every child has the potential for liking himself.
2. Your child learns to see himself as the important people around him do.
3. He builds his self-picture from the words, body language, attitudes, and judgments of others.
4. He judges himself according to his own observation of himself in comparison with others and others' responses to him.
5. High self-esteem comes from positive experiences with life and love.

Mirrors Influence Behavior

1. Your child's behavior matches his self-image.
2. He may feel confident in one area but not in another; how he acts gives you clues as to whether he feels he operates from a position of strength (positive self-statements) or weakness (negative self-statements).
3. If your child sees himself as inadequate, he expects to fail and acts accordingly. Personal sureness, however, gives him the courage and energy to tackle tasks. It allows him to expect to win, and he acts accordingly.
4. Belief in himself ensures that your child will relate more successfully to others. Then, personal happiness is more, likely to be his.

The Price of Warped Mirrors

1. Your child is seeking self-respect.
2. If he feels inadequate, he may submit to a self-effacing life, withdraw, or erect various defenses to keep his self-esteem.
3. Neurotic defenses are put up around the belief, "I am unlovable and unworthy."
4. When defenses push others away, the youngster defeats his need for positive reflections.
5. Your positive reflections allow your child to avoid paths that cut into the fullness of living.

The Trap of Negative Reflections

1. Ordinarily, your child's view of himself is continually changing.
2. If he becomes convinced that he is no good, he must, to remain internally consistent, refuse to let in positive messages about his competence.
3. Low self-esteem that is rigid results from many negative factors operating over a long period.
4. Negative self-attitudes can be changed to high self-esteem by providing your child with a nurturing climate of acceptance and experiences with success.

Polishing Parental Mirrors

1. We all see our children through filters of inexperience, borrowed standards, unfinished business, unmet hungers, and cultural values.
2. Filters become expectations by which you measure your child; they influence how you treat him.
3. If your expectations do not fit your particular child at his particular stage of growth, you will probably be disappointed in him.
4. If your child feels he consistently falls below your standards, he loses his respect for himself.
5. Your expectations are more likely to be fair if they are based on the facts of child development, alert observations, and sensitivity to his past and present pressures.
6. Check your expectations frequently; it is so easy for them to get out of line.
7. The more fulfilled you are as a person, the fewer unrealistic pressures you'll put on your child.
8. What you do to yourself, you will do to your child. Therefore, increasing your own self-acceptance allows you to be more accepting of your child.

Genuine Encounter

1. Every child needs focused attention—genuine encounter—to feel loved.
2. Love is not necessarily communicated by physical affection, constantly setting aside your own needs, over-protection, high expectations, time, and gifts.
3. Your child is likely to view continual distancing—concern with the past, future, schedules, and tasks—as lack of love. He can only feel lovable if you take time to be fully with his person.
4. Make a habit of being open to the wonder of your child in the here-and-now. Check yourself frequently on your focused attention rating.

The Safety of Trust

1. Trust is the most important ingredient of a psychologically safe climate.
2. Your child must be able to count on you for friendly help with his needs.
3. Your words must match your body language if he is to trust you.
4. He needs you to be appropriately open with him about your feelings, your reservations, and your ambivalences.
5. Your child needs your humanness; be real with him. This helps him accept his own humanness, giving him a model that allows him to embrace all parts of himself. Then, he is not alienated from himself or others.

The Safety of Nonjudgment

1. The second ingredient of safety comes when judgment goes.
2. Direct your "I-reactions" toward behavior; give up "you-judgments" of your child's person.
3. When your child sees his person as separate from his acts, he's better able to build solid self-respect

The Safety of Being Cherished

1. Cherishing your child's specialness, even though his behavior may not be acceptable, is the third ingredient of psychological safety.
2. Refuse to take your child's uniqueness for granted, treat him with the same respect you want, focus on his positive qualities, avoid seeing him as the same as his acts, and work toward valuing yourself. Then, your cherishing will come through.
3. When your child feels cherished, he will seek more realistic goals, accept others as they are, learn more efficiently, use his creativity, and like himself.

The Safety of "Owning' Feelings

1. The fourth ingredient of psychological safety comes with letting a child "own" his feelings without withdrawing your approval.
2. You respect separateness when you avoid asking your child to match his feelings and reactions to yours.
3. Offer your child many experiences, but treat his reactions to them with respect. Avoid forcing lessons on him when he doesn't enjoy them.
4. Plan actively for differences among your children, both in expectations and family activities.
5. Respect for differences and uniqueness nurtures your child's self-esteem.

The Safety of Empathy

1. Empathy is understanding your child's viewpoint without judgment, agreement, or disagreement Be attentive to body language as it is more accurate than words.
2. Empathy must come from your heart to be genuine.
3. When your child is upset, his secret wish is for empathic understanding; he needs it before explanations, reasons, or reassurance.
4. If you see your parental role as that of a nurturer, if you respect your child's integrity, if you are in touch with and comfortable about your own feelings, empathy comes easier.
5. Empathy erases alienation; it is powerful proof of love. And it actively builds your child's love for you.

The Safety of Unique Growing

1. The sixth ingredient of psychological safety is the freedom to grow uniquely.
2. Growth proceeds in spurts interlaced with regressions and plateaus.
3. The push toward growth is built into your child.
4. When your child feels safe to retreat, he is free to grow.
5. The seven ingredients of safe encounter intertwine to form the climate of love. They ensure that your child will feel your caring; then he develops wholehearted self-respect and can unfold in all directions.

Journey of Self: Over-all Plan

1. Human growth follows a logical plan; completing each step successfully allows your child to feel competent and worthwhile.
2. Familiarity with the plan helps keep your expectations realistic, spares you needless worry, helps you be more accepting, and can enable you to work with your child's psychological homework so that he is free for the next task ahead.

Journey of Self: First Six Years

1. Autonomy, mastery, initiative, attachment to the opposite-sexed parent, self-centeredness, and preference for the same sex are the tasks of the first six years.
2. Selfhood tasks are worked on at the same time that your preschooler learns what his body will do, what the world around him is like, and what it is to be a member of a family.
3. Your preschooler has a huge assignment; go easy; he needs slow, nonpressurized teaching.
4. The conscience only begins to emerge around six; it needs strong outside support.

Journey of Self: Middle Years

1. Your middle-aged child needs to refine autonomy and increase mastery while defining himself with reflections from age-mates.
2. He is making the move from self-centeredness to other-centeredness but it is gradual.
3. Your eight to ten works on getting hold of the feel of what males and females do by imitating the same-sexed parent. He needs sustained exposures to a strong, warm adult of the same sex. Seek a substitute model for him if there isn't one in your home.
4. From eleven to thirteen, your youngsters will seek same sex models outside the family.
5. You smooth the way for your youngster's increasing competence and self-respect by encouraging him to join groups his age, offering opportunities to develop skills in activities he enjoys, accepting his movement away from the family, and especially by providing safe encounters.

Journey of Self: Adolescence

1. Your teenager needs to sever his dependence on the family and age-mates, while reevaluating his picture of himself. He needs new answers as to his identity to fit the changes in himself and in his roles.
2. He needs to establish healthy relationships with the opposite sex, plan for a life work, and build a meaningful set of values by which to live.
3. Many roadblocks exist in our culture that directly stand in the adolescent's way as he tries to build a sense of identity.
4. The more you can give your teenager a sense of personal security (safe encounters and democratic discipline), the better he will withstand the outside pressures.
5. It is not until late adolescence that your teenager's conscience will be able to stand without outside support.
6. Many factors can make your teenagers a personal threat to you. Looking honestly at those threats can make them less overwhelming.

Handling Children's Feelings

1. Most of us do not handle children's feelings as we want ours handled.
2. All children have all kinds of feelings that tradition has taught us to avoid dealing with directly.
3. Handling negative feelings by reason, judgment, denial, advice, reassurance, or diversion pushes a child away. It forces him to think less of himself and to repress or disguise his true emotions.
4. Repressed feelings do not disappear; they work against physical, emotional, and intellectual health.
5. The power of feelings evaporates when emotions are accepted with understanding and channeled into acceptable outlets.
6. Your child needs you to be an active listener, not a passive one.
7. To get rid of negative acts, get rid of negative feelings first; they are the cause.
8. Acts may need to be limited, but expression of feelings should be limited only in terms of to whom, when, and where they are released.

Cracking the Code of Anger

1. The normal feeling of anger masks an earlier feeling.
2. When you accept anger by active listening, your child will usually lead you to the underlying emotion. Channel his feelings into safe outlets.
3. Times of anger can be reduced but never completely eliminated. If your child is frequently angry, check: Are his physical and emotional needs being met, is he up against too many frustrations, is he getting abundant exercise? Check your expectations, type of discipline, competition, comparisons, family tensions. Is he getting large doses of safe encounters?
4. Coming to terms with your own hostilities helps you work with his.
5. Send your first feelings as "I-reactions."
6. Most tantrums are a sign of lost control and extreme frustration, not bratty behavior.
7. Indirect signs of anger are constant teasing, tattling, sarcasm, acting-out aggression, hitting out at adult values, continual accidents, unrealistic fears, model behavior, depression, and psychosomatic symptoms.
8. Your acceptance of your child's anger prevents his using indirect outlets or repressing. It permits him to accept his total humanity.

Lifting the Mask of Jealousy

1. Jealousy is a normal feeling in families, particularly since each child wants to be the favorite.
2. Jealousy masks your child's real or imagined feeling that he is disadvantaged.
3. Internal or external pressures can decrease your child's feeling of adequacy; then, he is apt to feel jealous.
4. With high self-esteem, your child has an inner sureness that protects him from frequent and intense jealousy.
5. Jealousy grows when favoritism, comparisons, or lack of respect for individuality is present. Avoid using one child to meet your own unmet needs. A relaxed family atmosphere based on cooperation and democratic discipline reduces its frequency.
6. Indirect signs of jealousy are a sudden increase in dependency, regression, demands for material things, and increased misbehavior.
7. When jealousy comes, help your child express it by active listening. His feeling is real for him regardless of the facts.
8. Help your child to feel understood, included, and important; then, he doesn't feel shortchanged.

Disciples in Discipline

1. Discipline refers to rules for behavior and to the methods used to make and enforce them.
2. Discipline teaches children to get along with others. They can mind from fear of reprisal or from inner conviction.
3. The end goal of discipline is self-discipline.
4. Some limits are necessary to help people meet their needs as they live together.
5. Rules are more likely to be constructive when they consider both your children's and your needs.
6. Fewer rules are needed when you provide appropriate outlets for children's urges, suit the environment of childish needs, keep expectations realistic, and provide a climate of love and respect.
7. The kinds and number of rules in your home can sup­port or undermine your child's confidence in himself.

Old Ways of Discipline

1. Authoritarian discipline means you retain your power, make the rules, and enforce them by reward or punishment.
2. Over-permissive discipline means you give your power to your child to do as he pleases regardless of your needs.
3. When relied on exclusively, either of these two approaches works against responsible self-discipline, inner conviction, a healthy conscience, and high self-esteem.

Constructive Discipline

1. Democratic discipline means working with children to establish mutually agreeable limits and solutions to conflicts. You share your power.
2. To establish democracy you need democratic attitudes of mutual respect, realistic expectations, skill in releasing negative feelings, and a willingness to share your feelings and power.
3. Democratic procedures involve a clear statement of the problem, the expression of each person's needs, searching for a solution that meets those needs, and reacting to the solution after the family has worked with it.
4. Unless you listen actively and send "I-reactions" continuously, the lines of communication will bog down and defeat your efforts at home democracy.
5. Democracy's benefits are widespread: it fosters friendly feelings between you and your children; it encourages responsibility, independence, motivation, creative thinking, intellectual growth, personal involvement, and respect for those in authority. It directly enhances high self-esteem, for it is powerful proof of love, faith, and trust.

Motivation, Intelligence, and Creativity

1. Your child is born curious and with a push toward self-reliance.
2. Support his explorations, curiosity, and moves toward self-reliance if you want him to be intellectually stimulated and to use his creativity. He must know he is safe to wonder and discover.
3. You stimulate his intelligence by providing rich first hand experiences, broad language exposures, successful problem solving experiences, and family examples and attitudes that value learning and independence.
4. Your child's intellectual growth is affected by: physical handicaps, emotional hungers, repressed feelings, undue pressure for unrealistic goals, nondemocratic discipline, closed lines of communication, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate teachers, and poor teaching techniques.
5. A climate of safe encounter motivates your child to learn and to capitalize on his inborn uniqueness. There is a direct relationship between unfettered creativity and high self-esteem.

The Wedding of Sex and Love

1. Sex education means more than teaching the facts of reproduction. It involves fostering healthy attitudes toward the body, feelings, sex roles, and the self.
2. Attitudes toward sex are colored by cuddling, feeding, dressing, bathing, and toilet training experiences; progress in developmental tasks; how negative feelings are handled; the kinds of models provided; the values youngsters see lived; the type of discipline used; as well as by influences from outside the home.
3. Your attitudes toward sex are contagious. Be open about any squeamishness you may have. Place the responsibility where it belongs: on your past training rather than on the subject.
4. Present the facts of reproduction when your child asks questions. If he doesn't ask, open up the subject yourself. Give introductory information no later than age five. Get appropriate sex education books into his hands at each stage of development.
5. Positive sexual adjustment is more likely if your child is emotionally mature.
6. Self-esteem directly affects sexual behavior. Strong self-respects enables your youngster to establish an enriching, responsible, committed marriage to a person with similar self-regard. Such a couple is most apt to breed self-confidence in their own youngsters.

How do you spell love to your children? If they live with realistic expectations, safe encounters, cooperation with tasks of selfhood, understanding acceptance of all feelings even when you limit acts, and democratic discipline, they will feel loved. And that feeling is the basis of high self-esteem.

With this solid inner core, potentials will unfold, they will be motivated, creative, and see a purpose in life. They will relate successfully with others, have inner peace, be stress resistant, and have a greater chance for a happy marriage. They themselves will become a nurturing parent.

Hopefully, at this point, you are convinced of the importance of knowing all you can about the most important job in the world—parenthood.

CELEBRATE YOUR SELF
Enhancing Your Own Self-Esteem

I am unchained ... I stand free.
I am an unrepeatable miracle;.
I am whole ... I am complete.
I am one with all life.

When you are "in love" you feel beautiful.
And the whole world looks beautiful.
The point is... that you are always in love.

[To build high self esteem in your child...
you must have high esteem in yourself.]

CELEBRATE YOUR SELF

CHECKLIST OF BASIC IDEAS

Here are the kernel ideas. They can serve as booster shots along the path of daily Self nurturing.

What's Here for You

1. The key to inner peace lies in Self affirmation. This is not conceit but a quiet celebration that you are You.
2. You cannot always change the outer or others. But you can change your reactions. You and you alone write your own ticket to serenity.
3. The path to inner peace requires awareness, courage, decision and action.

Your Belief System About You

1. Who are you? You are not your name, age, size, shape, roles, values, relationships or self-image. You are your Essential Being, unlike any other. You are changeless yet always in process.
2. Your self-image—the package you call "Me"—was put together by you from how others saw and treated you. It may or may not be accurate. Regardless, it forms your personal Belief System about you.
3. Negative past experiences and teachings that made you feel unlovable and inadequate cause you to behave accordingly. Negative self-statements limit the options you give yourself. They imprison you.
4. Your self-image is learned. You can reprogram defective self-attitudes so that you live with a strong sense of personal self-worth.
5. A self-image of inadequacy becomes increasingly negative with age unless its existence is challenged and reworked.
6. Winners are inwardly free of destructive programming. Losers base their lives on the false belief that they are unlovable.

How You Got Where You Are Today

1. Your mind is like a multi-decked tape recorder with several "I's" or personality parts from which you can speak.
2. The "felt" Voice comes from the Child-in-you. The "thought" Voice comes from the Adult-in-you. The "taught" Voice comes from the Parent-in-you.
3. The amount of Not-OKness you feel is directly proportional to the size and strength of your Critical Parent tape. You have come to see yourself through the eyes of significant others from your past.
4. Your "Unacceptable Me" is the basis of low self-esteem.
5. The talk and treatment of others becomes your own self-talk and self-treatment; it is either for or against you.
6. High self-esteemers have little negative self-talk; they are Nurturing Parents to themselves. They are able to play, enjoy and express, but they stay in contact with reality and are responsible to themselves and others.

The Power of Not-OKness

1. Your Inner Child believes the psychological climate it grew up in is the only kind worth having. The Sad/Bad/Mad Child-in-you will strenuously resist changing the "Me" you have built. It seeks the comfort of the known; it is fearful of closeness to others (the source of past pain), and it resists giving up dependency.
2. Your Not-OK Child is kept alive today when you parent yourself with the same talk and attitudes of past others.
3. To increase your self-worth you do not need to change your Self. You need to change your self-talk and your negative beliefs about your Self. You can choose to become your own Nurturing Parent.
4. In your internal cast of characters the troublemakers will be your Not-OK Child and your Critical Parent tapes. They are hooked into the love of power. They try to manipulate, control and win. Your Nurturer, Adult and Natural Child are concerned with the power of love. They are the ones that work for your best interests.
5. You can choose to redesign the package you call "Me." No one can ever take the power of choice away from you. Only you can give it away.

Watch Your Language

1. The path to inner personal freedom involves scrupulously zeroing in on how you make pain for yourself. Continually ask yourself, "What kind of parent am I to me?"
2. Your Critical Voice can be recognized by its use of such words as "should," "must," "ought," "have to." They set up a master-slave dialogue within.
3. Change these words to those of the self-responsible Adult and the Nurturing Parent: "wish," "prefer," "want," "choose," "feel," "desire."
4. Change every "can't" (Helpless Child Voice) to a "won't" or "choose not to" except those that truly come from a physical inability. Own up to the responsibility of your choices. Winners don't play Helpless; rather they claim their choices as their own.
5. You can choose not to react to others. You do this by giving them the space to do their number while refusing to take their bait.
6. Symptoms have payoffs. They keep us from certain feelings or acts one part of us does not want to deal with. They often bring secondary gains. You free yourself by going after what you want directly.

Expectations That Cause Pain

1. Reasonable expectations are nurturing; unreasonable ones cause pain.
2. Your Inner Criticizer will ask for perfection in feelings, thoughts and deeds. Give yourself permission to be less than perfect. Do not cling to past mistakes, rather release them.
3. Seeking everyone's approval means giving up your own Self.
4. You are not alone in your feelings of inadequacy or insecurity.
5. Self-expectations need to be realistic, not impossible.
6. When you are upset, check to see what expectation has gone unmet.
7. Demand/need expectations born of "This is due me" cause trouble. They come from the Child or Critical Voice.
8. Avoid playing Dependent Child by changing what once may have been appropriately dire needs to wishes or preferences. Ask yourself what's the worst that could happen if they go unmet.

Other Painful Expectations

1. Nurture yourself by concentrating on what's right about you rather than what's wrong. Consistently give yourself private "support-talk." Relish your strengths and successes.
2. Give up the beliefs that things "should" always go as you want them to; that others "should" match your feelings, attitudes and values; that you need to compare yourself to others; that life and others will always be fair; that smooth sailing is the norm; that others "should" know how you feel or what you want without being told.
3. When you overreact, know that an earlier pain experienced as a threat to your Inner Child's survival is probably being triggered. Unexpressed feelings from that first pain need to be expressed through acceptable outlets in a safe place. Preferably to an empathic, supportive person.
4. You defuse the tender spots by allowing the Child or Critical Voice to express its feelings, by nurturing your own Inner Child and then giving your Adult a job that allows an outer focus.
5. Dealing with past hurts and hidden painful expectations rather than burying them is part of Self nurturing.
6. If emotional conflicts or symptoms are serious or incapacitating do not try to treat yourself. You are a Nurturing Parent to yourself when you seek competent help.

Judgment: the Dance of Death

1. "Shoulds" cause expectations that lead to judgments. Self-blame is at the core of all emotional disorder.
2. To avoid Self judgment react to your behavior, feelings and attitudes.
3. See your person as separate from your behavior, thoughts and feelings; otherwise your Self worth is lowered with each misstep.
4. Remember all new learning takes place in stages. You will become aware of reverting to old tapes after you've used them. Then you will be aware during the time you use old solutions. The final stage will eventually come; you will remember to use the new step before you revert to the old. Turn on your Nurturer and be patient with yourself; be supportive as you move to change old ways.
5. Translate the judgment of others into their reactions toward your behavior. Avoid letting outside judgments become Self judgments.

Copied or Free

1. Many of your attitudes, reactions and behaviors are copied from early models. You Self nurture when you weed out any antilife injunctions.
2. Check that you are not playing Total Opposite, for you are as unfree on that tape as when you play Total Mimic.
3. Seek prolonged exposure to prolife models for those positive qualities you want to encourage. Let your natural inclination to imitate be directed toward copying nurturing permissions.
4. Give yourself permission to let all feelings into your awareness without judgment. You disown a vital part of your person if you deny any feeling. Do not act on those that are irresponsible to yourself or others.

Diane Humetewa
The first American Indian woman
(Hopi) to serve as a federal prosecutor.

Role or Real

1. Give yourself permission to stop pretending, masking, role-playing. Remember you are a person above and beyond all the relationships you are involved with. Give yourself permission to be appropriately real. This involves risk-taking but the affirmation you get will be for what is rather than for a phony front.
2. Past roles you may have adopted were simply brave survival responses. Do not judge them; rather challenge their present usefulness.
3. Giving up your masks and your fear of rejection means you give yourself the freedom to be You.
4. When you are freely yourself you welcome your opposites; you do not ask yourself to have only one set of emotions. You accept that you will experience the full range of feelings. You refuse to let others put you into either/or boxes.

A Friend for You

1. Do you treat yourself as gently as you would a precious friend? If not, why not?
2. Are you being friendly to your body by giving it nutritious food, adequate sleep, exercise and physical checkups? If not, why not?
3. Do you let the Natural Child in you play for the pure fun and enjoyment of the activity without the pressure to compete, achieve or produce? If not, why not?
4. Practice staying in touch with all of your senses to savor the flavor of each moment in time.
5. Take time to indulge your creativity, curiosity and spontaneity. Give yourself permission to venture into the new.
6. Give yourself periodic gifts (some cost nothing) that are gentle kindnesses to you.
7. Avoid wallowing in the "if only's" of the past and the "what if's" of the future. Focus on the present—it's the only time you really have.
8. Believing you can, having faith in You and your abilities in spite of setbacks is part of Self nurturing.
9. Cultivate many friends; each one has a special gift for you—a piece of their uniqueness to share.

Making Coupleships Work

1. Seeing others through the eyes of blame or pain stands in the way of constructive coupling.
2. Loving another because he or she rounds you out puts you in a needing, dependent and ultimately resentful position. It keeps you from being whole in your own right.
3. Too often we choose partners and friends like the family member who failed to validate our lovability.
4. Parent-child, master-slave couplings are fraught with continual dominance-submission power struggles and efforts to shape the other up.
5. When either partner pushes to change the relationship the original basis for coming together is threatened. Much static results. But such a movement is a great opportunity for both to grow free and move to co-equal relating.
6. Adults with strong unmet dependency needs have trouble parenting. Their own need to lean is threatened by their children's need to be dependent on them.
7. Many forces are at work to weaken the institution of marriage and family. The answer is not divorce or an affair since you take your taping with you in all relationships. The answer rather lies in giving up destructive tapes by becoming your own Nurturing Parent, by becoming whole in your own right.
8. You and your partner both have the potential to grow whole. This means releasing the other and relentlessly working on your own case. This calls for an ongoing self-inventory, open communication, commitment and risking closeness. Enriching relationships come with caring, awareness, honesty, commitment, patience and effort.

Issues in Coupling

1. Critical Parent injunctions against body pleasuring need to be set aside if sex is to be enjoyed.
2. Commitment is based on mutual freedom to trust, mutual willingness to know and be known and mutual emotional support.
3. If you have experienced a broken love relationship through death, divorce or separation the lost attachment to the person and role triggers off feelings of denial, abandonment, anger, grief, divided loyalties and social isolation.
4. Quality mourning time, sharing with professional helpers or others who have suffered similarly, meaningful involvements and taking a day at a time all help you through the transition period. Avoid withdrawing or trying to skip over the grief process.
5. Middlescence is a special time for reevaluating your self-image, values and life goals. Denying your mortality only puts off the eventual task of facing it.
6. Open sharing of feelings, keeping active mentally and physically and giving your undeveloped potentials permission to be expressed can bring heightened joys to your advancing years. Take time to enjoy and reach out.

Who You Truly Are

1. Our senses pick up only the most dense slice of what seems to be. Outer appearances do not reveal the whole Truth of your Being.
2. The likelihood of another being genetically like you is 100 billion to one!
3. Our universe does not indulge in duplicates; therefore, it is totally irrelevant to compare your uniqueness with that of any other.
4. Although we are all made of the same Life Stuff, the Real You is a separate entity in the universe.
5. Within the assemblage making you up is a nonphysical Beingness, a Conscious Awareness, an Inner Power centered in Love.
6. Tapping into the miracle of your Existence through centering, affirmation and positive picturing repositions you in peace. What you have to offer can never be duplicated. You, like everyone else, are without peer. Remember, your inner serenity is your gift to You. You return home to the House of Love when you maintain an ongoing connectedness with the Real You.

Basic affirmations with visualization possibilities (Choose those you like or make up your own.)

I let go of all negative parts of the old "Me" package I put together.
(Imagine your skin as a delicate parchment. See it begin to crack and peel off against the pressure of the Inner Growing You. Like the dragonfly, experience yourself as wriggling free of the bondage of the old "Me" casing. Experience an inner movement expanding your person as it breaks loose of the old "skin." Know you can never fit into that old package again.)

I am unchained . . . I stand free.
(See yourself as standing tall and sure and free. See the old "skin" you have shed lying in bits and pieces around your feet. It served its purpose once; see it as totally useless now.)

I let my total Being absorb these Truths.
(Imagine these Truths flowing in through your nose and ears and pores, sinking deep into your muscles and bones and organs.)

I am an unrepeatable miracle.
(See the endless stream of humankind from the beginning of time passing before you. Include the passing of the millions on earth today. Imagine the flow of all future generations passing by. Soak up the impact of this personal message—that none is like you. Feel it soaking in.)

I am a universal premiere ... a distinct addition to life.
(Imagine seeing a great work of art unveiled for the first time. Freshly capture the vastness of your "firstness.")

My job is not to mimic . , . mine is to BE . . . to unfold the talents uniquely mine.
(Picture your Inner Splendor as a gradually unfolding bud. Stay with this image and watch the beauty and wonder of the unfoldment.)

I let no person, no event define or diminish the Real Me.
(Actively see outer arrows as sliding past you. They glance off; they do not touch your Person at all. No other can compress the incompressible You.)

I join hands with my Core Self.
(Clasp your hands in gentle friendship.)

I choose to be a loving friend to me.
(Imagine lovingly embracing your Essential Center.)

I embrace . . . I validate . , . I quietly inwardly celebrate the wonder of my Being.
(Vividly picture your Real Self as a priceless jewel that you look
at with awe.)

Each time I look in the mirror, I will see behind my eyes.
(Imagine looking through to make contact with your deepest Center.)

I see my own miracle.
(Experience contacting your Center Core of Love.)

I see with delight. . . the Inner Light.
(Actively see a soft, warm glow in and around your Being.)

My True Core is perfection in motion. It always has been; it always will be.
(Visualize the Inner Perfection created in You.)

I am whole. I am complete.
(Feel the Life Beat in You. Get the feel of Wholeness, Completeness.)

I am related to all Creation. I am part of the great Whole.
(See the inner glow—the Life Stuff—in You flowing out to meld with the Life Stuff of those near you, going beyond to meld with the Essence of all Creation.)

I am one with all Life.
(See the Life Force like a delicate web uniting all. Feel, experience your connectedness. Stay with it. Know it is always there.)

I am still. I am completely still. I bathe in the Truth within.
(See yourself as totally absorbing this Truth just as your total body absorbs the oxygen you breathe.)

I know who I am. I am a representative of Creation.
(Picture yourself as being convinced of these affirmations. Know these statements are the Truth about You. Experience them as realities about You. Know that nothing can erase or dim these Truths.)

And so it is.

(Quietly come out of your centering as you experience the inner glow of absolute conviction.)

PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4