a.m.a.a.w.w.i.t.r.a.a.y.b.n. part 2

Baer goes on to write:

"When we react [to others] with anger or withdrawal, or by acting hurt...we feel more alone and miserable. So why do we keep doing those unproductive things?

"The answer is simple. When you do feel unconditionally loved you lose your tendency to feel hurt and alone, and to react with anger, deceit, or withdrawal. You have those negative feelings and respond in those negative ways, therefore, because you don't feel loved. Human behavior is usually that simple."

For Baer, it seems, the best source of help for someone's abiltity to respond warmly rather than coldly, or fearfully or angrily is a sense of being fully and unconditionally loved.

Now certainly any good cognitive therapist will tell you that there are some people to whom you can give unconditional love but who will refuse to allow themselves to believe that you do fully love them and enjoy your interaction with them. Negative, false thinking habits are not uncommon among most of us. So you may find yourself trying to show forth real love to someone who prevents herself from being empowered and blessed by it.

And of course there will always be some people who have embraced wickedness to such an extent that to even approach them would be foolhardy unless you weigh 250 pounds, can bench press 500 and are a crack shot.

But there are many who will find it a real blessing and help in their efforts to respond well to life and its challenges and to others if you can become a person who can really, consistantly give them warm, welcoming, unconditional love in your daily interaction with them.

I think it must be, at least at first, a conscious decision in most relationships; a decision to actively take pleasure in another's company, put one's ego or one's sense of how things "should be done" out of the picture, to let go of a need to manage things, to be at peace in spite of your differences of opinion, and simply enjoy a beloved one. At least for me it would be. My "natural man" is way too front and center to be moved unconsciously.