Dr. Margaret Paul

When your pet looks at you with adoring eyes, or wags his tail and wiggles with joy, or snuggles next to you on the couch or bed, he is loving you because he believes you are deserving of love. But do you see yourself this way?

Our society is often focused on an instant fix – just take a pill and everything will be fine. Except it won’t.

Being alone for the holidays is a major challenge for many people. Holidays often conjure images of family, of warmth and the sharing of special time. Loneliness can be overwhelming when you have no one with whom to share holiday time.

I give myself full permission to be quiet. I might be enjoying a conversation while having little to add to the discussion. It might be a topic that I find interesting but that I don’t know much about, so I don’t judge myself for not contributing. I make sure that I don’t judge myself at all when I have nothing to say.

It’s one thing to be loving to yourself when things are going well and you feel centered and peaceful inside. It’s quite another to love yourself when you feel panicked and freaked out.

If you are too afraid to love — too afraid that you will get hurt — should you try to heal the fears before trying to love?

The biological sexual drive, or lack of it, relates to how much testosterone is present. The most common complaint from men regarding sex is frequency, and the most common complaint from woman is lack of emotional intimacy.

Healing our abandonment issues doesn’t happen overnight, yet it doesn’t have to take years either.

Love CAN last a lifetime. We keep love alive when we continue to do all we can to be open to learning about ourselves and about each other, and are devoted to deeply accepting each other with all our human flaws.

Many people suffer daily from anxiety, depression, stress, and anger as well as from feelings of guilt, shame and inadequacy. The major cause of these feelings is a lack of loving action in their own behalf, a lack of personal responsibility for their own feelings and wellbeing.

Inner emptiness is a sign that love is lacking inside. When you feel empty inside and you haven’t learned how to fill yourself with love, you might turn to food, alcohol, drugs, TV, sex, porn, spending and so on to try to fill the inner emptiness. These addictions are a poor substitute for love, which is what you are really needing.

Anxiety is often the way our inner child lets us know that we are abandoning ourselves rather than loving ourselves. There are a number of major causes of anxiety, and all of them are related to various forms of self-abandonment.