Empathic Amanda's Art of Self Love

Being around people with different values leads to alienation.
 

If you are experiencing alienation at this time in your life you may want to re-consider who you are choosing to put yourself around and why. Often times alienation arises from being around people who have different values than our own. Values tend to radiate from the heart and often reflect how a person is managing their emotional life. We tend to assign worth to things based on how it makes us feel. A lack of values can often times come from undervaluing feelings in general due to not having enough stable and loving energy in our life growing up.
 

Some life situations, such as work and school, require that we be around others regardless of their personal values. Sometimes we socialize within diverse groups that focus more on common interests and hobbies rather than a defined set of values. If we are clear about what our own values are then we can usually discover others in our environment who share similar values...whether they be virtuous or vain...and we feel content and connected. If we are not aware of what we value in life and in our relationships OR if we are in transition from our old way of looking at life into a “higher-self” perspective of life, then we may find ourselves feeling alienated often.
 

This is never really fun while it is happening to us, but its an important part of the self-discovery process because it forces us to begin looking within for answers to what is important to us rather than to those around us. The physical discomfort alone is what tends to ignite the process. We feel uncomfortable in our bodies when we are around others. Maybe we feel sad, anxious, sleepy, worried, or angry. We may feel a need to escape from the scene of people that are surrounding our experience of alienation. Or perhaps we comfort ourselves by thinking and longing for the people who, not only accept us, but understand us. Sometimes we may have no one in our life that we feel understands us, in which case that is when the Internet can be a real blessing. If you find yourself feeling different than everyone around you, then you can rest assured that there is a least one other person out there who owns a computer who will get you...
 

BUT FIRST...
 

Take a moment to center yourself and figure out how you are different than those around you.
 

Some questions to ask yourself are:
 

The need to belong and feel accepted is a primal need originating from our ability to survive better in families and groups than as individuals when it comes to fulfilling our basic needs like food, water and shelter. The physical, mental, and emotional pain of aloneness is perhaps an early survival instinct to remind us to find others so that we can eat better and live a longer, more comfortable life. Over the history of humanity we, as individuals, have not been very choosy in who we put ourselves around. In order to survive we've had to make do and suppress the subtle differences between ourselves and others in order to work towards fitting in and getting along even when our basic emotional needs go unmet. Because we now live in a much more abundant world that offers an easier course for survival, we now get the opportunity to have real choice in who we put ourselves around...we just have to claim for ourselves that feeling truly understood and respected is valuable.
 

This is why it is so important to clarify for yourself what you value when it comes to your feelings. Is it honesty? Commitment to working through problems? Listening? VALUE your VALUES because they are VALUABLE. They will guide you towards like-minded people that you can build relationships with. If you don't know your values or are in transition then your life experiences will constantly be reflecting this back to you so you can learn through your emotions what your values are. Values make us who we are because they inform our choices and so they are at the center of all concepts pertaining to “worth”...this includes self worth, money and things.
 

The biggest challenge most people face in life is the process of understanding the difference between their own personal values and the values of their family of origin and culture. It's in the family and then later in school and religious institution that we first learn what is deemed “good” and “bad” in the world and in people. This is a helpful when you are labeling things like touching a hot stove and not killing each other, but humanity is much more complex than that and so often times outdated values about what is good and bad get passed on over and over again, even though they may not really deal with what contributes to healthy relationships, healthy living, and a healthy world.
 

The survival instinct to belong (so that we can eat and live longer) is powerful in our unconscious minds and even in these modern times it can make it difficult for us to see when a family or cultural value that we carry around doesn't really serve our best interest and is even contributing to our unhappiness. An example of this is when a person is taught to think sex is dirty and sinful, but they find themselves wanting to be sexual anyway. If we don't understand that there is a difference in values taking place between what we feel inside and what we were taught, than we may feel discomfort in our bodies and won't understand why or we may think poorly of ourselves and attract negative experiences.
 

In order to feel like you truly belong in this world, you may have to risk being alone for awhile. You may have to risk taking full responsibility for meeting your own mental, spiritual, emotional and physical needs until you figure things out and meet others like you. You may have to risk letting go of people who do not have the same values as you do. You may have to let go of values that do not even belong to you. The more you understand and embrace your own personal values the more your vibration will change to reflect that and the more you will attract others who share the same values as you. Your sense of belonging will come from within and will be reflected in the people you put yourself around. This is something we all deserve and can create so that we can live more emotionally fulfilling lives!