/ DBT-C, English, Supersensers / By Francheska Perepletchikova

There are two main ways in which we can satisfy our needs – taking from others and giving to ourselves. Due to the programing that we receive from the information field in which we exist, we mostly are taught to rely on other people for reinforcement, validation, care, support, love, and we even put the responsibility on others for our own reactions, thus, putting them in control of our lives. For example, “if you have not said this, I would not be angry” or “if only you did what I asked, I would not have screamed at you.” 

Unfortunately, we are not programmed by the information field to reinforce, validate or even love ourselves. How many people do you know who were taught by their parents to simply self-reinforce? How many people were taught to self-validate? How many people do you know who discussed self-love with their children? Even worse, we are programmed to equate self-love with being selfish, unduly vain, narcissistic, or conceited. It is easy to demonstrate. All you need to do is google synonyms of self-love. This simple exercise can be eye opening, as Google is a representation of our shared meanings and collective understanding of what we think is real. 

Thus, we are mostly programmed to be takers and when others fail to satisfy our needs, we are starving and are likely to retaliate and use force to get what we want though threats, screaming, yelling, accusations and sometimes even violence. A simple example of this is a child who becomes verbally and physically aggressive, following not getting what they want.

Instead of relying on others, we need to learn and teach our children how to give to ourselves. Two important considerations before we discuss what this means. First, of course, as we give to self, we still need to receive from others. Nothing to extreme. We always have to balance two sides, including satisfaction of our needs. Another important consideration – receiving from other people praise, validation, love, etc. results in an experience with higher emotional intensity than when we self-reinforce or self-validate or sit with self-love. Therefore, receiving from others can be compared to getting a cake. Giving to self, on the other hand, does not result in experiencing intense emotions, so we call it “baking our own bread.” As always, there are two sides to everything – getting a cake from others is more exciting AND we are not in control of this outcome; while baking our own bread is not as exciting AND we are in a better control of this process. 

Why is learning to give to self so imperative? There are two main considerations: 1) we can then assume control over the satisfaction of our needs; and 2) we can gain a capacity to form and maintain healthy relationships with other people. 

Let’s starts with the first point.  We cannot control other people, life and circumstances. We cannot control how much our needs can be satisfied by others and whether what they give us is what we need. When others fail to satisfy our needs, we tend to retaliate, as we somehow assume that other people owe us something. Actually, other people do not owe us anything and we do not owe anything to others. We only owe it to ourselves – to learn about ourselves, love ourselves and self-actualize, and to our children, however, not what they want but what they need. We also forget that other people are not responsible for our reactions. So, when they do not behave to our preference, we retaliate and start to use force to obtain what we somehow think they owe us. It is understandable, as if the only one source that can satisfy our needs is blocked, we starve. And this will happen definitively and consistently, simply because we cannot control others and anything that is one-sided just does not work. Thus, we need to introduce the other side and place control where it belongs – on ourselves. When we become self-sufficient and other people give us cake – wonderful, if not – we are not starving and thus, much less likely to use force and retaliate. 

This leads us to the second point. Since forming and maintaining healthy relationships is based primarily on our ability to be giving to other people, only when we have something of our own, we can effectively do so. We cannot give much to other people if most of what we have is taken from others. Further, what we give to ourselves makes a great difference. We share with the world what we have. If I am a self-critical person, I will experience other people as critical and will be prone to interpret what they tell me as criticism even if it is not implied. If I have pain inside, I will share pain. If I have happiness inside, I will share happiness. We need to consider that not only we are programmed to primarily take from others, we are also programmed to be self-critical, self-judgmental and self-deprecating. Each and every one of us has sustained harmful invalidation where we received negative feedback not only on our actions but also on the personal level – “you did something bad, therefore you are bad.” 

So, to have healthy relationships with others, we need to first establish a healthy relationship with self. There are seven main ingredients of bread baking: 

1.self-reinforcement

2. self-validation

3. self-care

4. self-compassion

5. self- control

6. self-love

7. cognitive self-restructuring. 

If your children have difficulty with friendships, teaching them social skills is important. However, this is knowing what to do. This is necessary but  not sufficient, as we also need to gain the capacity to apply this knowledge. This capacity stems primarily from your child learning how to bake their own bread. To overcome problems in the relationships with others, we first need to overcome problems in our relationship with self, otherwise we have little to give.