Teal Swan: Other

“Rescuers convince themselves that if they give enough to others the recipient of their giving will clearly appreciate the rescuer so much that the taker will begin to give back to the rescuer, which is what the rescuer secretly wants all along. They want to be loved, nurtured and cared for. That is the hope and fantasy of the rescuer. But, because the rescuer has chosen someone who needs rescuing, someone who by definition takes and does not give, the rescuer never gets what he/she really wants, which is to be rescued. There is no such thing as a rescuer that doesn't want to be rescued.”

“What I know is that suffering creates suffering and the ONLY way to change that in the world is to become JOY and begin infecting other people with it. If you become joy, you will not make other people unhappy and the cycle of suffering… ends. Why do I care? Because I am you. Your suffering is the world's suffering. You can not suffer and not have it affect EVERYTHING in existence.”

“People, who are afraid of intimacy and connection (and thus vulnerability) tend to cope with those feelings by becoming an island unto themselves. They become emotionally unavailable and disconnect from the other person as a defence. To withdraw in a relationship is to commit emotional divorce. And the #1 symptom of withdrawal is lack of communication.”

“What does it mean to be crazy? To have a disorder of the mind. But "disorder" can only exist if there is some kind of pre determined "order" set in place. And who decides on order relative to the human mind? Human society. Sane and insane is a judgment based on perspective. And according to many other perspectives within this universe, it is human society that is rampant with disorder. So there is no reason to think of yourself as insane; if the very mindset of the society that determines whether you are sane or insane… is in and of itself insane!”

“If you are not truthful and if you are not in reality about yourself and if you are not in reality about the truth of other people, you have no chance at being happy in any of your relationships.”

“With a zero sum game, it almost always ends up being a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Both people involved will perceive the other to have started it.”

“What is on the other side of any addiction? Something you are desperate to avoid. You stay addicted and you can't let go because letting go means falling back into what you are desperate to avoid… such as a feeling of being unsafe, isolation, lack of belonging, loneliness, emptiness.”

“We must choose to be dependent. There is nothing powerless about the choice to be dependent and it is safe assuming that both people realize that their wellbeing is inseparable from the other person. This is the foundation of interdependence.”

“Happy people do not cause harm to others. If everyone who was born upon this earth focused on their own alignment and their own joy so much that they never became separated from it, there would be no war.”

“In relationships we tend to get lazy and think we know each other after months or years. This is a complete illusion, especially given that EMOTIONS and EXPERIENCES and THOUGHTS belonging to a person fluctuate every single day.”

“Responsibility is actually at the opposite end of the vibrational scale from self-blame. But it takes a high degree of emotional awareness to see them as opposing states because both states recognize the self in a position of causation. For this reason, self-blame can disguise itself as responsibility like a wolf wearing sheep’s clothing. But one is self-hating, the other self-loving. One condemns the self and the other saves the self. If you are taking responsibility, you are feeling empowered. If you are self blaming, you are feeling bad about yourself and disempowered.”

“We lack emotional connection even when we are surrounded by other people. This feeling of being profoundly alone is the root cause of unhappiness in the human race. It is the root cause of addictions. It is the root cause of suicide. It is the root cause of acts of terror. And it is the root of the dysfunction in the way society is structured.”

“To be manipulative is to speak and act in a way that guarantees that we get the response we want to get from other people. So you see, manipulation is how most of us try to get love. Manipulation is how most of us try to get safety… because we do not trust the world to be kind to us. Everyone is manipulative, we are simply more or less aware of that aspect within ourselves.”

“Manipulation is what we do when we feel we cannot meet our needs directly, so instead we try to meet them in round about ways. We try to influence others to do what we want them to do so our needs are met. This is particularly prevalent today when the need that is not met is emotional.”

“Never be ashamed of how you feel. If you feel shame because of how you feel, it means you have been judged by others and told that your feelings were wrong or bad. But the reality is you wouldn't be feeling them if there wasn't a very valid reason to be feeling them. Your feelings are valid. If you feel an emotion, there is a good reason that you are feeling that emotion. Don't let anyone tell you how you should or shouldn't feel.”

“Because we have learned that our parents and other people cannot accept our emotions, thoughts and desires and we cannot tolerate them in that situation, we learn to disconnect from our personal truth as well. This includes disconnecting from our feelings so we don't feel them. This includes disconnecting from our thoughts so we aren't thinking them. It means disconnecting from our bodies so we don't feel our bodies and it involves disconnecting from our personal desires.”

“The single most prevalent form of denial in the human race is emotional denial. We do not want to accept the reality of our own emotions and we do not want to accept the reality of other people's emotions. As a result, we are constantly at war with ourselves and with each other.”

“School is a place that adds to emotional pain for most children alive today. It is even more so the case for the two most isolated kids in school: 1. The social outcasts who are isolated in every way. 2. The social actors who are surrounded by other kids, but no one sees them because they are in a relationship not with them, but with the role they play.”

“The sentiment 'everything that is happening is supposed to be happening' can be a cop out that prevents us from becoming conscious and deliberately creating. On the other hand, the obsessive control over our reality that comes with trying to use the law of attraction to our advantage to deliberately create can be nothing more than resistance. It too can prevent us from being conscious.”