What is love? Is love the feeling of physical and emotional attraction? Or is it the outcome of appreciating others virtue? But can there be love without giving? Giving that requires indicating concern for others life and growth. Giving the idea of showing ones compassion of expressed and unexpressed feelings. The most important giving strategy is the ability to view a person as they are and being aware of their distinctive individuality. However, when a person keeps giving love to one another and does not seek love in his or her rightful place, they search for similar feelings somewhere else.
Love is significance in humans life. Simple appreciation may ease the pain, but is it enough? When love is not enough it may cause severe damage to a person. It may lead to suicide, to depression, to family problems, and even to eating disorders. Every human being values love than any personal effect in their lives. Love is assisting one another in time of need. When an individual does not experience love he or she develop a mask to their personality. To their fears. To their past life. The masks that create difficulty to knowing someone. Many act in certain ways around certain people.
However, when people go through denial of the physical existence just to protect their ego, we call them defense mechanism. Each and every one of us has a different strategy of coping to reality for it to be less stressful. Meaning, these masks protect us. They protect us from bad feelings. However, there is a specific amount of how much defense mechanism may isolate us from the real world. For example, denial. Denial is the most horrifying strategy that anyone may respond to in a situation; therefore, it may lead to completely refusing any horrible experience.
People are eager to tell others about their lives but they fear rejection and rejection leads to conflicts within. Everyone fears that exposing themselves would make them seem weak to others. However, does it not sometimes surprise you how one day you think you know someone for such a long time and when a deeply most horrifying secret of the person is out, you feel like your mind betrayed you? You think you know every single detail when in fact you weren’t looking inside of them. I’ll be telling you a story about a 20-year-old girl, Nicole. She lives in the Netherlands, originally from France. Nicole and I have been friends for a long time.
We were Skyping, I telling her about my Voice of Youth research paper. I was explaining to Nicole how I couldn’t find someone for the interview because of how hard it will be ask someone I personally know about conflicts in their life. As I said before, I knew Nicole for a long time, and in that moment, I discovered that she herself had a major conflict in her life. It does surprise you how long you’ve known someone, but then when they reveal something shocking about himself or herself, the perspective changes; not of the person, but of the fact that no one really gets to know someone with their problems.
No one wants to feel responsible. Nicole.. My friend.. My sister had developed an eating disorder; thus, resulting to Bulimia and anorexia. Nicole and I decided to Skype so I could interview her with questions. I later realized that I’m not only a student wanting to gather information for a research paper, but I’m her friend; therefore, I decided to take a train to Utrecht. I had to listen carefully as she expresses her thoughts, opinion, and feelings to me. One of the things I Learned from my Guide to critical thinking was, in order for me to be fair; I must consider the feelings of my friend.
As I sat down next to her, I heard her pour out her feelings. I could see the way she was acting. Nicole was extremely nervous. She carried a bottle in her hand, fidgeting with it the whole time. I looked at her, asked her one more time if she really wants to do this. Nicole glanced at me with an extremely red face, telling me that it was all right. Nicole began with.. “I don’t know where to start.. ” following apologizes of how much I might be disturbed. Nicole was constantly asking “Are you sure you want to know this.. ” I can see she’s worrying that I might see her differently.
For 5 minutes, all Nicole could say is, “You’ll be shocked! ” As I sat there in front of her, she began, “I always had problems with my mom.. ” Nicole switched schools in the 7th grade. That is when she developed an eating disorder. Nicole had no friends; people at school were mean, rude, and snobby. She had no attention. Due to that, Nicole stopped eating completely; but when she lost a huge amount of weight she got all the attention she wanted. “At first, to me it was weird because I stopped eating because I was sad and people kept telling me I looked good.
Nicole constantly desired attention from her friends at school. She received no attention from home. All Nicole wanted was to be noticed at home. Her situation made her seek love from people that do not matter. She got more and more desperate. Nicole is an only girl with two younger brothers. Her parents, especially her mother, treated her differently. Nicole was the least one with attention. Her mother always praised the boys whenever they accomplished something; they were always awarded. However, Nicole was never showed appreciation. “Whenever my brothers and I fought, I would always be blamed!
Nicole feels like her mother has failed at being a mom. I asked Nicole how she thought their parenting was, she said: “Its bad. They give us everything we want. We’re allowed to do a lot of stuff but she never consequences things.. It is hard to explain. She is just not a mother. She saw me not eat a lot and did not recognize that I had an eating disorder. ” Every once in a while I would hear Nicole repeating, “I would do everything different. I would never compare things with other people like she does. I would also not compare my childhood with my children’s’ like she does.
I wouldn’t do that. Things change. Time changes. She is just not happy with her life and she brings it out on us. ” Nicole then glanced slowly at me and told me how her mother has shared with her – her previous love. Her mother explained to her how she married her father because he could provide a decent life. Nicole’s reaction was, ” I love my dad and I don’t want him to be sad; but I know he’s unhappy as well; but he is so madly in love with her. ” Nicole grew up having to take care of herself, her brothers, her father, and even her mother. I see that its and extremely hard task to do.
Having to take care of your whole family knowing that none of them care. We went back to talking about her eating disorder. Nicole told me how whenever she had something to eat, she’d throw up all of it. I slowly asked her how it made her feel to force herself to vomit all she had eaten. I was scared that I was being out of line but then she said: “I do not know what was going on in my brain.. It is like having a cold; you can’t do anything about it… Its just there and its like being a complete different person. It makes you doing things that you actually don’t want to do and you don’t want to do it but you just do it.
I could see Nicole’s eye tearing up as she explained how she felt. “Menna, Something inside you tells you do it. Do it ” That is when I realized, she was in the affection of trying to make herself feel better. Her mind was controlling her thoughts by using her looks as an attention seeker; thus, making her seeks attention at school. She was not accepted by her parents, especially her mother. Losing weight, gave her attention at school. It was her only way out of the weight she carried at home. I then asked Nicole, “When was the moment you realized and decided you should stop and change?
Nicole told me about the nightmares she had when she started dating Victor. “I had nightmares… My teeth were falling out… It was really bad, and then my hair started falling off. ” This was the moment that Nicole had seen herself in the future. Nicole was lucky; she was able to visualize how her life would turn around if she carried on with this. Nicole had the opportunity, the chance to get out early before it gets worse. And that is when the fairytale started with the love of her life, Victor. He was the reason she was able to keep going; to hold on and face her fears.
I think its because I felt accepted from Victor. ” Nicole was able to find what she couldn’t get from home. “Nicole, how did it change you? “It made me realize how it is so weird that something is so powerful in your mind that makes you do things you don’t want to do. ” As she was explaining her thoughts, I realized that the mind is strong; it is able to control what we want to know, and if it doesn’t feel safe, it turns its back on everyone. Nicole then later on, confronted her parents on their parenting. She poured her heart out, telling them every single detail they did wrong.
Leaving out the fact that she was Bulimic, Nicole had only told that to her father. I asked her why her mother doesn’t know, she said: ” My mother could never handle this. ” Nicole later on then went to a psychological center for anorexic people to help out. It was then that she realized how thankful to god she is for helping her go through this. Nicole met girls that within a blink of an eye may die. She knew then that she should be grateful. The last question I asked my friend, Nicole, was “How do you feel now that I’m talking to you about this” She answered with a smooth look, “It’s like a story. ”
Nicole’s father, Victor, and me were the only people who knew. That was it. I finished the interview. Got up and hugged my friend. As I sat listening to a person I knew, a person that I cared about, but I never considered their feelings as much. Everything made sense. I first asked myself, as I hear her tell her story, “This doesn’t make sense to me, its like I don’t know this person. ” But then everything connected. I realized that Everyone has different reasons to why they endeavor to hide their emotional pain, that comes in the wake of negative beliefs about ourselves; evoked by a particular person or situation.
In conclusion, we are just human. Humans fear the thought of others not responding with a caring or supportive way. People dread the thought of trusting themselves, to cope with others response of their fears. The most important strategy, opening yourself to others. Everyone comes from a completely different family, community, or school. Opening yourself to others gives you the option to be in someone else’s world, giving you the choice to perceiving their goodness and kindness. I strongly believe that love comes from giving and knowledge.
Many fear opening themselves up to others, afraid of what people may think, resulting to grasp no love from others. People are eager to tell others about their lives, but they fear rejection and rejection leads to conflicts within. Everyone fears that exposing themselves would make them seem weak to others; thus, giving the thought and feeling of no love or compassion from anyone. In conclusion, not all masks are evil. It’s up to us how to identify the strategy to make the masks and the reason for each mask to motivate us to unconsciously choose which mask to wear.
One must be true to themselves by altering the right mask. Love can be described in many ways. However, love is not only enough when said or told. I believe that if parents do not take care of their child’s background, the child will eventually adapt within his or her own culture. Such events shape our lives. As you can see, every time Nicole fell down she got her self-right back up. A critical thinker must always seek better ways of doing things. “Critical thinkers believe in the power of their minds. “
