It's All About You - sample chapter

One – It’s All About You

Our eyes met and locked, gaze steady and unflinching. In a crowded room with little privacy, I desperately wanted to say ‘I love you’ but I felt too self-conscious. The more I thought about it, the more awkward I felt, as if I was now in the glare of a spotlight and the whole room was looking, but in reality they weren’t of course.

Rationality clicked in and I thought to myself how absurd the whole situation was. It went without saying that I love you. I’d always loved you from the first moment and I always would. It should be easy, I mean, I’m a reasonably okay person and sorted emotionally, right? The more I stared into your eyes, the more difficult it became to vocalise my feelings, which surprised me initially and then panicked me when the words still wouldn’t come. By now the lump in my throat wasn’t helping, nor the tightness in my shoulders as I involuntarily tensed up. My eyes filled with tears and I saw yours did too. God, it was becoming difficult. Perhaps too difficult – should I just get up and go? I can do this I thought; I must do this.

Somehow, I managed to summon every last vestige of courage from my heart and began to mouth the words, “Stephen, I love you”. In the handheld mirror, I saw tears well up, as it became shockingly obvious to me that this process was without doubt infinitely more difficult than I could have ever imagined. Uncontrollable sobbing came from the person sitting next door to me, and cautiously, I looked up and surveyed the room. It seemed I wasn’t alone, many were discovering unpalatable truths about themselves.

This exercise took place at a healing weekend in London in the mid-nineties. It was a pivotal experience for me, as you can imagine. Previous to this event, I believed I loved myself, and had no obvious examples in my life to make me think otherwise; so why had I encountered such difficulty when asked to declare self-love ‘face-to-face’ with myself? It seemed to me there had been a gulf between expectation and reality, and it gave me food for thought. It made me consider that perhaps I’d taken it for granted that I loved myself, absolutely and unconditionally, when perhaps I didn’t as much as I thought.

This experience set me down a path of self-discovery and personal development, as I sought to get closer to myself. I decided I wanted to make me more available for me, with love and acceptance. Since then, because of my own personal development experiences and from my training and practice as a therapist, I have helped many people turn to themselves in the same way.

The rest of this Book is dedicated to helping you to turn to yourself and showing you how to give yourself what you really need.

 

It's All About You is available to buy as a 110 page paperback:

price £7.95 including free UK P&P

NB if you live outside of the UK and would like to purchase a copy of It's All About You please contact us for delivery costs.