AM: Lately, God’s put me around people who are affirming…

Betty: Yeah, for a part of you, right? That’s why I am so strong with you when you go into that negative place. Don’t do that. Because the Lord is doing a good work in you. Honor and glorify Him. Don’t let the enemy throw you into a negative place just because the Perfectionist doesn’t have it all complete and done in the next second. That’s why, in a sense, when you develop the ability to laugh about your Perfectionist, that will be a great day for me. I laugh about mine. Don’t you notice that? It’s like, “Oh well.” Your Perfectionist is a tyrant when she gets in that place. It is like a little kid that is play acting a position that they are not. Let’s say they want to be a queen, and they’re acting like queen. As a parent, you can be amused at watching what they’re doing, because you know it’s play acting. But your Perfectionist takes you so seriously. “Oh, come on kid! Just have fun. Cut the exaggerations.” 

That’s just it. You have to give yourself time to let it happen. You have all these demands you seem to put on yourself like that part of you that immediately went into, “Oh, it’s all trash.” It’s like, “Oh, sit back and relax. It’s not. Cool it.” But, part of that is impatience. X had a lot of impatience. Part of it was that he wanted the best. It wasn’t a mean thing. He really wanted to do his best. But it’s hard to be around someone when they’re in that place. I think, as you work through this stuff, you’re going to get closer to X, which you probably really need. Because that is what they call the healing of the Animus as the negative parts of our father get healed. We need our Animus, because our Animus is that strong, assertive side of ourselves that we need to function in this world. 

AM: And you have to work through your dad issues for that? 

Betty: Oh yeah. Any part of yourself you hate and reject needs to get healed. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor,” He did have to say, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And it’s like, “Why did he say that?” Because we can’t really love our neighbor the way God is calling us to love our neighbor if we refuse to love ourselves. It’s impossible. The part of yourself that you hate, you’ll act out on somebody else sooner or later. That’s why if you listen to any of my talks, when I give the definition of love, I always say that we have to seek the true good of God, self and others. People will say to me, “I thought we were supposed to not think about ourselves, and we were supposed to go out and love others.” No, Scripture says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It doesn’t mean to become self-absorbed, which is the society that we live in? Its problem is it’s too stuck in itself. But healthy self-love needs to happen for us to love God, because God created us. And everything God creates, He loves. That happens to be ourselves, too.