One more thing, Joel, you wrote: “In order to love myself, I feel like I must view myself as a separate entity. In which case there are two of me; the real me that does the loving, that silently observes, and the my mind-body that is being observed and being loved by the observer.” I too feel and have felt like there are two of me, the child part of me (the inner child concept) and the other me that I am used to. I saw the child part of me as a stranger to me and talked about her in the third person (she, her). Over years of therapy of healing I came to realize that the reason for it is that I disassociated from myself, from my child part, the part feeling the hurt and fear; I dissociated from my EMOTIONAL MIND and focused on my RATIONAL MIND, my intellect, another way to put it. I rejected my child part/ my emotions and “lived in my head.” To RE-ASSOCIATE is to FEEL the vulnerable feelings I once rejected, to “make friends” with them. In reality everything in between our ears is a bunch of neurons, blood. fleshe… diffferent parts of our brain with many connections. Healing in physical terms is weakening OLD connections and making new connections between the different parts of our brain. I hope this helps.

Shifting the object of empathy is still the way that is working for me.
anita