[Angela]

...of another reason labeling yourself or someone else as "alpha" or "♥♥♥♥♥" or "dog person" or "chewie chewbacca" is a dumb thing to do, in my opinion.

When you assign a label of identity onto someone else, it doesn't mean anything at all about that person; it only limits you in your ability to freely and consciously relate to the person as anything else but. Your interaction with that person -- and actually with people as a species -- is restricted to the strategies you've got for surviving or coping with "alphas" or "bitches" or whatever. You're not making any positive difference for the "alpha" or the "♥♥♥♥♥," and you're not growing any deeper or more powerful inner resources by assigning those labels; you're just keeping yourself small.

For instance, if you believe there are bitches out there in the world -- bad ladies who must not be engaged with -- then your only way of coping and surviving this world that contains bitches is to avoid engaging with the bitches. Your scope of living is limited to areas in which there's no engagement with bitches. And if you don't like alphas, your only way of dealing with this world that has alphas in it is to avoid them, or maybe to fight or resist them. Very limiting approach to relating with other aspects of yourself, in my view: avoiding, fighting, resisting. It's like living as a caveman -- perpetually in freeze, fight or flight response; never fully free to evolve into the limitless capacity you have for experiencing others as magnificent human beings, all doing the best they can with the resources they have available, just like you.

Of course, sometimes people act in ways that don't work well for you -- a woman may say something nasty, or a man may try to assert power over you -- but that doesn't mean that Who They Are is ♥♥♥♥♥ or alpha, unless you choose that meaning (and that's just you). It can also mean that the person is acting in a particular way, and it's striking you in a particular way, in a given moment. You are free to change your own state so that it strikes you in a way that works better (switch your perspective), or you are free to act in a way that may have that person feeling better and behaving more effectively hermself, or you are free to notice that the person habitually acts this way and you can use or develop strategies for making a difference in the relationship, including avoiding them, if that's appropriate. But avoiding them in that case would be conscious response as a temporary tactic, not a reactive "policy" in the face of encountering someone to whom you assign that label. It's the difference between feeling good and feeling bad, and generating those feelings for others, too.

There's the playful animal game of name-calling, like MidasGirl referring to her girlfriend as a ♥♥♥♥♥, but that's not the same thing as actually believing her friend's identity is ♥♥♥♥♥ and relating to her as if that's what she IS. The two women are playfully aware that each other are magnificent human beings, and like puppies wrestling and biting each other, are playing a game. But there is no conscious or even unconscious belief that the other is really a ♥♥♥♥♥, at least not in a healthy, conscious friendship which is what I'm fairly certain MidasGirl is involved with.

And of course believing yourself to be a certain label at the level of identity is vastly limiting. If you believe you are an alpha or a ♥♥♥♥♥, or that you *should* be, then your relationship with yourself is limited to relating to yourself that way, or the disappointment and frustration of relating to yourself as not being what you *should* be. Yeccchh!

So if you see yourself or someone else behaving in a way that you used to see as an indication that the person IS this or that, as an identity, I think it makes a whole lot more sense to practice recognizing that what you're seeing is only a BEHAVIOR -- and you are free to relate to behaviors with far more freedom and power. You can't change what a person is, but you can act with real choice and opportunity or influence a behavior to something that works better for yourself and/or for the other person.

You can have access to forgiveness if you recognize that each person is doing the best they can with the resources they've got available in that moment -- and you, as a conscious person, have the ability to lead the world to real choice, freedom, and love. All those folks out there are aspects of you, after all; all you have to do to make a positive change out there is to change yourself and how you relate to those aspects.