It feels terrible to be constantly overlooked. This is the situation that Melanie is struggling with:

“Even when I think I am fitting in to a group and talking to everybody OK I always seem to be overlooked when it comes to invitations etc., and then I feel completely invisible – as if they either don’t remember that I exist or they are deliberately being mean to me. I don’t understand why I am treated differently to other people. I look OK, dress nicely, and I think I behave OK. When you talk about false beliefs I think – how can I tell myself it is false when it has been proven true over and over again. Sorry if I sound like a victim but it is how I feel right now and I can’t say this to anyone else.”

What I would say to Melanie is that I’m sure it’s not a false belief that you are being overlooked, since this is your experience over and over. The place to look at the underlying cause is not in how you look, how you dress or how you behave. The place to look is in how you treat yourself.

Others tend to treat us the way we treat ourselves.

How are you overlooking yourself? As I list some of the ways you might be overlooking yourself, try to be honest with yourself:

• I’m focused primarily in my head, ignoring my feelings
• I ignore even my basic needs, such as when I’m hungry or when I need to go to the bathroom
• I believe that others’ feelings and needs are more important than mine
• I believe that what I say and believe isn’t as important as what others say and believe
• I don’t speak up for myself when others discount me or are mean
• I give myself up to others, trying to please them
• I don’t value who I really am
• I believe I’m not good enough and judge myself harshly
• I need others’ approval to feel okay about myself

You might want to look inside to see how else you might be overlooking yourself that may be causing you to be overlooked.

If you recognize that how others treat you is often a mirror of how you treat yourself, and if you are honest about how you are treating yourself, then you will understand why you are so often invisible to others, and so often overlooked.

It’s not your beliefs about being overlooked that are the problem – it’s your false beliefs about yourself.

If you want to change all this, then you need to start to practice the Six Steps of Inner Bonding to learn to love yourself, rather than keep rejecting and abandoning yourself. You will be amazed at the changes that occur in your life when you:

• Lovingly attend to your feelings and needs, rather than continue to ignore them
• Make your feelings, needs and opinions just as important as others’
• Learn to speak up for yourself when others are being unkind
• Stop giving yourself up and caretaking others – instead, giving yourself the approval you need
• Learn to define your own essence, rather than leaving your definition of yourself up to others

In order to do all of this, you need to develop your loving adult self, which happens only when you develop your spiritual connection. You can’t see and define your essence through the eyes of your programmed wounded self. Only your spiritual guidance can help you to see the incredible wonderfulness of your essence – the spark of the Divine within you. This is the result of practicing Inner Bonding.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”