If you are hard on yourself, do you believe that this is helpful to you? You might want to re-evaluate this false belief.
Are you hard on yourself? Do you think this is a good thing? Do you believe this motivates you to do better? Think again. If you are doing well, it’s likely in spite of being hard on yourself, not because of it.
Many of us grew up with parents and teachers who believed that being hard on us was the way to motivate us. As children, we absorbed their judgments of us and became strict taskmasters with ourselves.
Most of us lead very busy lives and it is easy to become overwhelmed with all we need to do. In addition, about 15% to 20% of us are born with highly sensitive nervous systems that are far more reactive to having a lot to do than the general population. Since I have a very highly sensitive nervous system, I understand how easily some of us can become overwhelmed by the demands of life. I have learned some powerful tools for managing overwhelm that I will share with you as I answer the following questions about overwhelm.
Leslie asked:
“I feel overwhelmed when I have many things to do and they all seem equally important. How do I decide where to start without feeling that perhaps I need to be doing one of the other things instead?” Continue reading “How Can I Manage Overwhelm?”
This is often what clients who seek my help ask me in a first session. Because they have never learned to manage and learn from their pain, they want to avoid it, eliminate it – find a way to hide from it.
The problem is that they have been unsuccessfully hiding from their pain for years by abandoning themselves – by staying focused in their head rather than their body, hoping that if they avoid feeling their feelings, the feelings will go away. They have been judging their feelings and turning to various addictions for the same reason.
When trouble comes, which it inevitably does, they intensify their avoidance of their feelings. Continue reading Are You Hiding?
Do you believe that feelings of abandonment are coming from others abandoning you – or do they come from self-abandonment?
When we think about abandonment, we generally think about being left by someone. But abandonment is about leaving someone we are responsible for – a child or an old or sick person who cannot take care of themselves and whom we have agreed to take care of.
As a healthy adult, another adult can leave you, but they cannot abandon you, since they likely have not agreed to be responsible for you.
It might seem strange to you, but, as a healthy adult, when you feel abandoned by someone, it is not actually about them. It is about having abandoned yourself.
Most people don’t think about how they abandon themselves because they don’t recognize that they are responsible for themselves – physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, relationally and organizationally. Continue reading Are You Abandoning Yourself?
Breaking down keeps you stuck, while breaking open allows you to discover the power within yourself.
“Something I didn’t want to happen, happens. I feel the resistance build within. I feel the pressure to control what is obviously out of my control. I become aware of what I’m doing—I become aware of the choice either to break down or to break open.” Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open, p. 256
How aware are you that when bad things happen or something that you didn’t want to happen, happens, you have a choice of whether to break down or break open? This is what Elizabeth Lesser’s book, Broken Open, is about. It’s about using all our challenging life situations to open, on deeper and deeper levels, to our true, core essential selves. Unfortunately, many people do the opposite when deeply challenged—they numb and hide and avoid. They are afraid that if they let themselves break open to their deeper, spiritual selves, they will not be able to handle the painful feelings of heartbreak, loneliness, grief and helplessness over others and circumstances. Continue reading Breaking Down or Breaking Open
Do you want to experience intimacy and connection with others, and the joy and aliveness that this offers? You need to start by learning how to love yourself, rather than abandon yourself.
“Intimacy begins with oneself. It does no good to try to find intimacy with friends, lovers, and family if you are starting out from alienation and division within yourself.” – Thomas Moore, author, Care of the Soul
Most of us would love to have intimacy and connection in our lives, yet we often find this elusive. Why?
Thomas Moore puts it in a nutshell. Until we are intimate and connected with ourselves, we cannot experience the greatest joy in life – intimacy and connection with others.
The question becomes: what causes alienation and division within yourself? Just one thing – self-abandonment.
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