I have dedicated this episode to understanding your self image and your self worth, how your self worth gets crushed, how the image you have of yourself becomes tainted and skewed, how this impacts you in your life and what you can do to change it.
How self-worth gets crushed
Walk The Line …. a story about Johnny Cash
So many people have anchored the pain of the past and have brought that pain into their current, everyday experiences, and they project that pain into the future.
What do I mean by this? A really good example is a movie I recently watched, it’s a story about Johnny Cash called Walk the Line, if you haven’t seen its quite an interesting story.
The story in the movie was portrayed in the way that Johnny’s brother was his fathers favourite son but he died at a young age because of an accident.
Johnny’s father was an angry man at best but blamed Johnny for his brothers death and from that point forward rejected and made Johnny feel worthless and useless, and certainly not worth giving love to. At one point in the move he overheard his father scream to his mother that, ‘the wrong son died.’
You can image how devastating this would have been to that young boy, feeling somehow responsible for his brothers death, and feeling rejected by his father and feeling like he was worthless and perhaps believing that maybe he should have been the one who died instead.
It appeared that Johnny spent years trying to prove is worthiness to his father and for his father to finally accept him.
Johnny did go on to follow his passion and create music and become very successful, however in the movie, he also had a life of the pain struggling with alcohol and drugs and a failed marriage which his father only validated to him as being nothing.
Somewhere along the way he met June Carter who was like an angel and a blessing in his life but he had to do a whole lot of work on himself for June to finally agree to marry him.
According to the movie June and her family helped Johnny to detox and supported him in his recovery but he also needed to get to the point where he saw that he needed to make the changes and finally come to terms with his past.
The movie really was about forgiveness and healing. Johnny had to figure out that he was still worthy of being loved and accepted even without his fathers love and acceptance.
What we don't know and understand
Your self-image is woven from the experiences you have and the meaning you have given those experiences.
As young people we don’t know anything other than what is being shown to us by the things said to us and even the things that are unsaid, like, ‘I love you’, or ‘I’m proud of you’, and the things that we see and the things that happen to us.
I know of people who have been abused by family members and community members.
I know of people who witnessed a parent being abused and grew up in homes with addiction and violence.
Its not uncommon for these people to go on to find themselves in abusive relationships or being the ones inflicting the abuse.
I know of people who were told they were useless, would never amount to anything and not worth the skin they were in.
These people may find themselves in unhealthy relationships, never believe they have the ability to reach a goal and always settle for what they can get.
I know of people who were bullied and tormented by classmates.
These people may find themselves in positions where they don’t speak up for themselves and hide or they carry repressed anger towards the bully but it actually manifests as anger towards everything in their life instead.
I know of people who grew up in poverty.
Some struggle and believe that poverty are the cards they were dealt and they just have to deal with it because they believe it’s their lot and life and it’s the way it’s always been in their.
They never aspire to break the cycle and learn the skills to create wealth.
The challenge with all his is that if you grew up with violence, substance abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, were bullied, or were told you were nothing and would never amount to anything, it is going to cripple your sense of self, how you see yourself and what you believe you are worthy of.
It’s also not uncommon for people to develop some form of addiction;
- a substance,
- gambling,
- pornography,
- retail therapy,
- plastic surgery,
- even a addiction to defeating thought patterns and chaos.
It’s not uncommon for us to have a way out or a coping mechanism so we don’t have to feel the feelings and get to a place where we can forgive the things that have happened in our past.
I know some people would say they could never forgive someone for what they did.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, ‘forgiveness is for yourself, not the other person.’
It’s not easy to get to that place where you can forgive someone for their actions or cruelty towards you but there is a way to forgive the situation and see it from a different perspective. That shift in perspective is seeing the wounding and unhealed trauma that was in that person.
For example. If someone has come from an abusive environment chances are highly likely that there is a history of abuse that has been handed down from generation to generation and where that cycle of abuse has never been healed.
We may not understand that someone’s cruelty towards another is a reflection of the pain they carry inside.
It’s not your responsibility to go back and heal generational pain but when you do the work on yourself and start to heal and connect to a higher level of consciousness you have a broader perspective. It’s from this place that you find forgiveness.
This doesn’t make what they did or said to you okay but you see that they were stuck in their own pain and patterns.
release. heal. Recreate.
I Feel Pretty … a movie with Amy Schumer
The movie, I Feel Pretty, with Amy Schumer, really shows how life opens up to us when we see ourselves differently.
Until Amy fell off a spin bike in a class, she saw herself as someone inadequate and as the title subtly implies, un-pretty
She felt was insecure and didn’t feel good about herself. She had a job at a cosmetics company but she worked in the basement with a tech guy, hidden away.
When she fell off the spin bike, she hit her head and was briefly knocked unconscious. When she came to, she saw herself completely different.
She looked in the mirror and saw a slender and toned person instead of how she saw herself previously, overweight, perhaps undesirable and lacking the courage to really put herself out there and have a great relationship or go for a higher position in the company. She became a powerhouse for a bit.
If only we could temporarily be knocked unconscious and wake up seeing ourselves as the powerful people we are but it’s not that easy.
What if you didn't do that thing you do?
I mentioned that we have so many distractions in the form of a substance or gambling, or pornography, or retail therapy, plastic surgery or even a addiction to defeating thought patterns and chaos, as a way to numb our feelings but what if you didn’t do that?
What if instead you just let those feelings and emotions be there, and you let yourself cry, and shake and get nervous and be scared and feel insecure and angry?
As you move about your day you will notice, with some awareness, that you are being triggered.
For example. Triggers show up during conversation when someone says something and it makes you angry, or it reminds you of something someone else said once or reminds you of a way you felt before. That’s a trigger that is invoking a feeling or emotion.
Most people’s tendency is to go to their go to distraction and I haven’t mentioned this one but another great distraction is social media or binge watching something.
But what if you didn’t do that thing you do and instead let yourself feel and have the emotions that are coming up like anger, or jealousy or you cry? When you do this you will find that the energy around the emotion starts to dissipate.
This is not usually a one shot deal. It takes practice and time and the desire to want to feel better. And some people are not there yet, they aren’t ready to heal yet
One of my podcasts is called the Rebound. When they move on so quickly. I talk about why people rebound, and why it’s so difficult to let go.
One of the points I make is that some people aren’t ready to do the work and would rather move into a new relationship because they don’t want to feel the hurt, or rejection or the abandonment or worthiness, whatever it is for them.
It’s okay! There’s nothing wrong with that because when you’re ready to start doing the work, you’ll start doing the work
So if you’re in this place and your sick and tired of feeling sick and tired and looking for some pain relief, this is a good place to start.
And I want to talk about this pain relief because as you are going through this process, it actually brings us more pain but if you can stick with it the other side of this is much more satisfying. And you’ll have much greater self- awareness.
A higher level of consciousness
I am a huge advocate for meditating,
When you meditate it allow you to clear your mind and connect to something more than just your physical body, the thoughts you think and your current life.
And you’re probably thinking,
‘There’s that meditation again.’
‘If I could meditate I would meditate but, I cant shut off my mind off.’
When you can’t turn your mind off that’s an indicator that there is a process that you need to go through and learn by which you can calm your mind.
You learn to clear your mind by what I call, clearing the junk in the trunk, and letting go and feeling the feeling and the pain. It’s kind of a strange dichotomy the way this works, it sounds counter-intuitive but it actually works.
I have started a 100 day 1 hours each morning meditation, but I wasn’t always able to meditate and be calm this long.
I started small and in the beginning most of my mediation was spent crying or sleeping, so it takes practice but it if you’re consistent you will get there.
But let me offer you a different perspective of what meditation it. Its the process where you just sit there and listen and let any feelings, and any emotion come to the surface and be with whatever comes up.
Once you have done this you will start a free flow of higher guidance in the form of hunches, and heightened intuition and guidance and you’ll tap into a new level of creativity that will expand your consciousness and your life.
You have to clear the old stuff before you get to the free flow.
Kyle Cease, if you’re familiar with his work, used the analogy of an garden hose that’s been sitting for so long. It gets full of dirt and gunk and leaves so when you turn the water on come Spring, that old stuff needs to be cleaned out first before the water runs freely.
Meditation is a lot like that in the beginning. It’s virtually impossible to calm your mind, it doesn’t work that way so have patience.
Okay, to wrap this up in a nice package.
When you create space to feel your feelings and emotions, instead of distracting yourself and you make time to meditate, you will reach a place where you forgive yourself, and others. You let go of your past and who you thought you needed to be get love, acceptance, validation, feel seen, heard, understood and like you belong.
AND along the way you will step into a new version of yourself that no longer needs external validation of your worth and lovability because you will see it within yourself.
Although that seems simple enough, it is a process.
My work is helping women heal from unhealthy and toxic patterns that are played out in their relationships.
You can download my guided relaxation meditation because you’re worth your own time or book a complimentary assessment with me.
Be brave. Forgive yourself and others. Live big. Trust yourself. Make the tough decisions even though it may break your heart. Trust that what and who leaves your life is meant to leave. Have faith that the space that’s left will be filled with new experiences and opportunities that expand your heart and your life.