What you tell yourself about yourself is fundamental to your wellbeing. So many fall into a daily barrage of invisible, but conscious self rejecting harshness believing that this is self correcting behaviour. It is not. What it is, is a by-product of a fundamental disruption in the sacred relationship with the inner self.
This rejection of the self scaffolded in daily life by self criticism and the possibility of self validation and love sabotaged. Eventually this becomes distress, illness and internal rage.
Self rejection is the harshest wound we inflict and a huge collective blind spot we don’t appreciate or study in the age of the individual.
We are all too preoccupied with medicalising suffering, avoiding our contribution to that relationship with our inner beingness and obsessing about life as entertainment, leisure or affluence. None of these pursuits actually are anything more than a distraction; an avoidance of that inner self we take to our bed every night.
Let me put it this way - if we are forever being mean to ourselves with critical thoughts such as “I don’t really like me” or “what a bloody loser” or “I dont know why I feel like this” or, whatever hard perspective we dish ourselves so readily, we can’t feel whole, safe, fulfilled or positive. Such a modern day plague and the evidence is in the figures - mental illness is on the rise globally.
Every thought becomes a neural pathway and what we think influences what the body holds onto.
Sadly for many the experience of abuse, torture, psychological hurt and tragedy has been so horrific, the only way to survive is to detach, to lock away that inner self. I hold only compassion and care for the difficulty of such being.
But little steps towards a loving relationship with that inner self is what healing is all about. That is what recovery means. No pill can bring about that.
Let me ask you - would you dish out such harshness to your best pal, or to a friends child?
I guess not. Do you know why not?
Because you respect the humanity in them. What about respecting the humanity in you? This is an attitudinal choice and totally up to you!
Mental health and psychological wellbeing rely on you. When we have a thought we actually drive and imprint neural networks that become our runway to self-loathing.
I am sorry if this is difficult to accept. The medicalisation of suffering, the endless magic pill, millions of people are taking in the hope of clearing away their distress, is not working. Studies show again and again that antidepressants have no more effect on reducing and eradicating depression than a placebo.
Taking a pill numbs your neurology but does little to change your mindset. And this is a problem.
When you medicalise your experience and you internalise rage your distress becomes even worse. Whilst at the same time you feel even more hopeless, less safe, more zombified and increasingly like a faulty failing defective problem.
I have tonnes of compassion and empathy for the human struggle to navigate trauma, tragedy and distress. I have spent my working life helping people heal and I have studied and examined the research, the treatments, the structures that are contributing in causing mental illness.
I am not a celebrity sharing my personal experience. I am a professional who works hard in the clinical world to understand and bring about facilitated growth, healing and real psychological change.
Over 2 decades of such work it is abundantly clear, that what we tell ourselves about ourselves, hugely determines what we feel, how we see our life, how we engage in relationships, what we make of oppression and limits, what belief we buy into and what we act out.
So in this post what I recommend if you are struggling with depression, anxiety, stress, trauma and eating difficulties is to ask yourself this... what is it like to tell yourself that you love you? Really unconditionally like you?
If this is a disturbing question you need help. Professional help from a trained therapist can help you find a path into self acceptance, self love and a positive kindness to you always.
If you attend to the inside then the outside shifts and opens up.
Try it. Give yourself permission to change.
Chloe x
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