It’s so easy to bash yourself up. It’s so easy to be hard on yourself, to open social media, and compare yourself to every combination that pops up in your field of vision.
It’s so easy to feel shame at the motivating meme; to wonder what’s wrong with you when you feel the desire for things to be different and yet some days, the way you act, feel or behave doesn’t line up with a deeper feeling that seems to express a bigger truth about who you are.
And yet the outsides don’t seem to be matching the insides.
The thing is, we are never knowingly trying to work against ourselves. We are never purposely trying to bring ourselves down, not show up, be inconsistent, compare ourselves to other people, or shut down.
We do those things because on a nervous system level, at the deepest level of our unconscious, that feels like the safest thing for us to do based on our experience and resources. Does this mean it will be like that forever?
No.
But it DOES mean that beating yourself up about it will only exacerbate the feelings and cause the war to be inside you.
Every part of you is working to what it thinks is your best interest based on the intelligence and programming available to it.
If you feel yourself engaging in self-blame or even self-disgust, take a moment. Hug yourself and be kind. Feel what it feels like to meet yourself with compassion instead of despair.
It’s not the endpoint, but it’s certainly the start.
❤️ Jane
