When I got sober, I had no idea who I wanted to be, let alone the type of relationship I wanted to have with myself. I knew I wanted to be at peace but I didn’t know how to articulate it because chaos was my way of life.
It was what I was taught. My dad repeatedly told me when I was a kid, “if you don’t fight with someone you love, there’s no passion.”
When I look back on it now, I realize it was a lie he told to convince himself that’s why he and my mom fought all the time. Well, she fought. He took it.
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So, it became a lie I told myself in my relationships- “he hurts me because he loves me.” Even when it led to physical violence.
I also kept that mindset in the relationship with myself. It wasn’t until I explored the dynamic I wanted to have with myself that I realized how toxic it was.
We know how we want to feel. We may even know what we want. But, we rarely know the type of relationship we want to have with ourselves.
Especially when we’re conditioned to think that abandoning ourselves is safer than respecting ourselves and valuing our boundaries. So we run away and escape the very parts of ourselves that need the most amount of care, attention, and nurturing.
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To come back to ourselves requires a level of honesty and intimacy that we may not be used to, or even know. It forces us to look deep within and acknowledge that we owe ourselves more- more love, more respect, more loyalty, more kindness, more compassion.
Then we get angry at ourselves. But that anger is good. It means we’re finally recognizing our own value. Except we don’t look at it that way. Which leads us to dismissing the parts that need tenderness.
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It becomes a vicious cycle of wanting to be able to depend on ourselves, but not knowing how. So, there’s a list of questions below to help you explore your mind and understand yourself on a deeper level. From there, you can begin to provide yourself with the things you need most.
We suffer because of the lies we tell ourselves. We heal when we confront those lies.
Questions to ask yourself:
• When you think of the most elevated, healed version of yourself, what comes to mind?
• What characteristics and traits do you admire most in people? Do you see those same traits in yourself?
• What’s one thing you’re struggling to forgive yourself for?
• What did you need most as a child that you didn’t receive?
• What did you need most as an adolescent that you didn’t receive?
• What do you need most as an adult that you’re not getting?
• Do you enjoy taking care of yourself, or do you feel burdened by it- like you’re an afterthought?
• What’s the dominant emotion that surfaces when you reflect on the past?
• What’s the dominant emotion that surfaces when you think about yourself right now?
• When you think about the future- what comes to mind?
I’ll see you soon…in the meantime, love yourself so much that even a Hallmark Christmas movie would be jealous.
