My time in therapy gave me two important tools to for dealing thriving in life: mindfulness and self compassion. Today I will share with others about self compassion and will discuss mindfulness at a later date.
Most people are honestly too hard on themselves. If you just thought, "Me?! Uh, no, I am not hard enough on myself." -this is for you! When my therapist noted that I was being too harsh with myself (expectations, sense of failure, self evaluation, etc.) my first response was that I was not hard enough on myself. I thought, clearly she doesn't know who I really am! I am such a failure! I am lazy and a pathetic excuse for a mother! As I let the thoughts travel on the road of self loathing I began to see how I was too hard on myself.
My therapist showed me how being too hard on myself was keeping me from realizing what I was wanting most: to do a better job; to be a better me. All the time I failed to improve, change and reach my goals I felt discouraged and just mentally beat myself up. All I could do is hear the "you're not good enough" voice taunting me. And the voice was doing me nothing but harm. She gave me a new way to process my shortcomings that has been very helpful. I hope in sharing all this, it will help others.
My therapist taught me to sweet talk myself whenever I mess up. She argued that if I am focusing on self-shaming I would never be able to address the issue and make a positive change. It made sense, whenever a child does something wrong they hide. I realized (with some time) that all the time I thought I was doing well to chastise myself for my failures, I was really just hiding. Only when I could face my wrong doing could I begin to change and by shaming myself I was staying hidden, tortured, but hidden. I realized that no matter how I tried to get myself to change, it was not working and the negative self talk was getting me only farther from where I wanted to be. I gave my therapist's suggestion a try and with time found it very effective.
It is not my nature to sweet talk myself, but it is getting easier the more I practice it. Such a simple thing to do in theory can seem impossible to someone who is so used to bashing themselves for every mistake, but I promise it is worth trying. It works like this: after you mess up or fail to do something/not do something you review it with yourself by making kind comments like "given the fact that ______ it is no wonder that I ________." If you truly assess the situation with a kind tone, I guarantee you will be able to face what you did wrong (and right) and you will be able to see things you could not see before: patterns; causes for the issue; what to do differently next time; etc. At first it may seem more painful than the self shaming way of "handling" things; facing ourselves can be hard, but never harder than living in a vicious cycle of failure and self hatred.
This exercise works well in many areas, but I mainly struggle with feeling like a failure as a mother. I will write about this specifically, as I know this is a huge issue for many mothers. Motherhood is hard and it is easy to feel like a failure, every hour, even!
Most people are honestly too hard on themselves. If you just thought, "Me?! Uh, no, I am not hard enough on myself." -this is for you! When my therapist noted that I was being too harsh with myself (expectations, sense of failure, self evaluation, etc.) my first response was that I was not hard enough on myself. I thought, clearly she doesn't know who I really am! I am such a failure! I am lazy and a pathetic excuse for a mother! As I let the thoughts travel on the road of self loathing I began to see how I was too hard on myself.
My therapist showed me how being too hard on myself was keeping me from realizing what I was wanting most: to do a better job; to be a better me. All the time I failed to improve, change and reach my goals I felt discouraged and just mentally beat myself up. All I could do is hear the "you're not good enough" voice taunting me. And the voice was doing me nothing but harm. She gave me a new way to process my shortcomings that has been very helpful. I hope in sharing all this, it will help others.
My therapist taught me to sweet talk myself whenever I mess up. She argued that if I am focusing on self-shaming I would never be able to address the issue and make a positive change. It made sense, whenever a child does something wrong they hide. I realized (with some time) that all the time I thought I was doing well to chastise myself for my failures, I was really just hiding. Only when I could face my wrong doing could I begin to change and by shaming myself I was staying hidden, tortured, but hidden. I realized that no matter how I tried to get myself to change, it was not working and the negative self talk was getting me only farther from where I wanted to be. I gave my therapist's suggestion a try and with time found it very effective.
It is not my nature to sweet talk myself, but it is getting easier the more I practice it. Such a simple thing to do in theory can seem impossible to someone who is so used to bashing themselves for every mistake, but I promise it is worth trying. It works like this: after you mess up or fail to do something/not do something you review it with yourself by making kind comments like "given the fact that ______ it is no wonder that I ________." If you truly assess the situation with a kind tone, I guarantee you will be able to face what you did wrong (and right) and you will be able to see things you could not see before: patterns; causes for the issue; what to do differently next time; etc. At first it may seem more painful than the self shaming way of "handling" things; facing ourselves can be hard, but never harder than living in a vicious cycle of failure and self hatred.
This exercise works well in many areas, but I mainly struggle with feeling like a failure as a mother. I will write about this specifically, as I know this is a huge issue for many mothers. Motherhood is hard and it is easy to feel like a failure, every hour, even!
