Committing to Self-Love

“Too many of us are overcommitting to others and under committing to ourselves.”

Erica Layne

Early on in my adult life, I was suspicious about learning how to love myself. I confused self-acceptance with selfishness. Love is not selfish. Selfishness is a survival instinct. Love is a spiritual pilgrimage.

Oftentimes on our quest for spiritual awakening, we come across this idea of the search for our true, best, most Jesus-like self. We hear that our “false self” is inferior, ego-driven and we need to somehow dethrone her before she extinguishes our true self altogether. This is what I heard the gurus saying, I’m not sure that’s the lesson they intended to teach me.

Genetic testing results came back from my health screening and it turns out I have the genetic capacity of a “high performance athlete”. Oh no! Did my false self smother my inner athlete? There is absolutely no evidence that athletics is or ever was my destiny. Did I miss my prime? Has my life been less meaningful without an Olympic medal? Of course, I’m not sure a lot of women were given the opportunity to test out their athletic potential back in my youth, but that issue aside - have my genetics revealed a small piece of my true self but lost self?

This hunt for true versus false self at times sounds awfully woo woo to me. But it isn’t.

True and false self is not a search for some missing link. Lately, I’ve been thinking it is more like this: there are true and false ways of living.

My genetics reveal has helped me adjust my workout habits to fit my genetic strengths. To workout at my optimal potential I need to make room for rest; I have the capacity for both strength and endurance - so I shoot for my potential. But my genetics is not my destiny. My capacity is an outer limit, my actual performance depends on many factors. Things like commitment, training, practice and purpose. My genetics missed something true about me: I love to read and write more than I love to deadlift.

Our search for true versus false self will not be determined by a spiritual genetic reveal. It is revealed in the learning lab of life. My work, should I choose to commit, train, practice, and pursue a spiritual purpose will ultimately reveal itself in the results of living true to my core values. This is not mysterious work but it does require both courage and humility. It requires us to pay attention and be curious about ourselves. We pay attention to what we are willing to commit, train, practice and sacrifice for. Hopefully it aligns with our core values - which we also need to pay attention to and modify as necessary to align with our purpose for living. This is how we love ourselves! We don’t settle for living a life that our genetics or culture or even our suffering dictates. We love ourselves best when we commit to knowing ourselves and knowing God. Then we live in true ways. It turns out, this means we love ourselves and others. This is our true self.

Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

“You don’t have to be sorry for being yourself. So start loving your sarcasm, your awkwardness, your weirdness, your unique sense of humor, your everything. It will make your life so much easier to simply be yourself.”

The kissing cousin to compassion is self-acceptance. We figure out how to respect ourselves just the way we are because of our inherent worth, not because life is perfect. This does not mean that we just sit back and smoke cigars on the porch. No indeed.

Self-acceptance and compassion are the early companions of transformation. Once we accept where we are, we can choose, if we want to, to begin wrestling with where we might want to go.

One of my spiritual friends has asked for some specific support as she continues her spiritual journey. I asked her to tell me what her horizon looks like. “Huh? What did you say?” she replied.

“Your horizon. Where are you heading?”

“Oh. I hope Bermuda once this pandemic lifts.”

“Not where you are going or what you are doing,” I clarified. “I want to know your WHY for being. I want to know how you want to “BE” and “BECOME” in the future.”

She is scratching her head over the question; I look forward to seeing her response. In the meantime, how about you? Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Self-Compassion vs. Your Inner Critic

Daily I remind myself that I have a right to slow down and breathe. I am not a productivity machine. I have permission to simply be.

Krista O’Reilly Davi-Digui

Self-compassion is as good as a daily mutli-vitamin! We are doing the best we can! But we live in a world that keeps demanding MORE MORE MORE. Only you can choose to jump off the high speed train that is headed for a hard stop into a brick wall.

Rest and care are such foreign concepts to some of us, me included, that I needed some examples to even understand the way compassion might look on a daily basis. Here are a couple from real life:

I zoomed with a father who wanted to stop drinking so much. The pandemic revealed that his social drinking had escalated to the point where it was not a problem. He did not realize this when he was having martini lunches with clients, happy hour with co-workers, and returning home for a nightcap with his wife. Once he started working from home his consumption increased. It was hard to NOT notice the bottles piling up in the recyclables. He was home all the time, his wife and kids began complaining about his moodiness. Hung over in the morning and sloshed by 7 pm, the family was starting to wish that he would take the risk and go back to the office.

He said this: “I am disgusted with myself; I’m turning into my father. A lush I vowed to never imitate. I hate my life and my life hates me.”

Bummer.

Knowing that nothing good would grow from shame, I suggested we work on compassion before we tackled the drinking. Shocked by my suggestion, he agreed. Eventually, he chose to replace his inner critic with a compassionate inner mentor (an image I totally ripped off from one of my friends). When he would start with his harsh perspective, I’d call a time out and ask for a reframe. Typically, this is where we would land: “I need to stop beating myself up and figure out next steps. Although my drinking is an issue, I acknowledge that and I am getting support to change that. I am not my father AND I want to be a better father to my kids and more loving and present husband to my wife.”

Eureka! Our conversation shifts. We move away from limited discussions about how to give up drinking and pivot. He finds his “WHY” - be more loving. We explore what that looks like. And, yes, it does require him to lay off the sauce. But not because he is like his father, or cannot handle alcohol. His WHY is so that he can BE the guy he wants to become. See the difference? What compassion do you need to show yourself today?

A Few Facts About PTSD…

“Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers, or you can grow weeds.”

Knowledge about PTSD is relatively rare and studies are limited. Here are a few facts:

* PTSD is considered an anxiety disorder

* Symptoms are normal and healing is possible.

* Simple trauma from a single event is one possible way to develop PTSD, but it can also be the result of the steady drip drip drip of years of living with negligence or abuse. One reason some folks to not think about PTSD is because they cannot identify “trauma”, especially if theirs was more of a steady stream of uncaring rather than a big event.

* Secrecy is a deterrent to treatment. Shame or fear may cause us to remain silent about our suffering.

* Victims feel out of control after exposure to trauma, this leaves some of us feeling helpless and therefore we do not tell others or ask for help.

* PTSD is our mind and body’s attempt to survive. A little compassion for ourselves is helpful for healing. We are all doing the best we can.

* Our attempts to survive may be misguided, which is why we need support and the experience of others to help us heal and get back to thriving.

How does PTSD feel?

* Helplessness and unable to take initiative

* Shame, guilt, self-blame, self-harm

* Sense of feeling damaged

* Distorted relationship with perpetrator (idealizing them, feeling as if they have all the power, accepting their ideas and beliefs, feeling that “fate” brought you together)

* Despair, loss of faith, giving up on any kind of future

* Vulnerability to revictimization, isolation, distrust, conflict and secrets

* Sleep problems, excessive health problems, eating issues, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts and attempts, difficulty with depression and anxiety, explosive anger, sexual acting out, destructive coping strategies

* Memory problem, dissociation, reliving experiences through flashbacks, nightmares, rumination

* Depression, eating disorders, panic disorder and other anxiety disorders, personality disorder

If you are experiencing symptoms of PTSD, please reach out for help. Help is available; recovery is possible.

Be compassionate with yourself; your mind and body are doing the best they can!

The Walking Through…

A bird sitting in a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not in the branch but in her wings.

On January 7th, whether we recognize it or not, most of the citizens of the United States of American experienced an event worthy of triggering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If you watched the storming of the capitol in real time and in person, on television, or replays, then your brain experienced a stressful life event. The brain, regardless of political affiliation, sees acts of violence as over-stimulating and traumatic. This creates a set of emotional problems that most of us do not even recognize as traumatic.

There are two types of PTSD - one is “simple” - meaning a single incident, usually occurring when we are adults; the second is “complex” - and is from repeated incidents such as domestic violence of abuse. It triggers a cascading broad range of symptoms including: self-harm, suicide, dissociation, relationship and intimacy problems, memory, sexuality, health, anger, shame, guilt, numbness, loss of faith and trust and an uneasy sense of being damaged or broken.

Both men and women suffer with PTSD. Often PTSD and substance abuse travel together. This makes sense. PTSD sufferers have feelings or memories they want to escape or remember, they need “support” to go through the day and often mood altering substances seem like a quick fix (initially), they need pain relief (physical and emotional), they want to self-destruct, or simply because self-care is not on their radar.

PTSD and SUD are treatable. But we need to know that we need treatment!

Another way to view these maladies with compassion is to realize that we may develop strengths via these “gifts of suffering” (which may explain why we sometimes say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger). It is possible for profound growth to occur as we overcome difficult experiences. We might learn, with the clarity of hindsight, that we have the ability to survive under tough conditions. We might develop the capacity to use imagination and creativity to solve problems. We may gain more depth of character, awaken spiritually, find more empathy for self and others, strengthen our resilience, and even appreciate what we have.

But the key is in the overcoming, the walking through - not running from, denying or fighting against the symptoms that naturally occur when our bodies are exposed to suffering.

Do you ever wonder if some of the issues that you find challenging might be related to unacknowledged and untreated suffering? Tomorrow, we will explore the signs that might help us answer this question.