There are times in all of our life's that we felt down and out and empty. I'm sure if you think hard enough you could pinpoint the very moments that shut off your confidence and made you feel small and insignificant inside that you still have not recovered from. I challenge you today to dig deep and find a moment. See yourself there and break down what happened that day and how you felt in detail. Write it down if you have the time. Now ask yourself in what way did you help yourself or was it beneficial by subcombering to defeat and feeling helpless? I'm sure there was a good and understandable reason why. We may have been to young to fight back, we may have been to weak or just had no knowledge of how to help ourselves. If someone threw a rock at you and hit you in the head and you fell down in pain the most irrational thing you could do is pick the rock up and hit yourself in the head with it to hurt yourself. Unfortunately that's what we do. Bad things happen to us and not only do we convince ourselves that we are worthless, we punish ourselves for being this percieved worthless. Most of us wouldn't go kick a stranger if we saw them crying but we do it to ourselves all the time. Just deciding to love ourselves isn't how it works. No amount of Instagram and facebook quotes are going to change us into better versions of ourselves. It takes work and commitment and is an everyday battle you have to keep on fighting through. You may not be able to just wake up feeling on top of the world but you can start small and build with practicing self compassion.
Self compassion is a great way to start because it's just simply treating yourself the way you believe others should be treated.
You would think that would come natural to us but for most of us it doesn't. Alot of us start the self defeating talk in our head when we make mistakes or someone hurts us. We tell ourselves we are stupid for being so naive or that we can't do anything right. If we saw someone saying that to one of our friends we would jump to defend them. So why is it we believe it's okay to be so mean and evil to ourselves? Well the easy answer is because other's have been mean and evil to us and it's learned behavior.... But still it makes more sense to be on your own side and be your own kind stranger even if you aren't ready to be your own friend.
For me I had dissociate myself from myself to teach myself self compassion. I would write down in my journal whatever had happened to myself like it had happened to a friend; or I would imagine that I saw it on the news happening to a stranger. For a long time it was the only way I could keep myself from beating myself down and always blaming myself for everything. Within time it became natural for me to be compassionate to myself and it made me compassionate even to people that had wronged or hurt me . That's important because not blaming yourself doesn't mean blaming others. The truth is we are all battling something and most people don't have malicious intent to hurt us they are usually just acting out from the battles with themselves. Many of us have a bad habit of believing that everyone is out to get us and hurt us. We have been hurt and have developed a victim mentality and now we can't trust no body and fear everything so much that we limit our experience and existence. In reality that believe is just as narcissistic as being conceited. I remember telling my therapist when I was 19 that I was scared to go to college because I was afraid of people looking at me and judging me for not going to a University because I got pregnant. She said to me "Antoinette most people are much too self absorbed in their own insecurities and fears to even notice yours." There is no proverbial spotlight on us with a crowd waiting and watching for us to fuck everything up because everyone in the crowd is having the same spotlight nightmare that you are having.
No one is confident all the time because life goes up and down and is constantly throwing challenges. We all feel good on good days when everything seems right in the world. It's how we behave and take care of ourselves when everything feels wrong. When it gets bad the best thing you can do is care enough about yourself not to make matters worst by talking down to yourself. No matter how bad things get or how bad you feel I can promise you that it will not last. Be kind to yourself or name your bad day alter ego or talk to yourself in 3rd person like I do and be like "She ain't feeling good today, I gotta do something for my girl to get her back on track.
