For Moments When You Can’t Do Right by Yourself
There is a version of yourself that you want to be. You know she, he, they are close but you can’t quite figure out why you can’t get there. You want to be fit, but when you try to do things to be fit the commitment fizzles. You want to be knowledgeable, so you buy the book but you don’t ever pick it up to read it. You want to get a promotion, but you half-ass your job. You know what you need to do, but rarely do you ever do it and you keep asking yourself why?
The truth is it is always your inner child, self-esteem, and self-belief. When you think about the circumstances you grew up in, you tend to focus only on the pain, but you often miss the environment. You miss the part where your parents or caretakers were immature and forced you to look after them. You review your life and don’t remember your little body being exhausted because you weren’t allowed to indulge in the wonders of being a kid. Instead, you were told to look after your siblings, hover over your parents to make sure they are in a good mood, and be acutely aware of their moods so that you can get out of the way. You’ve done this so long that you had absolutely no room to take care of yourself. Furthermore, who wants to take care of themselves when they spent the whole day taking care of three to four other people.
Exhaustion is the self-saboteur. Anxiety is the self-saboteur. You don’t want to commit to yourself because your whole life you committed to others and you don’t quite have the room to fully dedicate your time to yourself. Then, when you do finally disconnect from your parents/caretakers/your siblings you find yourself anxious. You unconsciously remember the moments where you dedicated yourself to others and you become deflated. You use the tiny bit of energy you allocated for yourself, then you collapse. You operate NOW as if you still have to dedicate yourself to your family, when that is no longer the case, and you just don’t see how you can do it.
So, you do mindless things like scroll on the internet, binge watch, binge eat, and lounge because these things don’t require energy. These are passive habits. You can scroll, watch, eat, and lounge without commitment, dedication, or active energy. You won’t be bored because these things are there. You don’t feel bad about it because you can theorize on the internet and feel like you’ve done something fruitful. But deep down you know there’s more life that you can be giving to yourself. You know there is a lifestyle in your head that you aren’t working towards. You know there is a different ME that you’d like to be. So, how will you do that?
Talk to your inner child.
When you are deciding to commit, or you are gearing up to do a task that will get you to where you want to be, you must have a conversation with your inner child. Tell her, him, they that it’s ok there’s no need to panic this is just movement (exercise), curiosity (reading & learning), or getting things out of the way for more playtime (doing tasks you don’t want to do). Break it down to your inner child so they, he, she won’t panic, soothe your inner child, love your inner child, and lovingly parent your inner child. Beating yourself down won’t ever rouse you to do better, so give your inner child love and break it down in ways that will soothe that child.
