Embracing Your Glorious Mess
Who are you in the vast sea of all the characters we play in this life? Do you respect, appreciate, protect, vouch for, and accept who you are in all that makes you uniquely you? Self-love comes from experiencing love, and also having trust in the protection and safety that was present in your early childhood. Along with that security that you are loved and cared for, there has to be the element of acceptance- Acceptance to be who you are at all times without consequence. Without the acceptance to be you, it is difficult to cultivate a sense of belonging and subconscious love of who you are and what you have to offer. We often confuse the loving behaviors from your family with the acceptance of who we are as a person.
Part of understanding and learning to love yourself is to detangle the experiences we have had with the messages we have received. Most people in the beginning will share that they had a happy childhood with the support of their loved ones. I had a friend say a similar thing to me yesterday as we were catching up and sharing stories of past relationships.
She mentioned that her family had always been there for her and still when she would go to school, she would feel unwanted and like she did not fit in. She shared that her comfort and solace from the outside world was her home, in her parent’s arms. When asked if she was always allowed to speak her truth on her own perceptions and follow her own path on what she desired, even as a child, she realized that it was not always the case. She shared with me that her mother would often criticize her efforts as it reflected in her studies, even though she eventually graduated as the valedictorian of her class. As she further reflected on this new paradigm, she realized other examples where she would wait to see her mother’s reaction to a certain style of clothing while at a department store before she would give her opinion.
With this ingrained need to please her parents in order to validate her opinion or worth, it would then make sense that this behavior pattern would continue in her relationships outside of the home. Other’s opinions and impressions would slowly start to override her own to where her confidence in what she has to offer independent of another’s value judgement, would slowly disappear.
Now, being faced with this realization from a friend, not a gentle therapist (not that I am one of those either ahhahah), could incite a negative, immediate reaction. A need to defend oneself, one’s parents, or even to bite back on the person causing this discomfort. Makes total sense and that would be our ego at play.
My ego has a strong bite. She rears up, claws out, ready to pounce on whatever comment has triggered a value that has just been violated. She is there to defend my self-worth; and yet, many of us, including myself, have spent a lifetime taming the protector of our inner self instead of acknowledging that she is to be heard as a signal to own our worth. We shush, placate, or dismiss this inner voice in order to keep the peach or to not draw negative attention. We fight to maintain the acceptance or love of the other person by keeping the peace but starting a war within ourselves.
The word ego has with it a negative connotation, however, there is a difference between how it manifests in a healthy way and letting it run wild with your insecurities. Recognizing the difference is crucial in learning to love yourself and overriding those past experiences that inscribed messages of inclusion and worth. Responding to someone with presence is quite different from reacting with attitude. Presence is embracing everyone in your warm glow of security and confidence, while attitude is an unconscious attempt to keep everyone at bay as a method of self-preservation in reaction to internal insecurities.
What would be the answer if I asked what you have to offer that is uniquely your own? If the immediate response were “nothing” or “I don’t know” it would be met with the raise of my left eyebrow, and a slight challenging tilt of my head as my gaze holds yours until you come up with an answer hahahaha. Everyone has something unique to offer, starting with the experiences up to this particular point in life. Those experiences created a specific tint of color to the way you view the world and all that it stands for. There are instances where I see the interactions of other humans through bright colors that stand for understanding, courage, and hope while, (let us be real, for those who know me), the view is quite dark indeed. Both spectrums of my perception are based on personal experiences AND both end along with all the ones in the middle are valid and worthwhile.
Most of us grew up in an environment where we had to defend our right to exist and had a myriad of strings attached to our worth. The statements that governed our interactions such as keeping up with the jones, do not air your dirty laundry or be the best of everything if you want to be worth anything all influenced how we believed we should behave in order to be accepted or to belong. Most did not grow up in an environment where we were just accepted for being who we are- whether that was being pushed to get a certain type of grade to avoid punishment, follow a certain career path to bring honor to your family, believe in a particular religion, engage in certain hobbies, dress in a way to not draw negative attention, or present yourself in a way to prove you are worthy of being included with a certain group. The list of conditions goes on and on.
Conditional love is the root of all codependency. I will show you love/ acceptance if you do, be, think, or feel a certain way. Another manifestation of this is being so available for others needs and bending over backwards for them to show that they mean so much, with the hopes that “If I love you hard enough, eventually you will love me back this way too”. Setting healthy boundaries where you are not providing for their emotional/physical needs at the expense of your own is HARD.
Rejecting and berating yourself because of your past behaviors will just keep you stuck. You have to think for yourself of how your morals are reflective of your values. The values are the compass that lets you drive your life. Let your values drive you instead of your ego. The key is learning to be strong enough to fight for you.
Instead of saying I do not want to be codependent anymore, work rather on developing communication skills to challenge negative thoughts, or develop setting stronger boundaries. Acceptance of yourself has to be unconditional, but behaviors are based on conditions. Confusing right?! An example of this would be that I am a passionate person, so emotions are strong and bright with most occurrences. Just as my enthusiasm and joy is palpable, so is my anger and sadness. I cannot dilute one side and keep the other intact. That is who I am… but that does not mean that I get to behave in an aggressive and abusive manner when I am angry. Who we are as a person is not the same thing as how we behave.
Start with showing compassion for where these early and often unintentional messages came from that formed how you feel about yourself. To acknowledge the correlation of the belief to the source (which is often our parents/ caregivers) is not the same as assigning blame. It is to understand how we came to be who we are now, so we can gradually work towards rewriting those messages. Through this process of untangling, you will be able to approach yourself with respect, admiration, appreciation, and curiosity.