Relationship With Yourself

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Most of our problems lie in the area of human relations. We try to negotiate with our spouses, understand and be more patient with our children, defend our interests with our superiors. Less often we notice our difficulties in relationships with … ourselves

I don’t remember hearing phrases like: “I have problems in my relationship with myself”, or “I want to improve relationships with myself”, “I think I do not take care of myself enough, I am too demanding and unfair to myself, I cannot agree with me, I do not allow myself to do something."

At the same time, everything that we fill our life with begins with a relationship with ourselves. Love for oneself begins love for another, friendship with oneself begins friendship with another, understanding and acceptance of another begins with understanding and accepting oneself.

The psychotherapy process often involves addressing relationships with parents or other significant adults. The study of concepts and ideas about ourselves and the world around, formed in the process of relationships with the family and the culture in which we grew up. Clients often recall painful experiences associated with the reactions or attitudes of parents towards them in childhood.

“My dad was always very demanding of me, and he believed that the best way to help me get through my failures was to shame me. Probably guided by the idea that by blaming me for my mistakes, he motivates me to success"

“Parents often found someone who was better at something than me and compared with someone who did something better. I understand that it was their way of making me develop and strive for better and more, but then I had the feeling that it was impossible to reach the ideal that my parents would be completely satisfied with."

“When I was upset and needed to just be hugged and reassured, my parents felt that my childhood problems were not important and significant enough to worry about them. And in general it is pointless to be sad and upset, nothing can be changed by this method. "Tears cannot help grief" - they used to say in my family.

“In my family, children's opinions were not considered significant. Nobody paid attention to my disagreement, discontent. My parents wanted me to always obey them. Nobody asked my opinion. And if I didn't like something about the actions of my parents, I was told that I need to grow up in order to have the right to express my opinion."

“If I allowed myself to be open with my mother, she was offended, left and did not talk to me, and my father scolded and said that my mother was crying because of me. I felt so guilty and learned that it is better for myself to contain my feelings of anger, so as not to experience such feelings of guilt and tension."

“In my family I was raised as a 'real man'. Dad would shame me if I could not stand up for myself, if I was scared or confused. I was taught that crying is not a man's business. And if I cried, they called me a girl."

And there are many, many memories of unfair or even cruel treatment in childhood.

These memories often cause resentment in adult children towards their parents. Clients can describe well what exactly, as children, they needed so much on the part of their parents. But the most offensive thing for clients is the realization that now they continue to do the same with themselves. All the same things that hurt, hurt, or lacked so much in relations with parents.

Already grown-up people continue to be too demanding of themselves and do not forgive themselves for mistakes: “There is no need and there is no time to feel sorry for yourself and become limp, Petya Vasechkin has already achieved what! And I?"

Already adults do not allow themselves to express any feelings, opinions, fearing a response or having learned that their opinion has never been meaningful: “Who cares what I think? My opinion will not change anything anyway.”“How can I say something smart? Now I will definitely blurt out some nonsense."

Already adults cannot afford to cry out of resentment, because “showing your tears is weakness, and showing your weakness to others is dangerous / embarrassing. Or letting yourself cry - automatically means signing off that you are "not a real man."

Every day the actions that each of us performs are somehow evaluated by ourselves. We ourselves react in some way and relate to what we are doing (or not doing). Every day we motivate ourselves to do something, calm and support, forgive, praise and scold, negotiate with ourselves, take care of ourselves somehow, deal with fears and anxieties, organize time and space for ourselves, choose something or we save ourselves from something.

This inner dialogue can be heard very well for you, but even if you do not hear it, it is still there. Most of the reactions, ideas, attitudes of our internal interlocutor are the concepts we have learned or experienced (experienced from day to day, from time to time) reactions and the attitude of some important adults to us.

This is certainly not one person, not only one mom or dad. These are grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers and sisters, teachers, classmates and friends, maybe even a few characters that especially impressed us. In general, the values, words, ideas, beliefs of people important to us, a significant part of which we learned at the time when we were just forming as a person. We are not very capable of independently evaluating and forming an attitude towards ourselves and the world around us during this period.

Of course, our experience is not limited to just relationships with our family. However, in this article I want to focus specifically on the concepts, reactions and values that were relevant in our childhood, according to our parents, and those that we brought with us into our adult life and continue to use these often ineffective, no longer working or just unhealthy concepts.

“Well, why are you lying around? Finally, do something useful! - the voice of the mother is heard.

And you jump from the couch in alarm and start washing dishes and tidying up, only to earn yourself the right to lie around for a couple of hours. Without any benefit. Or even in advance and regularly plan to spend one of the weekends on general cleaning, preferably the first, in order to relax on the second with a clear conscience.

We can put the words and ideas once said by our parents inside ourselves and continue, often unconsciously, to be guided by them. "It is unacceptable to waste time uselessly", "it is forbidden to do something for the sake of pleasure", "getting pleasure cannot be the meaning of the activity", or "life is not for pleasure at all, it is a complicated and difficult thing", "time is fun for business", "To relax, you first need to work hard", etc. Even without being conscious, these concepts and attitudes can influence what we do and how we organize our lives long after our parents do not live with us.

“How can you refuse people, you cannot be so angry and impolite! You should be ashamed! . And you feel really ashamed for the fact that you offend (do not respect) the kind good people who came to visit, even without an invitation and violating your plans.

Do you really want to experience unpleasant feelings? True, there are not many options here: either choose and respect your interests, selfish, or sit with a strained smile, regretting your own frustrated plans, a kind, polite, good person! Quite often, from the words of clients, and just acquaintances, you can see that the concept of kindness is almost equated with reliability, and love and care are confused with sacrifice.

"Not bad, of course, but it could have been better!" And you easily devalue all your efforts and efforts, patience, diligence and perhaps even courage on the way to achieving the goal. Or you keep looking for that "significant" result, having achieved which you will finally be able to be satisfied with yourself and your achievements, you will be able to enjoy them at least for a long time. Or, in general, you scold and shame yourself for not having a good enough result.

Think, after all, this is a moment or event for which you must have been preparing for a long time, worried, worried, spent a lot of energy, and now when it did not work out as you intended, you are upset.

Is it fair at this moment to give yourself a kick and call yourself a loser and stupid? Most likely right now, the most important person in your life needs support and empathy. Say kind words to yourself. Do not scold, support yourself, praise yourself, because only you know what your path was to this goal.

It can be sad to realize that often your attitude in yourself is as unfair and insulting as your parents' attitude towards you and your actions seemed to be. But the good news at this same time is that you don't have to do that anymore. Now the right to determine what will be best for you in a given situation or life in general belongs to you. The right and the opportunity to somehow in their own way deal with their experiences, actions, plans, achievements, relationships, life time.

Of course, when our family, teachers planted some ideas and beliefs in us, they acted from good intentions, they wanted to grow out of us "real men", "true women" and just "good people." But if now, in your adult life, you have found that all these phrases, attitudes, values and ideas do not help you to cope with difficulties, to encourage yourself to achieve some goals, to respect, express and defend your individuality, then you have come to think about what they should be replaced with. Perhaps these concepts and values are no longer relevant to you, they do not work or are no longer needed at all in your adult life.