Being Authentic Means Listening to Your Feelings

image from Pinterest 

If you are getting criticism about who you are, from the people you surround yourself with, it does not mean that you should change who you are….just the people you surround yourself with. 

If complying with the people you know is the only way to get them to stop demeaning you and shaming you, then find people that do not demand compliance with their ways just so they will be nice to you. 

People who insist that you change for them do not really like you, and changing for them will not make them like you either. Those kinds of people have an agenda, and your only value to them has to do with this agenda. 

There are people in the world that will value you for who you are. You should be surrounded with people who support you and realize the value to being authentic. When everyone follows someone else, the whole world becomes fake. 

It is better to be alone for a while to gather strength. You are never completely alone. You can find people to talk to in the blogging world and other places online.

If you cannot physically separate from people who are bringing you down, the  you can emotionally detach from them. Do not gratify them with the emotional responses they are trying to elicit from you.

You cannot gather strength from being around people who do not like you for who you are. There is always support from people online. There are others who believe in being authentic.

Once you are able to breath and find yourself amidst all the programming that others tried to brainwash you with, then you can raise your consciousness level.

You will then attract people who are at a similar vibrational frequency, rather than people who were attracted to you because they are predators. 

If you feel confused or uneasy after interacting with people every time you  are with them, this should be telling you something. They are only a match to your frequency because your self esteem is low, from being bullied and carrying toxic shame.

People who support you will not leave you with that uneasy feeling. Your intuition is your first line of defense against people who are not what they say they are. Just because someone says they want to help you, and that they are “doing it for your own good,” does not make it true. 

My Top Favorite Self Care Behaviors

Self care is part of self parenting. If you have C-PTSD from childhood abuse, emotional trauma, or neglect, then you were probably not taught to care for yourself.

If your emotional needs were regularly discounted then you were trained to ignore your feelings about being uncomfortable, and taught to hide those feelings. You were not able to get what you needed to make your environment feel safe and comfortable.

If your parents did not make an effort to care for your need to feel safe and comfortable, then you were programmed into discounting your own comfort needs.

Everone has the need to feel comfort, safety and pleasure. It is not selfish to have these needs. It is normal and it is part of the survival instinct.

As an adult who came from a narcissistic pareny or otherwise dysfunctional family, you have to learn how to parent yourself now. …Not in the same way you were parented as a child. But in a nurturing, compassionate way.

Learning thow to care for yourself will allow you to have more energy and patience ti share your love with other people.

Love the loving. Maintain behaviors of self love and then show compassion to people who have the capacity for love and empathy. Do not waste energy trying to change unloving people.

So here is a list of my top 10 favorite self care ideas. Please share your own favorite ideas in the comments below.

1. Wrap up in hot towels from the dryer. You don’t have to be doing wash at the time. Just toss 2 or 3 nice towels in the dryer and dry them on high, for 10 or 15 minutes. Then wrap up in them.

2. Cover yourself in soft blankets. Buy one special blanket that has your favorite texture. Running your hands over pleasing textures can calm the nervous system, similar to petting a soft furred animal.

3. Take a warm shower or bath. You don’t have to wait until you need to bathe. Hot steamy showers have a healing effect and calm the nervous system. Submersing yourself in a bath of warm water will help you be mindful of the present moment.

4. Listen to music that makes you feel empowered. Your favorite music has a direct effect on your nervous system and will generate dopamine and feel-good chemical responses.

5. Petting and playing with your favorite kind of animals. Animals are living spiritual beings. Different people are drawn to different animals for different emotional and spiritual energies that these animals have.

6. Water has healing properties. Drinking clean water…swimming in water… and being near the ocean, stream… or a beautiful sparkling lake…all have spiritually uplifting possibilities.

7. Creating your perfect sleep space. Your sleeping area needs to be a calm haven of nurturing and soothing quality. Alter your lighting with red or other colored light bulbs in a table lamp. Add soothing sounds and textureus. The colors should be ones that are important to you and have an affect on your nervous system.

8. Uplifting words. Read or watch videos by people who inspre you. Your self esteem should feel boosted after spending time with a message that energizes and validates you.

9. Learn to say NO, without feeling obligated to make them agree that your reasons are valid. Being afraid to say NO to people will cause you to be forced into situations that deplete your energy and your self esteem.

10. Create things that are inventive, artistic, authentic or unique. Draw, color, craft, write a poem, sing in your unique voice, write, create a new yoga routine, rearrange items in a unique way, decorate a box, add fringe to your lampshade with a hot glue gun, change the laces in your sneakers to colored ones, make a beaded bracelet, plant some flowers, choose your favorite material at JoAnne fabrics and lay it on your table for a table cloth, buy a bag of buttons at the craft store and sew them onto your tops and jackets, add some coloful garnishes to your dinner plate….explore….create…don’t worry about comparing your creativity to others….be yourself!

 

 

Thoughts on Depression and C-PTSD from emotional Abuse

Depression can make you feel like staying in bed and not interacting with other people. You know that if you go out of the house, you will feel different and out of place.

Other people will not understand your inner world. You feel like you will be forced to put on a mask to fit in. It is difficult to function.

You get more and more internalized. So you self isolate, and limit your social interactions. This is understandable because certain kinds of interactions can be emotionally traumatizing.

You feel like the one person that is out of place in the world.  You sit alone and hear the thoughts that come up from your subconscious. Thoughts that there is something wrong with you.

Some of the feelings you get are from emotional flashbacks. There are things that happened and ways you were rejected during childhood that cause your subconscious to store these kinds of feelings.

If you can identify the false beliefs behind your thoughts, then the feelings can be sat with and calmed. You were not born feeling like you did not belong in the world. These thoughts were taught to you….even brainwashed into you.

When you have a feeling that is painful, like hopelessness…try to discover what core belief that thought is driven by. The belief might be that you are not as good as other people. .. Or that the world is unsafe.

If you are carrying the core belief that you are less adequate than other people…that is a bad programming. These things are programmed into children who do not have emotionally supportive childhoods.

Think back to your childhood and if you were made to feel insignificant, unworthy, unneccesary, or anything else negative. If your thoughts and feelings were dismissed, criticized, or made fun of then you are probably carrying CPTSD…complex post traumatic stress disorder.

People with C-PTSD often get depressed or feel extreme anxiety. You may have trouble keeping up with other people or feeling normal.

Those false core beliefs that were fed to you can be re-programmed. You need to question each one of those negative beliefs about yourself. Be like a scientist attempting to disprove a theory.

If you feel that something is wrong with you compared to other people, then ask what things are Right about you. Write them down. Engage in activities that prove you are as good or better at those activities, than other people are.

Look at the qualities of your parents and whomever fed those negative, false beliefs to you, about yourself. What kind of people are they?

Would you consider those people reliable critics? Did tbey have any agenda in which lowering your power would have helped them?

If those people told you something bad about the character of a person you love right now….would you believe their opinion without question? Or is their opinion not reliable?

You can begin to go out and interact with people in small increments. Go over your present state of mind, before you go out…and before you leave your car. You can just sit in your car for a few minutes and listen to music that calms or peps up your nervous system.

How you feel when you interact with others is based on the current state of your nervous system, how much sleep you have had, your mental state, and your blood sugar.

You can think of those categories and assess each of them, before you go into a store or any other place. Then you will feel more in touch with yourself and have some ways to help yourself.

If you are interested in learning. NLP State Management techniques, you can send me a message via my web site

Gentlekindnesscoaching.com

For information about C-PTSD and how emotional abuse causes depression and anxiety disorders, join us at the gentlekindness facebook page.

You are special. Your gifts and personality are an important part of the puzzle of humanity. You are connected with all living things in an important way.

You matter. You have a unique voice that other people need to hear. You have special characteristics that someone really needs right now.

You have innate value.

Namaste,

Annie. Gentlekindnesscoaching.com

Gentlekindness facebook page

Annie Mimi Hall youtube channel

Dance Like No One’s Watching

Facebook post by my Daughter about Not Attaching Your Self Esteem to the Comments or Lack their Of / Cyberbullying and Our Children

The post below is by my youngest  daughter. She gave me permission to post it here on wordpress. I thought it was insightful and a very interesting perspective from a young person about the internet. Our children are very connected with the social media and their self esteem is directly linked  what goes on between their internet  “friends”  and followers.

Facebook is a social media that involves short burst types of posts and posting of photos and some artwork.  Many of the people on facebook are superficial and also status quo oriented. Posting very meaningful things does not always get the response you want, unless you are in a closed group on facebook, specializing in mental illness or abuse.

My daughter has learned that facebook is not the best place to use for a self esteem meter.

She also posts artwork and writings on deviantart which is a better place for meaningful and inspired types of work. She gets more intelligent feedback there. You can post things on deviantart like drawings, computer generated art  story writing and poetry.

I am very proud of her for making the observations which you will see below. I am proud of her that she has been able to evaluate the shortcomings of facebook and does not attach her self esteem to the responses she gets from the people on facebook.

Our children must learn to deal with criticism and stupid comments on the internet. They also have to deal with bullying in an internet world, that we did not grow up with.  The children and teenagers can have harmful mental damage done to them by cyber-bullying and inappropriate comments.

Our children can end up with mental illness (depression, severe anxiety, suicidal ideations) over the interactions on the internet.

They have to learn that every comment is not true or worth taking to heart. Also that lack of comments on something they post, does not mean that they are not important.

Please enjoy her post and comment anything below that you would like me to convey to her.

(sorry if this post offends anyone im just kinda joking around though it is also kinda true)

~facebook logic~

* someone makes a meaningful post/shares meaningful thing, post gets ignored*

* someone makes a  stupid post, gets tons of comments*

*good artist uploads an art piece, is told they suck and the only person who comments anything nice is person’s boyfriend*

*bad artist uploads art piece, is told they should be an animator and is the best artist ever*

*someone uploads something intelligent, is told they are stupid*

*someone uploads something super idiotic, is told they are the next Albert Einstein*