This path of self love isn’t as simple as it sounds at first glance.
Learning to see where we’re stuck in loops of shame, blame and guilt and how to question those loops is hard.
Learning to have compassion for ourselves when we’re coping, numbing and self sabotaging rather than rushing to try to fix ourselves is incredibly difficult.
Learning to challenge the beliefs we have about ourselves and the world around us that feel terrible is totally counter to what most of us have been taught.
Learning to make room for our emotions when we’ve been historically shamed for how we feel or deeply invalidated can feel downright dangerous.
Learning to re-parent those parts of ourselves that were deeply abandoned by our caregivers will require a great deal of effort for most of us.
Making space for ourselves to process the anger, grief and resentment we have about how our lives have gone - even if we are in a space right now that is arguably good - will often feel like a massive uphill battle at times.
Seeing that the key to a happy life doesn’t lie in measuring up to all the conditioning we’ve been fed our entire lives, but rather comes from being able to actually love and accept ourselves for who and what we are will often take a million and a half reminders.
Moving into a space where we actually give ourselves the chance to TRY this path on, to experience the results for ourselves vs. having an assurance before we start that it’s all going to work out will require a deep level of commitment and work for most of us.
This path isn’t easy.
This path is totally counter to our culture and it’s outside of the lived experience of most of us.
Literally, just developing the awareness of where we’re NOT loving ourselves, where we’re assuming the worst about ourselves and where we’re stuck in narratives that are deeply painful can be an extremely challenging task because for most of us these are our patterns and these patterns feel and seem like we’re just objectively observing reality.
Most of us are going to have to put forth a considerable amount of effort to get on and stay on this path - and in this blog I want to remind you that you aren’t alone if you’re struggling to do this work, and to remind you again of what this path is likely going to look like so you can release any unrealistic expectations and make room for yourself to simply walk the messy, complex reality.
Your Struggle On This Path Is NOT A Sign That You’re More Broken Than Others
One of the most common things I hear from the people that I work with and the people who go through the other materials I share, is the fear that there must be something EXTRA wrong with us when we find it really, really hard to catch our loops of shame, blame and guilt and when we struggle extra hard to be kind to ourselves.
Many people find that when they get into doing this work, when they start to become aware of just how much they abandoned, blame, shame, judge and criticize themselves, it feels like in order to ‘get on top of it’ they would have to be questioning literally every single thought they have in a day.
Many people are totally shocked in sessions with me or as they work through the public or Mystery School materials just how deeply ingrained their self loathing really is - and they’re shocked to find out that their observations of themselves and their apparent flaws aren’t objective reality that anyone would agree with - but rather are rooted in conditioning that isn’t actually true.
Many people see this and feel like this MUST mean that they are extra broken, extra conditioned and that this work is going to be impossible for them to ever do because the mountain ahead feels and looks insurmountable.
If this is you, if you’re feeling this way, I want to tell you that there’s nothing wrong with you.
There’s nothing extra wrong with you.
There’s nothing about this reality that is proof that you’re MORE broken than others and are possibly hopeless in ever finding freedom or relief.
Rather, it’s likely that how you feel about yourself is actually more NORMAL than you think.
The unfortunate reality is that our culture is fully set up to have us in a state of constant self loathing.
Our current culture tells us that if we are in pain this means that we’re doing something wrong/not taking enough responsibility for ourselves/are in some way deserving of suffering because of some inherent flaw in us or sin we’ve committed that we now need to pay back.
Our current culture tells us that any time we don’t feel like we belong or struggle to find a community, this means that we need to change ourselves to become more likable - again with the foundational message being that our natural selves aren’t good enough.
Our culture is constantly shifting what’s ‘in and out’ in order to make sure that none of us can ever feel like we’ve ‘arrived’ at good enough - because what’s good enough is a goal-post that is constantly on the move.
Our culture perpetually tells us that self perfection is possible if we just have the right habits, do the right routines, make the right choices and think the right thoughts - and that any time we self sabotage, can’t keep up with all the things we have to do in a day to be acceptable, feel like we don’t get the results we want or fail to achieve our goals that this means that we simply messed up because we suck and we need to try harder.
Our culture makes us believe that we all arrived in adulthood perfectly aware, perfectly capable of developing health relationships, fully capable of nourishing our bodies to peak physical health, fully resourced so that we can pursue careers that not only fulfill us but also make us shit tonnes of money, fully able to be emotionally regulated at all times and that any time we fail to reach any of these goals that this is a sign of us just fucking up.
Our culture plays on the deep-seated childhood narrative that the only reason we aren’t happy, the only reason we could be in pain, the only reason others could be rejecting or misunderstanding us, the only reason we would fail to be happy or fail to live up to expectation is due to us BEHAVING in a way that didn’t please our caregivers. This deep, core belief that we developed in our childhoods when we were fully dependent upon our caregivers for everything - where it appeared to us that the only reason we would EVER be in pain would be due to being separated from our caregivers love due to us doing something wrong is used as a weapon against us via the persistent narrative that again, perfection in life is possible, and if we’re failing to reach it, the only reason for that is us failing.
Our culture has systematically engineered the things that ACTUALLY make us feel well, safe, loved, supported and fulfilled out of our daily lives - and then it turns around and blames us for our RESPONSE to these lifestyles that hurt for a reason.
All of us are swimming in this soup of not enough culture.
All of us are deeply convinced that our pain is due to our failure to live up to what culture dictates is the ‘right way to be’ rather than being able to see that the roots of our pain are likely going to be found in the fact that what we’ve been conditioned to be and pursue is actually the problem.
We are perpetually being told that MORE of the culture that’s harming us is the SOLUTION to the pain we’re in and that WE are the problem for not being happy within this culture - rather than the truth being told - we are unhappy because culture is painful and getting to a place of feeling good isn’t about fixing ourselves, but rather it’s about understanding ourselves, what we need, what does and doesn’t work about what we’ve been taught to be and do and finally getting off the self improvement rollercoaster so we can find a life that feels good.
But no one is saying this.
No one in mainstream culture is saying this and no one in wellness culture is saying this - generally speaking.
Rather the message is, over and over again - if you’re in pain, you’re failing and you need to be fixed.
It’s coming at us from our pasts, it’s present in culture, it’s our inner monologue - it’s literally everywhere.
So if you read nothing else in this blog please do read this - you are not the reason you’re struggling.
The reason you’re struggling is because this is simply objectively hard.
Learning to have compassion for yourself, to see your shame, blame and guilt not just as objective truth, learning to question what you’ve been told you MUST do and be in order to be good enough, learning to be on your own side even when others aren’t and learning to be your own safe space when you’ve been trained to abandon yourself any time there’s even a whiff of a chance that you may veer off the path of expectation is truly, truly hard.
It’s true that it’s harder for some of us than others - but at the end of the day, we are all going to struggle with this and this is NOT a sign that you are extra broken or a sign that you should give up because it’s really TRUE that you ARE horrible.
It’s just a reflection of our deeply unhealthy culture.
What It ACTUALLY Takes To Feel Well - Putting Yourself Into Context
Here’s the deal - most of us are deeply unhappy in our world not because we are broken, failing or otherwise shameful.
Most of us are struggling to move forward in life not because we don’t have enough discipline to stick to our perfectly curated morning routines like the influencers on social media or because we can’t be in a perfect state of emotional regulation like the pop-psychologists and spiritual teachers of the world tell us we need to be in.
Most of us aren’t struggling to find healthy love because we just make bad choices and can’t get our act together enough to set healthy boundaries or to see where our ‘daddy issues’ (I despise this term) are driving the ship.
Most of us aren’t failing to level up in our careers because we aren’t trying hard enough or because we’re too incompetent to succeed.
Most of us aren’t in a place where we consume substances that harm us or fail to take care of our bodies in a truly supportive way, where we’re locked in body obsession or struggle to find healthy habits we can actually sustain and maintain because we suck.
We are instead living in a world that pushes us to pursue what may not be what WE actually want or desire, that pushes us to externalize our experience and try to ‘do good’ rather than living from a place of actually feeling how what we’re doing feels and assessing our goals based on lived outcomes, where we’re taught to hide ourselves and our authenticity in order to try to earn community with others who are also being inauthentic and trying to earn love and where what actually fulfills us has been determined to be a waste of time.
Our culture has life totally backwards and many of us are responding to this with deep emotional pain, mental health issues, physical health struggles, a failure to ‘thrive’, and a whole bunch of self sabotage and coping mechanisms because we literally have no idea what else to do.
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Let’s take a break here and let this sink in.
We will come back next week for the second part of this post!
<3
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Check out The Mystery School Here
