are reacting to our own beliefs or perspectives of thought about what the person represents. Any time we say all—all women, all men, all Christians, all Muslims, all single moms, all dads, or all Americans—we need to pay close attention. If we use the word all in that sense, there is a belief tied into it. See if the beliefs you hold are really true for you. By focusing on negatively charged beliefs, the negative (fear, anger, rage, hate, corruption, separation) is where our focus goes, and we create more of it.
If we are not clear in our perspective, we can get very confused and lose sight of the love within us. We can get so stuck in the perspective of fear that we forget what brought us to the relationship, situation, event, or cause in the first place. We submerge into the darkness of humanity.
Dig Deeper
Belief exercise. Write about some of the beliefs that are a part of the foundation you build your house on. What do you believe? Remember to be honest! This exercise is to reveal hidden beliefs that could be causing us more pain. Here’s a couple to get you going:
•Do I believe love hurts, or that hurt people are responsible for the hurt?
•Do I believe money (a piece of paper) is bad, or that it corrupts all who have it?
For those of us ready to face our shame and guilt cycles…
Dear Universe,
I must be a truly horrible person. You keep knocking me down every time I start feeling good about a situation in my life. I have a great job and start to love what I do—I get laid off. I get into what I think is a great relationship—I find out he used me. I think someone is a great friend—she backstabs me. What did I do for you to punish me over and over? I really try to be a good person. If you loved me, you would give me the life I want. If you thought I deserved it, you would make good things happen in my life. I told my employer that if he valued me, he would let me work my own hours—he let me go. I told my boyfriend that if he loved me, he would marry me. Nope, he didn’t love me. I told my friend that, if my friendship meant anything to her, she wouldn’t be friends with this girl who doesn’t like me. She’s a friend to her anyway!
You keep bringing me so much pain. Am I really that worthless to you? Do I serve no purpose to you? I feel like if you really loved me I would be prettier. I wouldn’t struggle with my weight and more people would want to be around me. I would be able to look in the mirror and be proud of who I am. I guess I’m just not worthy of being one of your beautiful creations. Maybe that’s why you put me in a home where my brother was abused physically and I was abused emotionally. Maybe that’s why I had to watch my mom being beaten. You didn’t think I deserved more. I’m nothing.
A Broken Me
Shame and Guilt Cycles
We may experience a horrific series of events: parental, sexual, physical, emotional, or mental abuse. Our parents, religions, teachers, and employers used to or could be still using shame and guilt techniques as a passive-aggressive way to get what they want. If we were children when these events happened, our undeveloped selves may have taken those shaming sessions in as part of our identity. If that happens, a shame cycle is initiated and the self-abuse begins. These abusive beliefs can go as far as making us think we don’t deserve to breathe the air we’re given. In our minds, we are bad people. Self-abuse can remain unconscious for a lifetime if it goes unchecked. How do you know if someone is abusing themselves? They are a negative force of fear in our world. It all begins with shame.
Shame creeps in, and our feeling of worthlessness starts feeding into our thought cycles. We are so ashamed of who we are that we create walls. This makes us easy targets for guilt trips. We don’t feel worthy, so we need to do something for you whether it feels right or not. We can be convinced to stay quiet when bad things happen to us because we feel like we deserved it or somehow it was our own fault. We then will use the same cycle of shame and guilt to get what we want from others. The vicious cycle continues. We go on feeling like we are never good enough.
For women ready to see how our low self-image hurts us…
Dear Mirror,
I don’t like the person you keep putting in front of me. Her eyes are too far apart. Her face is too round. Her hair is too stringy. Her skin is too pale. Don’t even get me started on all the jiggling. How do you expect anyone to love her? What can I do to make her more acceptable? If I cover all her natural features, maybe she will be more lovable. If I get Spanks, maybe the jiggle won’t disgust the people who have to see her. I can dye her hair to distract people from the roundness of her face. I take picture after picture of her, using all the editing features on my phone. I can make her more beautiful to the world. If at least fifty people don’t like the picture, I didn’t do a good job. I spend whole days thinking about how to make her look better.
I look into exercise programs, diets, makeup, and hair removal, yet no matter how many things I try, my attempt fails. I just can’t look at you anymore, so I covered all the mirrors in my house. I don’t want to think about what is in there anymore. I don’t like what I see and I can’t seem to change it.
I’ve just accepted that I’m not going to find anybody who will love the woman in the mirror. She’s pathetic. She can’t do anything right. She fails at everything. Who would want her?
A Pathetic Me
Low Self-Image and Self-Worth
This is how we got here, the land of misery. We believed we were unworthy and had to prove ourselves to the outside world. What we didn’t realize is that we missed the messages that told us to love ourselves first. We missed the point where we might have been told we only get more of what we already have inside. We missed the vital importance of putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first. We just held onto being unworthy. If we feel unlovable, we try to get from the world what we aren’t giving to ourselves. We expect the world to show us love.
We don’t realize that we won’t be able to spot it if we don’t first love ourselves. We will attract people who will prove we are unworthy and unlovable. We will continue to attack ourselves, looking for any external way to make ourselves lovable—relationships, clothes, makeup, body alterations, and material goods—yet we will also get lost in addictions to food, alcohol, or drugs in order to continue our belief that we are unlovable. We beat ourselves up for our cellulite, shape, hair, and overall look. Then we tell the mirror that’s why we aren’t lovable.
A healthy person can look in the mirror and make changes too, but the difference is that they aren’t doing it to seek outside worth. They aren’t attached to what doing it means for someone else. They may be doing it as way to treat themselves. It’s important to know the difference. When we are feeding a negative self-image, we are creating the darkness within us. Then we aim our darkness at something outside of us to lessen the pain.
As we become more and more aware of the negative cycles and our own unstable foundations, we will get the tools to create lasting change. We can’t get there by building on the same unstable foundations (our negative self-image, self-worth, and self-respect), no matter how pretty we make our house and garden (how we make our outsides look). The house will eventually break down if it’s not on solid and healthy ground. The only thing that’s solid is love. A healthy relationship with ourselves has to come first. All other relationships take our lead, including our relationships with our spiritual lives.
For the brave women ready to look at how unproductive blame is…
Dear Mom and Dad,
How could you do this to me? This is your fault. If you hadn’t treated me like I couldn’t make
