Don’t Abandon Yourself
Image by Priscilla Du Preez
When we are in pain, and have problems in our life, we often fall into old patterns. We blame others, feel like a victim, or avoid ourselves and pain by attempting to help and rescue others. Can you see where you fall when you are in pain? This never gets us where we truly want to go. And often, we aren’t aware of the patterns.
Initially, I could not see I was abandoning myself when I was upset, or felt overwhelmed, or like it was too hard and I would never heal. I wasn’t accepting the process. (And of course, who can blame us for feeling that way, when we are in pain?) We aren’t taught self-love in our culture. Self love would be accepting our pain, where we are, and that we may not be where we want to be in this now. Instead, our culture teaches us to pull ourselves together, make a good appearance, and to not be a “burden” on others. If we aren’t looking and feeling perfect, then we shouldn’t open our mouths. That message is what most of us received as children, and this goes back many generations.
What does that leave us with? Stuffing away our pain, which comes out in other ways. We tell ourselves to hurry up and get better, so we can do and be good productive citizens. When we repress the need for rest and the healing process, we become resentful, angry, or hopeless. This extends our suffering and the healing timeline. We even feel self-hatred because, ‘Why aren’t we better?’, or ‘Why aren’t we doing this or that?’ Beating ourselves up is common, but it ends with awareness.
Self love is a journey. I recently awoke in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep for a very long time. I started to get irritated with myself after two hours, and was thinking, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ Then I realized, this was what my body and mind wanted. I was needing to think and process something. Once I allowed the time and space to do so, I was back to sleep within a short time. No, I haven’t mastered this practice of self love yet. Some days I still abandon myself. But, over all in my progress, I have more days of self love than not. This is possible for you too.
We get to keep using this process to sit with our sadness, our scared inner child, and feel it all. We catch ourselves when we begin to worry, complain, become a victim or blame someone else or God/Universe. This is what I call shadow work.
We are in this together. We don’t learn these tools overnight. If you are looking for ongoing support to address this, I have Transformation Coaching available to assist you with shadow work, and to do energy clearings as well. If you want to be a part of a group to assist you in making these changes, my group program, ‘Clearing Pain and Finding Happiness’ begins March 22nd. I would love to assist you on the road to finding inner peace, self love and to free yourself from pain.
Namaste,
Tanya