Welcome to Life Unedited Sanctuary,
Where reality happens.
I'm Tiffany.
And this is a reality therapy approach to self-esteem.
Softening the self-blame.
Self-esteem is essentially how we feel about ourselves.
Key aspects of how we feel about us includes our confidence,
Our worth,
Our self-respect,
And our trust in ourselves.
All of this ties into self-blame in a rather vicious cycle.
When our self-esteem is low,
We tend to take on the weight of all of our perceived problems and blame ourselves.
There are so many components of this that deserve unpacking as we work toward softening the self-blame.
As a reality therapist,
I am naturally going to approach unpacking from a space of radically accepting the reality of what is.
There is a common thread that will run through all the components that will be addressed.
The common thread binds self-abandonment,
Validation,
Projection.
Taking things personally.
Unrealistic expectations,
Arguing with reality,
And control.
All together into what I am going to call a web of self-deception and self-blame.
That common thread is the ego belief that we are not good enough.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that belief is the root of all of our issues.
Every problem that arises in our life can be teased back to it.
That is a powerful and sad statement all at the same time.
It's powerful because of how much control we give to the untrue belief held by our ego.
It's sad because of how much damage it can do with the goal of protecting ourselves.
Why do most people,
Deep inside,
Believe that they aren't good enough?
And where does not good enough come from?
Honestly,
Sometimes we don't even know,
And that's okay.
It's okay because even if we did know the exact moment,
We latched onto that belief.
We couldn't do anything about it because it has already happened.
We don't usually know because it's an unconscious agreement we made with the universe in early childhood.
Then we spend our entire lives operating from that ego agreement by trying to prove ourselves to others in a way to assuage that ego voice within.
I said we may not even know how it became our unconscious agreement.
And I will give an example to help explain how benignly it could have formed.
Let's say we're three years old and want to show our mom what a big kid we are by getting ourselves breakfast one morning.
There we are at the table with our bowl of cereal,
Struggling to pick up the gallon of milk and pour it in.
And just as we are tipping that jug,
Mom walks in to see us spill the milk and she automatically yells out.
In that very moment,
Our little three-year-old brain,
Which is cognitively still in black and white thinking,
Go straight to something like,
My mom hates me and I'm not good enough.
Bam.
Eagle locks into that and it becomes the underlying belief that haunts us from that moment forward.
It is that inner voice that says mean,
Hurtful things to us.
It is what we call our own worst enemy.
That is both ego reminding us of our not good enough and using not good enough to motivate us to do or be better.
This can cause a kind of psychological whiplash because in one minute when something goes wrong,
We aren't good enough and everything is our fault.
The next minute when something goes right.
We did that and can't take credit for it or that would be selfish.
Which is another example of not good enough.
Cultural messaging reinforces this belief as well in our communities,
Society,
Advertising,
And social media.
Self-abandonment is a piece of not good enough.
And through the process of domestication in early childhood,
We are taught to abandon our capital S self.
Capital S Self is the authentic us born into this world.
At birth and at death,
We are the most genuine,
Capital S self,
We will ever be.
Within moments after being born,
Our capital S self begins to dissipate.
This is due in part because of how we are raised.
I am absolutely not pointing a finger of blame at the people who raise us.
It is just a nugget of reality that the people who raise us have a part in shaping us.
And it is in that shaping that our capital S self-authenticity is modified into a lowercase s self to fit into our families of origin,
Our friend groups,
With classmates and society as a whole.
Validation is one of the ways we try to fit in and try to quell our feeling of not good enough.
We are born trusting ourselves.
It's through the process of domestication that we learn to doubt and begin to second guess ourselves.
That's how our trust begins to erode.
As our trust erodes,
So does our self-esteem.
Like I've said.
It's not anyone's fault.
And by anyone,
I mean our parents or our caregivers.
Whoever raised us did so with the information they had on board at the time,
Which probably came from how they were raised.
The most important people in our formative stages projected their feelings,
Values,
Beliefs,
Thoughts,
And opinions onto us in their efforts to raise us.
All communication is projection.
Literally all,
And literally a projection.
When we speak,
We are projecting words toward whoever we are speaking to.
The person we are talking to hears the words and projects words back.
Dialogue occurs in those projections by nature of shared human experience.
We resonate with what is being said.
We've had similar experiences.
We've felt that way.
We've thought that,
Et cetera.
When we communicate,
We are projecting our memories,
Feelings,
Values,
Beliefs,
Thoughts,
And opinions onto the people around us.
I am currently projecting all of my stuff right here,
Right now.
According to the theory of projection,
Every person in our lives is also projecting their own memories,
Feelings,
Values,
Beliefs,
Thoughts,
And opinions.
Knowing this,
We gain more information about the speaker by taking a pause and reminding ourselves that they are talking about themselves in our direction.
We take things less personally because their projections are about them,
Not us.
We can only talk about ourselves.
For example,
When we are talking about our friend,
We are relaying our observation of them,
Or feelings about them,
Or our experience with them.
It is still about us.
Projection is a reflection of the speaker.
Our ego has another habit of making everything about us,
Taking things personally.
It does this again to further confirm the belief of not good enough.
When we learn that all communication is projection,
It makes more sense that no communication is ever personal.
All we can ever speak about is ourselves,
Our thoughts,
Feelings,
Stories,
Experience,
Memories,
Etc.
If I talk about my dogs,
I'm talking about my experience or love of my dogs.
So it is still about me.
Here's an example.
Let's say during a conversation with a friend.
The friend says,
You're being mean.
Prior to learning about all communication being projection,
We might have taken that personally and could respond with either,
I'm sorry,
I wasn't trying to be mean.
Which is apologetic or people-pleasing.
Or we could respond with.
I'm not being mean.
I'm just being honest in a defensive manner.
Since we know that our friend is projecting feelings they have related to themselves,
We can choose not to take it personally and ask,
Tell me how you feel.
What I said was mean.
This gives the two of you the opportunity to go deeper into the friend's interpretation of what was said.
Chances are,
Whatever was said touched on an unhealed wound in the friend,
And she was reacting to the world,
Projecting it outward because it was too uncomfortable to process internally.
I want to reiterate all communication is projection of the speaker and no communication is personal.
We don't get to pick and choose what is personal and what isn't.
Everyone is projecting their stuff toward one another in the name of communicating.
Unrealistic expectations are another facet of the web of self-deception and self-blame.
The only person we can confidently have an expectation of is ourselves.
That is because we are the only ones who can fulfill that expectation as we desire.
With that said,
We have to evaluate our expectations of ourselves.
Nine times out of 10,
Clients come into my office and have completely unrealistic expectations of themselves and wonder why they feel like such a disappointment.
Probably the most unrealistic expectation I hear is the need to be perfect.
This one is really mind-boggling because every person I know will openly say that there is no such thing as perfect,
Yet they expect themselves to somehow be something that does not exist.
It doesn't make sense.
And if a friend came to them with a similar dilemma.
Sharing their expectation of perfection.
They would tell the friend that perfection is not possible.
Then they would go home and continue to expect perfection from themselves.
Another common unrealistic expectation is,
I should have known.
In this case,
We learn something when we learn it and not only get on ourselves for not having known it sooner,
But we also argue with the reality that we learned it when we learned it and not a minute before we learned it.
Whenever the word should is in a sentence,
That is a clear indicator of an argument with reality.
By now,
We can probably identify the not good enough undercurrent.
In unrealistic expectations.
We have them because we can't live up to them.
And it is further data for ego.
Arguing with reality is when we choose not to accept the reality of what is,
What happened,
And what will happen.
Instead,
We argue that it should or would have happened in a different way.
We don't like what happened,
So we make up stories around how it should have happened differently and get stuck in the stories.
Staying stuck reinforces our ego belief of not good enough.
The final component of the self-deceptive,
Self-blame web is control.
In reality,
Control is an illusion.
We think we have it,
And the next thing we know,
We don't.
It is an elusive beast that is rooted in our fears of not having it.
Going out on a limb,
I can say that it is tied to our greatest fear of death,
Which is the ultimate loss of control.
Besides that,
When we have abandoned ourselves,
Go outside of ourselves seeking validation,
Taking projections personally,
Have unrealistic expectations of ourselves,
And argue with reality,
That is a lot of internal chaos.
Naturally,
It feels out of control internally,
So we go in search of control externally.
Chasing an illusion we will not catch,
Further proving our ego belief of not good enough.
All of that is the tangled web of why we self-blame.
It's easier to blame us,
Because after all,
We aren't good enough.
We don't want to blame other people and feel like we hurt their feelings or people pleas.
If we are at fault,
Then we should be able to fix it.
When we can't fix it,
Then it's easier to stomach our self-disappointment rather than risk disappointing others.
We give so much grace to everyone outside of ourselves and rarely give ourselves the same grace.
The good news is we can soften and overcome this habit of self-blame.
It starts with recognizing the inner dialogue as ego,
Which tells stories,
Most of which are not true.
Ego's purpose is to protect us,
And it does so in a very back-assward way.
Ego reminds us of our not good enough in many ways to keep us stuck and afraid of change.
If we feel badly enough about ourselves on the inside,
Then the outside world cannot hurt as much.
If we stay where we are,
Then we can't get hurt by the unknown of change.
When we notice the inner chatter as ego,
Then we have a choice to believe it or not.
It is a choice,
And we can ignore ego.
I do this when,
On occasion,
My ego says,
Well that was stupid Tiffany,
Or something like that.
I roll my eyes and move forward,
Sometimes saying to myself,
Well that was human Tiffany.
It's a practice and ego is strong.
The more we do it,
The less often we have to.
This is about morphing how we feel about ourselves,
Which again,
Is a choice.
People sometimes don't know that it is a choice,
Or if they do,
They think it's self-centered to love themselves.
Selfish is something we are taught,
Straightforwardly,
Passively,
Or role-modeled.
And this again isn't about blaming anyone for that teaching,
Namely ourselves.
When we are born,
We are pretty much all self-centric,
Meaning it's all about us.
We don't know any differently.
And as we age,
We learn that putting ourselves first is selfish.
So add selfish or self-centered to our not good enough,
And we have a problem.
And or we are the problem.
Neither of those things is true.
We are all good enough,
And choosing ourselves is not selfish.
In fact,
It's imperative.
If I don't put myself first,
No one will.
For me to care for and love anyone outside of me,
I first have to care for and love me.
Softening the self-blame begins with the practice of radically accepting that we are good enough.
Everyone is.
And we are also all works in progress.
That's beautiful.
It evens the human playing field.
Next,
Sit with the super cliche,
Everything happens for a reason statement.
Feel into it.
Is it true?
How does it ring true for you?
Like all communication is projection,
Everything happens for a reason is black and white.
Everything either happens for a reason or nothing does.
We do not have the ability to discern otherwise.
These two concepts under our belt,
We begin to work on remembering our capital S self.
We embrace and radiate our authenticity whenever and wherever we are.
We allow us to just be us.
While we are being authentically us,
We practice validating ourselves rather than seeking approval from people outside of ourselves.
We begin to recognize that all communication is projection and don't take anything personally.
It's not about us.
Evaluate the expectations we have for ourselves.
Are they realistic?
Are they achievable?
Are they even necessary?
Eliminate perfection from your vocabulary.
Like control,
It is an unachievable illusion.
Speaking of which,
Surrender the need to control.
Do what you can and let the universe handle the rest.
Finally,
Stop arguing with reality.
It is what it is,
It was what it was,
And it will be what it will be.
We don't have to agree with or like the reality in question,
And arguing with it will not change it.
We are only in charge of us and we are not to blame.
In fact,
And this is the most radical concept to date,
No one is to blame when everything happens for a reason.
All we can do in any given moment is what we can do with the exact information we have on board.
And we are human for goodness sake.
We have to mess up to know how not to mess up.
If we only give ourselves the grace we give others,
Then we are further ahead than we once were.
Remember.
This all started with self-esteem and attempting to glean our self-esteem and even self-confidence from outside of ourselves.
That's fleeting and not sustainable.
When we notice the negative inner dialogue,
Choose not to attach to it,
And instead radically accept that we are good enough,
Human,
And not in need of fixing,
Yet works of progress.
Then our self-esteem and confidence come from within,
Which is genuine and sustainable.
When we accept that we are good enough,
We soften the self-blame because we recognize that we are not at fault.
Everything is happening in accordance with someone's lesson plan,
And we are only responsible for ours.
