Healing your relationship with yourself is not a seamless process. It’s more of a journey, and I often thought it’d be a pretty long one for me.
I remember being 8 years old and sincerely loathing myself. Dark, I know, but my relationship with myself was broken. I had no idea how to deal with it. It’s puzzling to think about this, having to teach a child how to love themselves. But it’s a real issue, and something I faced every day for years.
I would punish myself for my interests; locking myself in my room for hours to read every day was the reason for my awkwardness around others. I wasn’t like other kids my age because they didn’t have the same weird habits. They didn’t like to run around in circles for hours until their calves burned, maladaptively daydreaming to pass the time. Nor did they spend even more hours attempting to write a book of their own. They didn’t even have an affirmations book they used to write out their self-loathing thoughts. There was no one to talk to about these crippling feelings, so it dictated how I treated myself and others.
Now imagine my lack of surprise when I found out children as young as 3 years old can be diagnosed with depression.
My depressive episodes today have the same intensity as the episodes I had as a child. The difference now is my relationship with myself is much healthier. It took me years to figure it out, but once I did, the change was instant.
Whether you struggle with mental health or not, this is the most important relationship in your life. Healing means to have a better quality of life and become an emotionally intelligent person (a topic I can’t wait to touch on).
So, how do you start healing your relationship with yourself? By practicing these three strategies that have never failed me.
Be Alone With Yourself
To be alone with yourself means to spend time with your thoughts without any distractions. We do this a lot, distract ourselves. Even while we feel like we’re being productive or doing some serious self-care.
For example; I like to listen to podcasts when I do chores, listen to music while I write, and listen to either when I go for a walk. Sometimes when I do yoga, I put on a show so I can watch while I practice. And yeah, those all sound like productive activities, and you can argue that they are. However, these are also examples of how I self-soothe because I’m alone with myself.
Even when we’re alone, we fill our senses with distractions to feel more comfortable. We stay busy or keep our minds occupied, just so we don’t have to deal with what comes up in our minds, even if nothing at all.
How do we solve this? By turning the distractions off. When I don’t listen to music while I walk and feel the boredom slip away from me, I start to feel calm. Then, the calmness transforms to joy, a genuine joy. All of a sudden I’m enjoying my own company!
So I don’t listen to music when I walk anymore. When I’m doing yoga in silence, where the only noise is my breathing, it’s usually the best yoga sessions I experience.
Practice being alone with yourself. You can’t force the enjoyment of your own company either, so don’t try to. Just allowing the opportunity for it to come is more than enough.
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Practice Shadow Work
I think it’s normal to be unsure about how to approach yourself. Just like how natural it is for us to distract ourselves from ourselves, it’s easy to be uncomfortable once we pay attention.
The way I like to combat these feelings is by practicing shadow work. What this looks like for me is asking myself pondering questions.
What is shadow work? Well, to keep it short; shadow work is the practice of discovering the parts of yourself you’ve kept hidden to discover unconditional self love. This is key to healing your relationship with yourself.
There are many ways to practice this, but what works for me is reflecting on my negative feelings and asking myself why. I ask myself why exactly three to five times. This amount usually gives me a deeper insight into my emotions, and I can properly deal with them. I’ll give you a not-so-fictional example:
What’s going on: I’m not feeling up to seeing my friends.
Why? Because I don’t want to be seen right now.
Why? Because I haven’t been working out and I don’t feel attractive.
Why? Because I’ve been working too much and not taking care of myself.
Why? Because I’m rushing to get this work done so I’m not falling behind in life.
Why? Because I don’t want others to think less of me.
Did you see that jump? That’s one way you can discover what’s really going on with you. When you get to the answer you’ve been searching for, you can assess it with an objective lens. In that example, I’d ask myself, “Why would I care about others’ opinions of me?” Now that I see the issue with clarity, it’s a much smaller, more manageable problem to handle. I’d shake it off and see my friends because I don’t want this issue to be the reason I don’t see the people I care about.
By practicing shadow work, you start building trust in yourself. You can trust yourself to make the best decisions for you. This heals your self-relationship, which builds self-growth. You’ve got to practice this daily to make it a habit, and it’s a habit that’s going to jumpstart the healing process of your self-relationship so fast.
Would you like to know how you can build self trust? You might be interested in my post on 7 Steps Towards Genuine Self Trust While Coping With Anxiety + How Anxiety Ruins It. These steps will help immensely with your relationship with self.
Take Care Of Yourself
You might be sick of hearing the term self-care, but nowadays it’s more important than ever. The role this plays in your relationship with yourself is important because you can use it the wrong way.
Let me explain.
When you’re taking care of yourself, you want to be confident that you know how to. That’s something we’re either always worried about (thanks anxiety) or we willfully ignore, both of which are neglectful. This directly relates to self-trust and self-growth. Once you can determine that sometimes, self-care has to look like taking care of your workload before treating yourself to a tv show binge, then your self-relationship stays healthy.
However, if you convince yourself that you need “me time” after ditching four outings with your friends in a row, not showing up for family, or taking a raincheck on your own healthy habits, then you’re teetering on the edge of self-sabotage. You can’t trust yourself to be there for you anymore.
The result? Probably distracting yourself from the fact with entertainment. And then we’re back to square one.
I might sound judge-y, but I bring this up to say this cycle is usually what healing your relationship with yourself looks like. It probably won’t be a steady incline to a completely healthy relationship, and that’s okay. As long as you keep showing up for yourself you will reap the reward of a healthier self-relationship.
This was all about how to heal your relationship with yourself. I hope this post helps you make a new best friend out of yourself. After all, our lives are nothing more than the relationships we have.
There is an amazing power getting to know your inner self and learning how to use it and not fight with the world. If you know what makes you happy, your personality, interests and capabilities, just use them, and everything else flows beautifully.
Juhi Chawla
Until next time.
