SELFCARE WEDNESDAY: My Mistake
So many of us are raised with an implicit belief that we need to be better, to do better.
What happens if we flip that concept on its head, and consider that, in fact, there is and was nothing wrong with you?
Can you sit with that idea, turn it over, examine it and spend time holding it as a true statement? For many of us, it will feel strange and perhaps a little uncomfortable. That little voice that whispers (or shouts) “but what about…” is incredibly persistent.
For some of us, we were raised in a way that was full of external motivation, for example, if you do better at school you can have a particular treat. Or an elf was watching your behavior to see if you deserved gifts, or an authority figure pointed out your flaws rather than highlighting your gifts (in the belief it would spur you on to doing better). Whatever it was, it sent you the message that you had to be a certain way to be loved, and if you weren’t loved, you needed to fix the errors of your ways to access that affection again.
Rather than hearing that we are worthy of love regardless of our mistakes, many of us receive the message that all love is conditional, and you have the ability (and let’s face it, unwanted power) to stop that love.
If this is the ground in which we grow, then it isn’t too much of a stretch to become an adult who never feels good enough. Of course, we all need to do our best to make this world better for ourselves and for others, but our motivation for doing so can be based on past insecurities.
Imagine the difference if you truly believed that you were full of good things and with an enormous capacity to give and receive love from the day and hour you were born?
This is truly a revolutionary act.
Our life experiences may have opened cracks in that belief and made us feel that something is wrong with us. Perhaps someone told you that you were “too X, Y, or Z” to wear that. To do that. To say that. To want that.
Bit by bit, our character is eroded and treated as a mistake.
Think about the messages you’ve heard and internalised from an early age. What you believe about yourself. Have you the beautiful audacity to believe that they might not really be true?
As we have talked about many times on this blog, childhood patterns stick. Those times are called our formative years for a reason, and we cannot easily brush off what in engrained in our idea of self. Those childhood patterns stay with us, and when we are reminded of them by something that happens in the present, we often find ourselves coming back to the same message: there is something wrong with me.
When we receive criticism or have a disagreement, we get propelled back to those times where we feel fearful, insecure and just not good enough - “this is happening because there is something wrong with me.”
We all make mistakes. We all need restoration and reconciliation. However, even if we have behaved in ways that we are not proud of, it doesn’t make us bad people.
It’s ok if you want to reflect on some behaviors and endeavour to change what doesn’t benefit you - we all can learn new things and identify what makes us grow - but there is a huge difference between wanting to carry out self-care because you believe you are a terribly, broken individual, or practicing self-care because you want to be loved in the way you would love someone else.