Many years ago I was sent to a counsellor by my GP as he was nearly as worried about my state of mind as I was.
The guy turned out to be a Community Psychiatric Nurse, which made me even more worried as it sounded rather more dramatic, the difference between ‘you need help’ and ‘you need help!’ He also turned out to be brilliant.
Instead of the more counsellor style of ‘mmmm how does that make you feel?’, that was common at the time, he was far more dynamic and proactive. Rather than making me go through my problems his extra training helped him to come up with a proper diagnosis of the issues that were causing the anxiety, and his approach was that together we were going to take action to change this. He did, however, make the rather interesting mistake of asking me exactly what I wanted to achieve.
I told him that I didn’t like myself and wanted to turn myself into a person that I did like. He obviously said that it wasn’t good to say that about myself. I countered with the facts that I didn’t like my mindset, I didn’t like my approach to life, I realised that my childhood training was wrong for me and wrong for the person I wanted to be, and I intended to change all that forthwith. He took a deep breath and said, ‘okay, you’re the first client where I feel comfortable to say, that we will go with that’.
The thing was I didn’t feel bad about not liking myself, because I knew that I wasn’t myself. I was the product of an upbringing and social beliefs that I’d moved past, recognising that my family dynamics were wrong, I say that because they were all unhappy for years, and that their beliefs weren’t mine.
There is no need to judge yourself if you find that you’re not who you want to be,
just accept that the past is what it is and move on from it.
So I did
I moved on, noticing my words, feelings, thoughts, and reactions, and modifying them as I went, which I still do, without judgement. Never forget that the saying ‘you’re only human’ isn’t a cliché, it’s the simple truth and an undeniable fact. Believing humans can’t change will just hold you back.
Be willing to change, do it on your own terms, decide who you want to be,
and create that one step at a time, your way.
Everyone deserves to like who they see in a mirror.
Deb xx
Deb Hawken - Amorah 