Stop Self Abusive Thoughts. Increase Wellness.

Everyday I talk to people who feel lost. Some days it is I who is grasping. Funny enough, it is usually the most giving people that find themselves feeling the most downtrodden. What is common among all of us? Self-abuse through negative self-affirmations.  Self-abuse damages confidence and inhibits the ability to receive love – and it is powerful. Are you self-abusive? Do you say any of the following on a regular basis:

I am too fat (or skinny).
My (body part) is too (pointy, long, ugly, stupid, etc).
I’m never going to find a partner who loves me.
I am stupid.
I make bad decisions.
My home is ugly – a reflection of me.
If only I could be better…
I don’t deserve love.

Maybe some of these sound familiar. Maybe they all do.  The truth is, you are a divine, beautiful, perfect human exactly as you are! There isn’t any one else just like you in the whole world. We hope you will see that someday, because life is too short to live with someone who is constantly hard on you, even if that is you.

Whether you are tall or short, skinny or fat, rich or poor, all of us experience overwhelming feelings of self-doubt and self-dissatisfaction. Some of us even believe this cruelty is the reason we continue to succeed. Do we also realize that it is the reason we continue to feel alone?

If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t giving to yourself. -Barbara DeAngelis

Self-care and positive self-affirmations are the most necessary, yet most often neglected actions, we can take on a daily basis. We spend much of our time doing for others. We work at jobs where we follow directions, we have families we feel the need to appease and we often throw ourselves into relationships, spending the majority of our time thinking about someone else – or how that someone else views us. Our own needs and desires often come after these external obligations. So, if you, like thousands of others out there, are asking “Why wasn’t I better? “Why haven’t I found the one?” or “Why is my life so cluttered?” Maybe its time to take a look at how YOU are taking care of yourself.

Why Self-Abuse Isn’t Motivation:

When feeling of worthlessness increase, we cease loving ourselves. When we stop loving ourselves, we begin to doubt or question the intelligence and validity of those who do love us.  This can increase feelings of jealousy, possessiveness, and fear on a massive scale. Love heals. If we can’t love ourselves, we can’t truly accept love from others and we inhibit this healing from saving us.

Self-abuse also increases problems with emotional eating and over-exercise. How many times have you punished yourself with one extra hour at the gym for eating dessert or given yourself the gift of a whole bag of Doritos after a hard day at work? Behavior that is motivated by self-abusive thought simply reinforces negative patterns.  If you saw how beautiful you were right now, perhaps emotional eating would cease to be a problem, and you could really hear what your body was craving.

Allow me to repeat myself. If you don’t take care of yourself first, you will never be able to take care of others! When we don’t feel that we deserve to take care of ourselves, many areas of our lives can suffer, adding to the sense that we’re not being nurtured.

How Wellness Suffers from Negative Internal Dialogue:

Of all attitudes, self-hatred and neglect cause the most harm. They prolong the feelings of depression, and in some cases make success practically impossible [Was 10 pounds less ever enough?].  As your emotional wellness starts to suffer from negative affirmations, the rest of your world begins to bear the weight as well. Here’s how we’ve seen it play out:

Emotional Wellness: Feelings of resentment towards loved ones. Over eating in the hopes of feeling fulfilled. Lack of creativity.

Intellectual Wellness: Lack of confidence. Decrease of internal fire or passion. Inability to speak up for self. Lack of new intellectual pursuits. Obsession with single, often unhealthy, concepts.

Occupational Wellness: If you aren’t being nurtured at work, you may also experience feelings of resentment, isolation and the feeling of being trapped. Curiously, we’ve found that if you are not being nurtured at home, you may find that you actually become better at your job. This may be the only place you feel comfortable being yourself. If this is you, start to bring the confidence you have at work, home with you. Find a way to be fully you in all places.

Physical Wellness:  Lack of self-care can turn into obesity due to emotional eating and fear. It can also, just as quickly, become excessive exercise.

Social Wellness: Isolation. Loneliness. Few to no friends.

Environmental Wellness: If our homes begin to reflect our self-image, we begin to feel even more worthless, unproductive and hopeless. We stop keeping our homes, cars and work areas clean and orderly. As our worlds become more cluttered, we only feel worse.
These descriptions might sound severe. Even when we don’t have extreme depression issues, our feelings of self-worth can be seriously affected by how we care for ourselves and our environments. We are all made up of the Seven Aspects of Wellness, and how we see the world is mirrored in our attitudes toward our own little slices of the larger world. If one wellness aspect is suffering, odds are that we have a negative view of life and ourselves.

Begin Your Practice of Self-Affirmations: Find Peace

There is hope! There is hope because you are an amazingly beautiful and powerful human. It all starts with changing the script of that little voice inside your head. Self-affirmations are a great way to shift your thoughts.

Find one affirmation that you feel comfortable saying, and use it for a week. Say it when you wake up. Repeat it when you look at yourself in the mirror. Set an alarm on your phone that repeats it during the day. Leave it on sticky notes around your house. Start surrounding yourself with the thoughts that will bring you everything you wish to manifest.

Examples of Positive Affirmations:

I deserve love, and I accept it happily.
I am a beautiful and vibrant individual.
I attract wealth and prosperity.
I choose to make positive healthy choices for myself.
Abundance flows freely from me.
When I believe in myself, so do others.
I am at peace.
I trust that my path will take me towards more abundance and prosperity.
I choose freedom, and I open my heart to allow for more wonderful things to flow into my life.

Allow your affirmations to be positive and open. Refrain from making affirmations that require action, simply allow the affirmation to inspire you toward action. Self-affirmations may seem silly or hard to say aloud at first, but keep repeating them. They will start to sink into your subconscious brain. Then, you may find yourself with increased joy, energy, and confidence in life.

Keep a journal of your experiences. Don’t read the journal until after making affirmations for three months. At the end of the three months view how the inner voice starts to shift. Decide which voice you find to be more authentically and radiantly you. In other words: Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Soon, you’ll be on your way to living with a voice inside your head that really sees how amazing you are. And, when you start to radiate your authentic self, without fear, I guarantee that this will soon be followed by a whole entourage of humans who also see your power.

About the Author

The 123 Feel Better Company provides resources for people seeking to change their lives. With a focus on overall health and wellness that centers around the 7 Aspects of Wellness—or 7 major life areas that comprise a full and complete life—the 123 Feel Better company helps individuals acquire the tools necessary to affect positive change and accomplish their goals.