Stress, Anxiety & Binge-Eating Recovery Podcast

Turn CHILDHOOD BELIEFS of low self-worth into deep healing. Part 3

July 14, 2021 Shelley Treacher Overeating, Anxiety, & Loneliness Season 2 Episode 13
Stress, Anxiety & Binge-Eating Recovery Podcast
Turn CHILDHOOD BELIEFS of low self-worth into deep healing. Part 3
Show Notes Transcript

I talk about how you can address low self-worth on a deeper level. It’s often the case that when we start talking about how bad we feel about ourselves, that sooner or later, we're going to remember that this started a long time ago. Here, I will show you how to start to address this underlying reason for binge and emotional eating, with compassion.

 "Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place" - Zora Neale Hurston

Another podcast you might love: How Do I Stop Self-Criticism?

Citations
Zora Neale Hurston
Imagine Ideal Parents - Dr. Daniel P Brown: https://youtu.be/z2au4jtL0O4
Some ideas here were inspired by a Nicabm training on working with self-worth. You can buy your full training programme here

Support the show


Get Your Comfort Eating Recovery Starter Kit here
Have a question or comment? shelley_treacher@hotmail.com

If this podcast helped you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

Hi, this is Shelley Treacher from the Binge and Overeating Recovery podcast. The week before last, I talked about what self worth is and what influences us in feeling low self worth. Then last week, I gave you some ways to start to change a low self worth mindset and core beliefs. This week, I'm going to talk more about how you can start to address low self worth on a deeper level.

But let's start with a question. Somebody says, Yesterday, I remembered a situation where I behaved in a way that I regret and makes me feel bad about myself. It also makes me question how I dealt with the situation. This was whilst I was driving. I feel this was the reason I binge ate last night. Do you have any ideas, tips, about how to deal with this?

I love this question because it goes to the heart of everything that I'm trying to communicate to you. The first thing I want to say is forgive yourself as a human being. There's nothing that you can do that hasn't been done before. There's nothing that you can do that isn't humanly explainable. Self blame and repetition of guilt is certainly going to make you feel awful and not really help anybody, least of all you.

Work out if there is a way that you need to address the situation, either by going directly to the person that was involved, or by changing something in your behaviour going forward, and ask where you want to be with this thing, realistically. What you would need to be, who you would want to be. For example, and I don't know the situation, if you lost your temper with someone, understand how and why you did this.

There are always reasons for human acting out and behaviours in, you know, when we behave in ways that we're not really that happy with. There is usually an emotional reason behind it, so have some compassion and kindness for yourself in working that out. And then, knowing that it's human to do whatever you did, often because we feel trapped in some way, like a caged animal, work out if you need to explain or see how the other person feels now.

Work out how to address your anger in the future as well. But this is something that you need to negotiate with yourself as to whether that's going to be best for you, because sometimes it won't be for the best to go back to that situation if that person is holding a grudge that actually relates to their life in some way.

And not really anything to do with you, that's another thing to assess. We all have regrets. For the longest time, I regretted not marrying my first love, but I wouldn't be in the situation with the man that I'm with now if I had done that. My life would have been so many different in so many ways, and so now I'm really grateful for all of the decisions that I've made, painful as some of them were at the time.

Look for the silver lining and the real reasons for doing something. What were you really trying to do or to liberate? We bring ourselves into every part of our lives, so everything we do can be understood. And then changed if you need to. And talking of change, I'm changing the name of my business very soon.

And the name of the podcast will change as well. I'm just giving you that warning now. The podcast won't change at all. I'm still going to be talking about the emotional issues behind overeating, but I might expand to talk about Other mental health issues too, just as I have been doing and the name is going to change in the next few weeks But please don't be alarmed.

I'm still here. I'm still doing the same thing. Thank you So now let's turn to the deeper side of low self worth low self worth can of course come from somewhere in your history It's often the case that when we start talking about how bad we feel about ourselves that sooner or later We're going to remember that this started a long time ago As I speak, I have literally just come from a call with a client who discovered that her current feelings of neglect and rejection in her love life come directly from how her dad treated her.

We discovered that because her dad didn't have a huge amount of time for her, she interpreted some of this as her being stupid and a burden, and she's learned to be quiet and to not say no. Is this something that you can relate to? One way to start working with this is to start having conversations with your inner child.

Take the thoughts associated with not being good enough, like I'm useless or I'm stupid, and go back to the first age that you remember feeling like this. Remember details of yourself, where you are, where you were, and what it felt like. Say or write down all the words that come with not being good enough, and allow yourself to feel it.

This pulls out the sadness of the human condition. And we all can relate to this. Ask what your inner child needs from you. When I ask clients this, they often want just to sit with you, or to have a hug, or for someone to stand up for them. Sometimes they are wary and stand back, so it takes a while. But just keep offering gently, with kindness, in the way that you would any child.

In this case with my client today, she found somebody who was reassuring and who could tell her that she's not stupid. This is the persona that you need to take on, so see if there is also someone in your history who might have said nice things to you in this difficult situation. This is healing on a heart level.

It's attention for the exiled part of you that's always been there. You can practice tucking the child in your heart, or the teenager, and yourself now. Pause at the place of where it started, the story of Hurt, taking in that this is where you got this critic from, that it doesn't belong in the present.

Whenever you notice this critic, soften your body and breathe. You can do this now with me. Just notice your body, notice any tension, and allow yourself to soften. Take a gentle breath as you soften your body. Then in the same way, remember first feeling wanted, loved, or special. Allow yourself to feel and re experience every detail of that.

There's a connection that you need to learn here to make inside for yourself. No one can do this for you. You need to be able to recognize when you have that self esteem collapse and to have compassion for yourself at that exact moment. You need to learn to recognize that you feel worthless. To be able to normalize that feeling.

We all have it. You need to normalise that sometimes you feel good and sometimes you don't. This is normal. The idea is to find equilibrium in how you judge yourself. Maybe over and over and over again. This is something that you can't be talked into. You have to experience it for yourself. For example, exploring, knowing or feeling what it feels like to do and be the things that you like about you.

This is an example of this in action for me. I'm in a long distance relationship. With the lack of contact, sometimes I can feel neglected. My mind can wander and I can just not see the truth of our situation. Neglect can easily lead to me feeling worthless. So, I remember that we are both just human, and I remember how I feel when I feel close to my partner.

It helps. Like any human experience, this all comes in waves. I deliberately practice the positive waves. I consciously call the intimate times in our relationship back to me, and I practice this every day. I think that's what's needed in a long distance relationship, but especially when I feel his absence.

Rather than let my mind wander to any negativity, which, by the way, our brains naturally gravitate towards, according to neuroscience, our brains are hard wired to have a bias towards negativity. This bias means that we are naturally drawn to focus on the bad things that happen. Our decisions are often made from here, and we often relate to others from here, too.

This can cause great problems in our lives, such as isolating ourselves through mistrust or overworking through worry. It is also a constant challenge for those of us who respond to negative feelings with food. So, make a name for this part of you, this critic, and a character. Describe it. When I was on my master's degree in California, we worked for a whole term, we did a whole course on working with our dark side.

Obviously, this is something as a therapist that we need to understand. We were asked to imagine looking in a mirror and seeing this part of ourselves. And I remember very clearly that I saw in the mirror a devil like gremlin. It really shocked me. I think I was a little bit scared but I got to know it and to have compassion for it actually and to understand it which I think is a really useful thing to do.

And then we also had a whole weekend on creating a story of the opposite, so inhabiting our lighter side. We had to dress up as the resourced, strong, and beautiful parts of ourselves. I remember dressing in white and tying my hair up with scarves, and having lots of flowy different colours on me. That was so much fun!

So you can imagine the all characters. What are the sides of you? What do they look like? Who are they? How can you relate to them? What can you bring to them? How can you dress them up and just get to know those sides of you because they exist both of them exist inside you and everything in between and You get to practice them if you know them and you also get to understand them and to be able to choose them But what if you didn't believe that shadow story or what if someone else in your story told the story?

And what story would someone who loves you tell? With this kind of thinking, as with working with core beliefs, you realise that you have a choice whether to believe it, and that it's an unhelpful story. Is this story all that you are? What story would you like? An exercise that you can try is this. Write a story about you not being good enough for 20 minutes non stop.

It's likely that it'll wear you out. And you can also write the flip story. Another way of looking at this is by exploring who you would be if you were someone fundamentally different with a different story. I'll put a link in the comments here to a meditation during which you practice having an ideal parent.

This is something that a lot of my clients find really useful, so give it a go. You can also think about times when your story has shifted and what that was like. For me, I've made some brave, passionate decisions many times. My story was to feel ashamed of being sensitive. But my life, as you can see, has turned out pretty well on that score.

My career has been a constant relearning of belief in me to go forward. I've also turned that round in my love life as well. From believing I didn't deserve any attention to now having wonderful relationships in my life, my story has changed over and over again when I've chosen to believe in myself. I remember going to a psychic once, or someone who claimed they were psychic, when I was very young and was told by him that it is likely that I would do things against what other people believe in around me, but I would still do it nevertheless, and that I would succeed.

But nobody else would agree with me around me. And that actually has turned out to be true. I have had a lot of resistance for making a career out of being emotional and sensitive. There've been a lot of people in my life who've just told me to buck up and get on with it and that this is depressing and not the way that people should be.

I would entirely disagree because I feel like a lot of people have been made a lot happier, including myself, for being able to understand the sensitivities and emotions behind how we act and behave. Um, but my point right here is to say that this spurred me on. It made me think, oh, it's okay to do what other people don't agree with.

And, I guess I'm saying it to you, whether I believe that that psychic had any potential intuition about who I am, or whether he was predicting my future or not, I'm saying it to you. Going against the grain, even if it's uncomfortable, even if everybody doesn't agree with you, it worked out really well for me, and it could work out really well for you too.

People often put it down if someone compliments them. And so here's another way that you can practice going against the grain. Um, for example, if somebody says, I like your top. Uh, we usually say something like, Oh, this old thing? I got it cheap from a secondhand shop. Try breathing instead. Try, instead of putting down a compliment automatically and instinctively, try breathing it in.

And also, you could try the Devil's Advocate opposite. Imagine saying, You're not allowed to have that thought or that feeling. And that could be about the positive or the negative. When they say the compliment, you could tell yourself, You're not allowed to receive this compliment and see how that feels.

Or, you're not allowed to be nasty to yourself and see how that feels. It's all kind of an awakened way of discovering what's going on for you around compliments. But people who fear receiving compliments or mistrust compliments and kind behaviour tend to find it harder to feel self worth and are more likely to feel depressed.

Another meditation, which I got from Kelly McGonigal, is to try breathing in the words, these words, May you be free from suffering. May you be happy. In my groups, we might do this with a partner, where the partner would listen, breathe, and transform the words into compassion. Of course, you may have plenty of resistance to this.

This may be valuable information in itself, teaching you about how and why you protect yourself. And eventually, you may learn to receive, which is something you need to learn. How can you let yourself receive more? Being in compassionate company in groups or in relationship will help you see yourself with love because others do that.

These relationships help you heal. Letting someone see you with love can help you love yourself. What's it like for you to be held or heard or loved? To be accepted with non judgment? What is it like to take that in? How could you try that on? Healing early difficulties, or how we developed, how we feel about ourselves, and whether we deserve to be loved, is not an easy quick fix process.

But it is a case of combining love for your wounded parts with corrective experiences. All of which these are. But look out for all the tiny things that we all do on a daily basis to contribute to the joy of other people's lives or to ourselves. Every time you smile at someone, it makes a difference.

Compassion is something you can do rather than something you have. Progressing 1 percent towards worthiness helps. Perhaps you can keep a gorgeous looking kindness jar for every time you act in a kind way to yourself so that you can see it. I'm going to end today on a quote by Zora Neale Hurston. Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

Thank you. This is all I have to say about self worth for today, but pretty much all of my podcasts have an element about self worth, so please keep tuned. If you want more help personally, I have a group coming out, a program in August, and I also have a support group starting in August. And also let me know about your comments.

I'm loving your comments and your questions and really very happy to respond to them. So please keep them coming. They are confidential. I will keep your name out of it. And that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I'll look forward to speaking with you next Wednesday.