How Toxic is Self-contempt for our Bodies?

If you have any of the following behaviors, you have unconsciously or consciously worked to turn off your emotions or you have a resistance to them. Completely normal! This is the realm of your Shadow and you simply do not see your shadow, so it owns you instead. You may be stuck in patterns and behaviors that cause you unnecessary suffering. At that stage, you are in a state of unconscious incompetence because you don’t even know what you don’t know. And as such, what you don’t know can definitely hurt you.

Do not worry. On the contrary! You found your way here – And that, my friends, is a sign that you have activated your first emotional muscles! You are entering the space of Self-care – So congratulations!

That we have a lot of thoughts in our heads is nothing new. That some of them are conscious and some of them are unconscious is probably not news either. About 60,000 thoughts go through our minds per day and many of them are the same every day. To add something to your consciousness: we are constantly sending and receiving thoughts without really knowing it. And yes, these thoughts influence not only our behavior but also our emotions, and thus, also our happiness.

You may think that’s crazy! Wait, what? They control us? At best, our thoughts influence us. At worst, they downright control us, consciously; but mostly unconsciously. It will therefore be priority no.1, to find out what these thoughts sound like. Right? What can be more important to find your own sound or series of sounds- that control you. Want to be free? Then consciousness will be your best bet. 

So what does the sound inside us sound like, and what do our emotional landscapes look like on the inside?

See if you can imagine yourself in two parts. Where one part is small and the other part is large. The small part consists of 5% and the other is 95%. We call the small part the Conscious Mind and the big part we call the Subconscious Mind. Now, to make it a little more fun, see if you can imagine instead that the small part (5% of you) is a parent and the big part (95% of you) is a child around 4 years old. 

Who is in control? 

The big part, aka the 4-year-old, controls us. The small part, i.e. the parent, i.e. your conscious mind, usually does not know that it is controlled by the 4-year-old. Actually, you can imagine an ordinary family of three people. One of which is a child. The family operates and acts completely according to the child’s immature feelings. In the same way, we can imagine what it looks like inside us.

We therefore act entirely from a small child’s perspective. The adult and the child are very often in conflict with each other. The parent and the child do not communicate very well. They do not see, understand or hear each other. If the parent decided on something in a mature, intelligent and warm way; it might have resulted in harmony in the body/in the family. If we have taken responsibility for our feelings and our needs in a clean and clear way, we got what we needed without manipulating, diminishing, criticizing, lying, or blaming, etc.

A sign when the child has taken control is when we escape everything that is uncomfortable and difficult. We deny what we feel, we drink a lot of alcohol, we may even do drugs, fight or scream. We overeat or watch movies all day. Don’t get clean, brush our teeth and so on. We are simply destructive. Partly because we do not know how else to be. We have derailed and we have set aside a part of us that deals with our health, well-being and creativity. Or we are split into two – we are healthy, exercise, eat healthy one day and the next day we lose it completely. This occurs when the parent and child alternate a little every other day. This often happens when the inner parent and child are in conflict with each other. You turn on yourself when you are controlled and then you turn on yourself when you are uncontrolled.

“What a boring life – just exercising and eating healthy” 

“I should not party so much. I should go home. Why am I doing this to myself?”

When you create a loving inner communication, the inner parent will become more and more aware of the child’s behavior, and the child will trust the parent more and more and feel secure with her decisions and internal boundaries. You will thus create your own inner Super parent. A parent who listens to and takes care of the child, i.e. you. In other words, your conscious mind will expand and you will come into more and more contact with your subconscious. Another word for the subconscious can be the operating system. An internal system that controls you. Your thoughts, deeds, behavior, etc.

The first step to well-being is to become aware of the decisions the inner child makes that have negative consequences.

The Super Parent is the smart part of us who reflects on our actions, puts things in perspective, and then guides us to the path of long-term stable and sustainable profits. 

Another word for the ego-mind – the “not so good” parent in us, is The Critic/Monkey mind. External factors/thoughts that we have taken in and made into our own thoughts. The Unconscious is Mass consciousness: the place where all accepted norms, common beliefs and ideas are held. Every person on the planet has the same access to the Unconscious.

So now imagine there is a child, a parent and a critic in you. A small dysfunctional family. Who communicates the loudest? Who are you listening to? Who are you going to listen to? Who says what?

Run by the Super Parent? Then you are a person with a well-developed frontal lobe, who is making wise decisions that work well in the long run, with ease, rather than choosing the quick fix.

Critic/Radio – Your antennas are outward and you take in external information like a sponge. You may be convinced that circumstances affect you and that you are affected by different people or external events. A fragile, nervous, easily offended and anxious person often has a strong Critic or we also call it a bad radio station. The radio jumps from one channel to another, different opinions, news, thoughts. unfocused and easily influenced. This is the ego-mind.

When we begin to become aware that our thoughts create our emotions and thus our reality, and we can choose what we want to believe, we suddenly gain power over our well-being. The radio then gets less and less power over us and the internal messages become more supportive.

The child has often not been listened to, offered unconditional love, given a sense of security and value, not been shown acceptance, not taught to stay in and acknowledge their feelings, doesn’t know how to share or to express their needs, etc. As much as your inner child has not been taught, so have your own biological parents’ inner children not been taught. No one is to blame – We’re all in the same boat. The beginning of learning self-care and self-love.  

Exercise your self-care muscles. Give to yourself as often as possible.

Congratulations! The fact that you are reading this, and that you have read this far, indicates that you have a trained Self-Care Muscle!! and that it is active right now. The more you reflect on yourself, your behavior and your actions – the stronger this muscle becomes.

Our thoughts are wildly out of control and a mix of external and internal voices and mostly unconscious to us. What do you think your thoughts are about? How do they sound? Your first exercise is to try to observe and hear your thoughts and understand that they are not you. Play with the idea that you are the one who observes and hears them. Listen to your own inner radio.

A thought that has looped, day after day, year after year, has probably become a truth. It can eventually become so true that it becomes part of you, your values.

Some common unconscious internal thoughts from the radio

I cannot afford it.
I will not make it.
I can’t be alone.
Alone equals bad.
I’m not allowed to make mistakes. 
I have no support. 
I need to be heard.
I don’t really know this.
They’re better than me
I’m just making this up
They are stupid
I’m smarter than most people
I have no idea what I’m doing
I’m fake or I’m a fraud
I feel like an imposter
I need to be beautiful to be loved.
I need to be thin to be loved, 
I’m not educated enough.
I’m probably wrong
I’m bad at math
You’re probably right
I am sensitive and that is bad
I am fat and that is bad.
I should be more fit; fit equal love
I know too little
It’s dangerous to be seen
I have to be seen
I deserve to be treated better.
My boss is stupid
She doesn’t like me. No one really likes me. 
You cannot love me. No one really loves me.
I dare not…
They do not like me.
My English is not very good.
My Swedish is bad
I’m bad. 

Become aware of your feelings

Where in the body do you feel the feelings?
How does it feel?
Can you care about your feelings? See them as friends?
Can you let go, even just a little of those intense feelings?
Are you willing to observe you from a neutral place for a little while?

Try to understand why you feel the way you do. Have compassion for the feelings. Do not undervalue them – allow yourself to feel them fully. Do not judge or try to edit them — just feel them.

What escape behaviors do you have from emotions?
What resistance do you have to the emotions?

Raising your Emotional intelligence quotation by yourself can be tricky. Doing it together with others can be fun. We can laugh about how similar our thoughts are and create more warm emotions around them. We can also become a support to each other.

Come and try out a free workshop this Sunday. It is a meditative exercise to allow you to get to know yourself a little bit better. It’s an exercise to strengthen your self-care muscles. Reserve your slot here. 

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