When I started this journey of self-love with my therapist a lot of the negative habits I had were extremely detrimental to my mental state. Being highly-critical to myself grew into something that became a normal state of mind; I was consistently second-guessing myself, had little to no confidence in any of the decisions I made, and I had self-destructive habits to avoid uncomfortable emotions.
What came out of that therapy session was that I could not trust myself with MYSELF. So, we took some approaches and a lot of them didn’t work. Till one blessed therapy session, my therapist watched a video with me to help me tackle my trust issues.
The video was not curated to be for people with trust issues. It is just a way to view yourself differently and to help you understand yourself. I also cannot find the video, but the quick rundown is that there are different parts about ourselves and sometimes, some parts can be louder than other parts.
I never really took notice or focused on myself, like ever, so I didn’t really put much thought till after this video. From what I’m assuming, people normally view themselves as a whole. However, in the video, they encourage you to look at yourself as different parts. Some parts are more vocal than others; a lot of my uncomfortable parts were more vocal than my positive parts, which is why I couldn’t really take notice of them.
A lot of the parts we dislike like—anger, insecurity, sadness, or loneliness are actually good? What? After the video, my therapist asked me how I felt and did the run down. Honestly, the first reaction, I didn’t feel much after watching the video. It was terribly put together, and the graphics made me laugh mid-way. When we began to discuss it properly I began to also use words like, “parts”.
A lot of our “parts” are meant to be understood not shunned away because it feels uncomfortable or they make us feel a type of way. These parts exist to simply protect us and help us understand why certain things make us feel a particular way. During my heartbreak, a part of me held a lot of hope, hope for that person to come back to my life. I told my therapist I didn’t like how this part of me made me feel uncomfortable.
My therapist told me to ask myself questions to help me understand this feeling. Hopefully, these questions will help you as well,
1. What is the cause?
2. Why do you think it’s making you feel this way?
3. What is this emotion/feeling trying to accomplish?
A lot of these questions are trying to get you to appreciate and understand your uncomfortable parts. Our uncomfortable parts are here to help us grow or to help us appreciate ourselves. Learn to appreciate your insecure side, they’re just trying to help you focus on what you can improve, or you can just give them a different job. The point is to never get rid of these parts but to either appreciate or help them develop a new job.
If you can accept all the different parts of you, you’ll be able to trust yourself, and definitely be able to love yourself a lot more.
All the parts of you are accepted and welcomed.