Today's entry is a brutally honest confession. I have to warn people about reading further, it is a conversation with myself. How I talk to myself. So if you are going to judge me after reading this, then please don't read any further. I struggle with who to share this with, so if you are family, please don't read further, I don't want you to think that any of these thought are your fault, because their not. They're MY thoughts, and MY issues, it has NOTHING to do with anyone else, and no one is to blame for these thoughts.
This is not how all people who live in poverty talk to themselves, but I am telling you how I talk to myself. The last two years have been challenging for me, I think in some ways, the most challenging in most of my life.
I think I have always struggled liking myself, let alone loving myself. My mom tells me that since I was a young child (6) I have always thought of myself as stupid. I failed Grade One, had a speech issue. Failed horribly in Junior and Senior High School.
So most of my conversations in my head go like this:
"Amber, the city police hate you. You might as well just buy a BBgun, take it to the arrest processing unit, point it at a police officer, and let them shoot you. This is how you should die, they would be ecstatic about this. They would never had to deal with their District Two nutcase ever again. You shouldn't have been born in the first place, everyone would be better off without you."
"Amber, you don't belong at your church. The congregation member's are wealthier than you. Look at you, you're ugly and a piece of shit. They would never associate with you outside of church, you're a freak!"
My mom tells me that God doesn't make junk. The conversation in my head when she told me this went something like this. "Are you kidding me? God was high on crack when he created me, otherwise he wouldn't have fucked me up so much. Why couldn't he have made me fucken normal?"
My handsome son graduated High School this year. After falling on ice at the bus stop last year and breaking my knee cap, I have developed a very painful lump on the side of my knee which has left me unable to work full-time and struggling in pain to go to work and provide for myself and my son. I am lucky, my parents have helped me raise him. Still, I have a responsibility to him. And graduation is expensive. My conversation with myself was something like: "Look at you, you're such a dumb bitch! You can't even provide for your own child! He would be SO much better without you. You've never been able to provide for him. You're a fuck up, a loser, a FAILURE!"
I was invited to a hockey game by our Councillor Brian Pincott earlier this year. My first thoughts we're: "He really doesn't know what kind of a person I really am, if he knew what kind of a loser, failure I am, he wouldn't associate with me."
I am so amazingly lucky, and grateful. I know my thoughts are emotionally based. That I am not thinking rationally. I am in pain, struggling to make ends meet, not eating, unable to look after my home because all of my energy is exerted in going to work in pain. I have wonderful parents who believe in and love me. I have a church family who never gives up on me, Councillor Pincott doesn't judge me, and my community social worker's support me by advocating for me. I have an employer who wants me to be well and succeed at work, and I have neighbors and friends who love and care for me. They know I am not a bad person. And I would never speak to my friends the way I speak to myself, so I don't know why I think it's OK to talk to myself like this. I sometimes believe my thoughts though, and that's dangerous for me.
Hi Amber,
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you are aware of this, but everyone experiences negative self talk. Through counselling, I learned that it's function is (believe it or not) to protect us from pain. I was taught to talk to it, to allow it to be there as my protector, but to give it new words that are supportive when I am feeling insecure or fearful, rather than allowing it to be critical and destructive.
Another helper was a book by Thich Nhat Hahn called Creating True Peace. He discusses how peace begins inside of ourselves through acceptance and unconditional love...which can then branch out to our family, community, and our planet. One beautiful exercise in the book is before you fall asleep at night, you smile to each body part and thank it for its purpose...for example thanking your arms for helping you lift groceries, for helping you work or clean, for hugging your children. Gratitude can be very powerful and life altering.
Peace,
Heidi
Thank You Heidi, I have been lucky enough to find and be a part of what is called Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), specifically designed to help people with a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I have to constantly replace that negative self talk with positives, but admit that the negative self talk often takes over. It is a constant battle of the mind and emotions. We are designed to be negative people, it's a survival instinct in us. That book sounds very enlightening and helpful, I think I will pick it up the next time I am at the library.
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