I’ve been listening to the Mindset Mentor podcast recently and the one I listened to today was all about negative thoughts or self-talk. You identify the negative thoughts about yourself and then recognize that you wouldn’t say those things to someone you loved. if that’s the case then why the heck are you saying them to yourself?!? So don’t do that! Then you light those bitches on fire to get rid of them.
I can’t be loved.
I am ugly.
I am fat.
I’ll never be good enough
Here are just some examples of the bad thoughts I have about myself. When Rob Dial was talking about the negative thoughts and how to burn them. I had this idea.
Write them down on the paper. Go buy a really stinky candle. A smell you loathe. And use that stinkin candle to burn your bad thoughts. Then maybe you can rewire your brain quicker and those bad thoughts will be associated with that smell you hate and it can be a double whammy! Don’t think that!!!!!!
But i think it’s also important to acknowledge so much more than the negative thoughts. Like where that negative thought came from and what the counter is for that negative thought. So I’m going to dump it out... right here, right now.
I can’t be loved.
Mom left me with my grandparents. This made me feel like she didn’t love me or that she didn’t want me. And if your mother who birthed you can’t love you then who can?!
But I can be loved! And I AM loved. And get this: my mom even loves me. And here I am 30 years old still hanging onto shit from over 20 years ago. Mom was 17 years old. What the fuck was she supposed to do with a newborn - and not just that - a newborn who was born 3 months too soon. We never bonded. That whole theory of attachment is some real shit. So we don’t have the same bond that she has with my other siblings. And I cried a lot for my nanny and papa. I loved them. But that made my mom feel like I hated her and didn’t want her. So here we are making each other both feel like shit. And that continued all throughout childhood and into adulthood.
Now I’m 30. She’s 46. And we’re just now getting to the point of not being awful to each other. And I still have that mom in my head that says “You’re no child of mine, you little nancy”... “You think she cares about you. She only cares about herself... the rest of us are for whatever she can get.”... That shit she said years ago is still echoing in my head. She was angry because I called her out. We all say shit when we’re angry. And that last little bit was my mom projecting. Saying about me what she knows she was doing back then. Now she has a man - a good man - and a job and a house and all the things that she didn’t have back then. She finally has a good life. And i can’t help but panic from time to time thinking it’s all gonna go to shit any time something goes wrong and she’s going to go back to being that person that was mean to me.
Little Gwen is still very much an active part of me and who I am now. These negative thoughts are mostly her negative thoughts that have followed me into adulthood.
I can be loved and I AM loved.
I have a whole bunch of people who love me and I love them. I don’t even have to do anything to make them. They just do. They’re my family. They’re my peeps. So if I can be loved and I am loved then why do I still feel like I am unlovable?
Because I don’t love myself. And discovering how to do this is going to be a challenge, but I think I’m up for it.
