Hello, I am Trisha, and I am learning every day how to live my OWN LIFE to the fullest. Until a few years ago, I didn't know hardly anything about myself. I went through a process of doing and saying what I thought everyone else wanted to see and hear. I did not know how to feel, or really think for myself, and express truthfully how I was feeling. I was always very shy, and a HUGE people please-er. Because I wasn't naturally inclined to say what was on my mind, I rarely took the chance to communicate my thoughts and feelings. While growing up, I really didn't have the environment of open communication. I needed some coaxing to share, and because I never took initiative to express any true feelings, they kind of got buried deeper and deeper inside.
I never really noticed, but little by little, I would actually respond to a person's question by first saying to myself, "how do I think this person wants me to respond to this question?" Rather than simply asking myself, "hmm, how do I want to respond to this question, based on what I think about what was just asked of me?" My voice was swallowed up by my insecurities that continued to grow. I covered it up very well though. I was an over-achiever, and always wanted to do my best. The problem was, that I would emotionally punish myself for not succeeding perfectly in every way.
I don't blame any of this on anyone, by the way. Yes, I could have had a more open, communicative family, but in no way do I think anyone made me this way. But as I grew older, and reached for perfection, my vision of my self-worth was skewed. I thought that the more I strived for "perfection", the more secure I would feel about myself. I lived for praise. And praise would usually come after I achieved something. I thought I was only worth something if I had achieved a goal or performance worth everyone's praise. I'm not saying that striving for excellence bad. It is that word perfection that I have a problem with. No one is perfect. No one. I thought I had to be the best, almost perfect, at EVERYTHING.
On my quest to achieve success and excellence, my self-respect was compromised by feeling fear and guilt when the outcome was not perfect. And of course it never was. So after a while, I began feeling huge amounts of fear of failure. When I did "fail", I would feel guilty for not trying hard enough. My life began to be driven primarily by guilt and fear. I was afraid of failing, because if I did, that meant that I was not good enough. Not good enough for everyone in my life. I always was taught that I was a daughter of God, and I always knew it. But I really did not truly believe it. Because if I really understood what it means to be a daughter of God, then I would have realized from day one- that with that, comes the understanding that my existence alone is enough to hold the right to love myself and to have a constant feeling of self-respect. In my mind I knew that I was worth something, but I didn't believe it enough to be my own friend and stick up for myself.
Little by little I created my own critic. And she was nasty to me. I know a lot of it has to do with our super ego, and sub conscious, but honestly I'm not an expert about all the psychology with that. All I knew was that I had something constantly putting myself down-and it took a while before I realized that it was a negative version of myself. I had allowed my sub-conscious to create this "person" beside me; and it began to dominate and control my life. I remember back to when I was very young, in grade school, that I was very hard on myself. When I would make a mistake, or not live up to my own expectations, and those expectations of others that I thought people had for me; I would put myself down. I would not let myself be imperfect.
I didn't know how to be okay with myself, flaws and all. I just kept building on my fear of failure and guilt for not measuring up. And for a long while, my guilt was disguised as something good. Because my guilt, for a long time, was what propelled me forward to do better. But the problem, again, was that I told myself I wasn't good enough and because of my failure, I was not as valuable as I would be; if I had not "messed" up. This viscous cycle continued into High school, college, and into my first 5 years of marriage. And when you throw anxiety into the mix, it makes things a whole lot more challenging. I had seriouse anxiety issues. Only I would not admit it. At first I thought that I could overcome my anxious feelings with prayer and scripture study and faith. Any type of therapy or medicine seemed to be looked down upon in my family, so I never even considered that. I remember having a pit in my stomach every morning before school. I don't even know what exactly I was nervous about. Just the anxiety of not knowing what would happen in the day, and not having confidence or assurance in myself that what ever happened; I would be fine. The first day of 5th grade, I bawled my eyes out as my sister and her husband drove me to school. I was so scared and I didn't even know why. I got used to this feeling, and thought it was normal. I literally had my stomach in knots almost every single day.
It was really wierd, I remember thinking, because I knew my life was great and I felt very blessed for everything in it. I actually had a lot of friends. I was involved in TONS of extra curricular activities: I was a dancer and was accepted into elite ballet programs. I was involved in singing, acting and performing. In the 8th grade, I got the lead role in the school musical, and literally had the lead in every school production following that year. I was the president of the high school show choir, and was super involved in church seminary class, and served as president there too. On the outside, I'm sure it looked like I didn't have a care in the world. This is why my anxiety and lack of self-worth got buried deeper and deeper. I had convinced myself that because of all these wonderful "badges of honor", this meant that I was worth something. The more I was recognized by others, and praised by others, the better I felt about myself. This is where I gained my self-worth. Through other people. But this was the most deceiving and false sense of self-worth I could have. Because I did not ever establish my self-respect starting with my own approval, I let the praise of others be my "false" sense of self- worth and self-respect. I never knew I was doing this to myself. I just thought I was trying my best. And I was. I don't blame myself either.
I am at such a good place right now. I have learned how to strip myself bare, down to the core of who I am with all of my insecurities, diseases, imperfectness, and vulnerabilities. It was very hard. It took a lot of experiences in my life to let me know that I didn't know who I was. Literally. I knew what I had been taught about my worth, but I didn't believe it for myself. I was sick of living- trying to be like everyone else. I judged myself, and others who I wanted to be like, so harshly. I hated myself and the others I envied. I knew this was wrong. But I didn't know how to change. I cried out to God my whole life for reasons why I felt like this. But I can say that I never gave up.
Thankfully, I kept my faith and believed that God did love me, and that some day I would feel the love for myself that I knew He had for me. I went through some tough close relationships that took a direct hit to the very core of my struggles. I wanted so badly the approval of a certain few people in my life, and when I didn't feel like I received that acceptance, it hurt me. Bad. I thought I wasn't good enough for their friendship, and I thought there was something wrong with me. It wasn't until several years later, that I realized how important those struggles with approval would be so important to my own discovery of my own self-respect. It was through this lesson, that I learned I could only gain it for myself. I thought that I could get it from others. I wanted others to constantly tell me that I was OK. But God knew this was not the right way. I am so thankful for my years of struggle with this tiral. Now, because I was forced to discover and believe it on my own, all by myself, I have everything I would ever need in this life to truly be happy. You can be taught that you are a son or daughter of God and that you can achieve all happiness ever possible, but without accepting that you are deserving of that love and hapiness, you will never achieve that happiness to the fullest.
I can honestly say that now, I Love myself. I am my own friend. I used to be my own worst enemy. I believe now that I am a daughter of God with endless worth, in all my imperfections. How I am today, right now, this very moment, is perfect (in an imperfect sort of way). I am OK. I don't fear making mistakes now, because I believe that mistakes bring me closer to who I am,and to who I am meant to become. I am not afraid to fail, and therefore, I am not afraid to try. With my more frequent absence of fear, I have traveled so far in my course of self-discovery and acceptance. I still experince feelings of fear of failure, but I do not let it consume my life anymore. I try not to judge myself and others. This very thing has enriched my life immensely. I try not to make any sort of initial judgments on people. This has allowed me to discover the beauty in all of God's creations.
Every single one of us has been placed on this earth with our own unique purpose. Try to figure out what your own purpose on this earth is and dedicate your life to finding and being just that.
And if you don't know how to be yourself, like I have struggled with, just hold on to those things that you do know for sure that are good in your life, and hold onto that. When I look at others, I see how beautiful their own unique individuality is. Don't waste your time trying to be like any body else. It is truly a waste of time. Just dedicate your life to finding the good in yourself. Let others you admire influence you for the good, but don't try to be them. Find out what you like, what you don't like. Accept your imperfections, your insecurities, your "ugliness" and embrace them all. Because when you do, you will just reinforce to yourself that you are human, and being human is OK.
You can recognize a mistake, learn from it, and move on. Never should you beat yourself up about it. It only binds you and keeps you from moving on and from moving forward toward discovering the beautiful things about your own unique life. I feel so passionately about this because I live it daily. I have done a lot of work to get to this point, and we all are different. Some people don't think twice about their own self-worth, and we all have different challenges. But I do think this world presents a lot of comparisons, and reasons to not feel good about ourselves. Every day I have to remind myself to be happy with myself, and celebrate my uniqueness. But I am so grateful that I am learning how to conquer the core of my own self-hate.
I want to continue to share my experiences with this, and will be writing a series of entries about how to know if you are following a quest to be yourself, or a quest to be like someone else. If you were like me, you may not even know it. I have a reverence for life, and an even deeper appreciation for all of God's children. God does not make mistakes, and He for sure wants all of us to love ourselves as He does. I hope this has either reaffirmed your love and respect for yourself, or helped you to realize that there could be a little more room for a little more LOVE. If you truly love yourself the way God does, then you will share that love equally for your fellow men. And if we all could follow this commandment- what a wonderful world this would be. Thanks for listening. And by the way, learning to express your feelings only increases your ability to live and love your own life. Even if others don't agree with you. Because it doesn't matter. You are still OK, and so are they. "I'm OK, You're OK". If you only emit love for yourself and others, it doesn't matter how others respond to you. So pray for love for yourself and everyone. Everyone matters. Everyone has the right to take up space in this world. No matter what color, race, religion, economic status level, or anything else- YOU MATTER. We were all created equal. We all deserve to love. And be loved...
And I love that.
YOu ARe uNIqUE. sTAy tHAt waY.
Click here to take The Self-Respect Test
I never really noticed, but little by little, I would actually respond to a person's question by first saying to myself, "how do I think this person wants me to respond to this question?" Rather than simply asking myself, "hmm, how do I want to respond to this question, based on what I think about what was just asked of me?" My voice was swallowed up by my insecurities that continued to grow. I covered it up very well though. I was an over-achiever, and always wanted to do my best. The problem was, that I would emotionally punish myself for not succeeding perfectly in every way.
I don't blame any of this on anyone, by the way. Yes, I could have had a more open, communicative family, but in no way do I think anyone made me this way. But as I grew older, and reached for perfection, my vision of my self-worth was skewed. I thought that the more I strived for "perfection", the more secure I would feel about myself. I lived for praise. And praise would usually come after I achieved something. I thought I was only worth something if I had achieved a goal or performance worth everyone's praise. I'm not saying that striving for excellence bad. It is that word perfection that I have a problem with. No one is perfect. No one. I thought I had to be the best, almost perfect, at EVERYTHING.
On my quest to achieve success and excellence, my self-respect was compromised by feeling fear and guilt when the outcome was not perfect. And of course it never was. So after a while, I began feeling huge amounts of fear of failure. When I did "fail", I would feel guilty for not trying hard enough. My life began to be driven primarily by guilt and fear. I was afraid of failing, because if I did, that meant that I was not good enough. Not good enough for everyone in my life. I always was taught that I was a daughter of God, and I always knew it. But I really did not truly believe it. Because if I really understood what it means to be a daughter of God, then I would have realized from day one- that with that, comes the understanding that my existence alone is enough to hold the right to love myself and to have a constant feeling of self-respect. In my mind I knew that I was worth something, but I didn't believe it enough to be my own friend and stick up for myself.
Little by little I created my own critic. And she was nasty to me. I know a lot of it has to do with our super ego, and sub conscious, but honestly I'm not an expert about all the psychology with that. All I knew was that I had something constantly putting myself down-and it took a while before I realized that it was a negative version of myself. I had allowed my sub-conscious to create this "person" beside me; and it began to dominate and control my life. I remember back to when I was very young, in grade school, that I was very hard on myself. When I would make a mistake, or not live up to my own expectations, and those expectations of others that I thought people had for me; I would put myself down. I would not let myself be imperfect.
I didn't know how to be okay with myself, flaws and all. I just kept building on my fear of failure and guilt for not measuring up. And for a long while, my guilt was disguised as something good. Because my guilt, for a long time, was what propelled me forward to do better. But the problem, again, was that I told myself I wasn't good enough and because of my failure, I was not as valuable as I would be; if I had not "messed" up. This viscous cycle continued into High school, college, and into my first 5 years of marriage. And when you throw anxiety into the mix, it makes things a whole lot more challenging. I had seriouse anxiety issues. Only I would not admit it. At first I thought that I could overcome my anxious feelings with prayer and scripture study and faith. Any type of therapy or medicine seemed to be looked down upon in my family, so I never even considered that. I remember having a pit in my stomach every morning before school. I don't even know what exactly I was nervous about. Just the anxiety of not knowing what would happen in the day, and not having confidence or assurance in myself that what ever happened; I would be fine. The first day of 5th grade, I bawled my eyes out as my sister and her husband drove me to school. I was so scared and I didn't even know why. I got used to this feeling, and thought it was normal. I literally had my stomach in knots almost every single day.
It was really wierd, I remember thinking, because I knew my life was great and I felt very blessed for everything in it. I actually had a lot of friends. I was involved in TONS of extra curricular activities: I was a dancer and was accepted into elite ballet programs. I was involved in singing, acting and performing. In the 8th grade, I got the lead role in the school musical, and literally had the lead in every school production following that year. I was the president of the high school show choir, and was super involved in church seminary class, and served as president there too. On the outside, I'm sure it looked like I didn't have a care in the world. This is why my anxiety and lack of self-worth got buried deeper and deeper. I had convinced myself that because of all these wonderful "badges of honor", this meant that I was worth something. The more I was recognized by others, and praised by others, the better I felt about myself. This is where I gained my self-worth. Through other people. But this was the most deceiving and false sense of self-worth I could have. Because I did not ever establish my self-respect starting with my own approval, I let the praise of others be my "false" sense of self- worth and self-respect. I never knew I was doing this to myself. I just thought I was trying my best. And I was. I don't blame myself either.
I am at such a good place right now. I have learned how to strip myself bare, down to the core of who I am with all of my insecurities, diseases, imperfectness, and vulnerabilities. It was very hard. It took a lot of experiences in my life to let me know that I didn't know who I was. Literally. I knew what I had been taught about my worth, but I didn't believe it for myself. I was sick of living- trying to be like everyone else. I judged myself, and others who I wanted to be like, so harshly. I hated myself and the others I envied. I knew this was wrong. But I didn't know how to change. I cried out to God my whole life for reasons why I felt like this. But I can say that I never gave up.
Thankfully, I kept my faith and believed that God did love me, and that some day I would feel the love for myself that I knew He had for me. I went through some tough close relationships that took a direct hit to the very core of my struggles. I wanted so badly the approval of a certain few people in my life, and when I didn't feel like I received that acceptance, it hurt me. Bad. I thought I wasn't good enough for their friendship, and I thought there was something wrong with me. It wasn't until several years later, that I realized how important those struggles with approval would be so important to my own discovery of my own self-respect. It was through this lesson, that I learned I could only gain it for myself. I thought that I could get it from others. I wanted others to constantly tell me that I was OK. But God knew this was not the right way. I am so thankful for my years of struggle with this tiral. Now, because I was forced to discover and believe it on my own, all by myself, I have everything I would ever need in this life to truly be happy. You can be taught that you are a son or daughter of God and that you can achieve all happiness ever possible, but without accepting that you are deserving of that love and hapiness, you will never achieve that happiness to the fullest.
I can honestly say that now, I Love myself. I am my own friend. I used to be my own worst enemy. I believe now that I am a daughter of God with endless worth, in all my imperfections. How I am today, right now, this very moment, is perfect (in an imperfect sort of way). I am OK. I don't fear making mistakes now, because I believe that mistakes bring me closer to who I am,and to who I am meant to become. I am not afraid to fail, and therefore, I am not afraid to try. With my more frequent absence of fear, I have traveled so far in my course of self-discovery and acceptance. I still experince feelings of fear of failure, but I do not let it consume my life anymore. I try not to judge myself and others. This very thing has enriched my life immensely. I try not to make any sort of initial judgments on people. This has allowed me to discover the beauty in all of God's creations.
Every single one of us has been placed on this earth with our own unique purpose. Try to figure out what your own purpose on this earth is and dedicate your life to finding and being just that.
Just be yourself.
You can recognize a mistake, learn from it, and move on. Never should you beat yourself up about it. It only binds you and keeps you from moving on and from moving forward toward discovering the beautiful things about your own unique life. I feel so passionately about this because I live it daily. I have done a lot of work to get to this point, and we all are different. Some people don't think twice about their own self-worth, and we all have different challenges. But I do think this world presents a lot of comparisons, and reasons to not feel good about ourselves. Every day I have to remind myself to be happy with myself, and celebrate my uniqueness. But I am so grateful that I am learning how to conquer the core of my own self-hate.
I want to continue to share my experiences with this, and will be writing a series of entries about how to know if you are following a quest to be yourself, or a quest to be like someone else. If you were like me, you may not even know it. I have a reverence for life, and an even deeper appreciation for all of God's children. God does not make mistakes, and He for sure wants all of us to love ourselves as He does. I hope this has either reaffirmed your love and respect for yourself, or helped you to realize that there could be a little more room for a little more LOVE. If you truly love yourself the way God does, then you will share that love equally for your fellow men. And if we all could follow this commandment- what a wonderful world this would be. Thanks for listening. And by the way, learning to express your feelings only increases your ability to live and love your own life. Even if others don't agree with you. Because it doesn't matter. You are still OK, and so are they. "I'm OK, You're OK". If you only emit love for yourself and others, it doesn't matter how others respond to you. So pray for love for yourself and everyone. Everyone matters. Everyone has the right to take up space in this world. No matter what color, race, religion, economic status level, or anything else- YOU MATTER. We were all created equal. We all deserve to love. And be loved...
And I love that.
YOu ARe uNIqUE. sTAy tHAt waY.
4 comments:
Profound. Thank you. I myself am still on this path, trying to keep on it, sometimes slipping back; working on it. You are amazing for your honesty and raw open hearted-ness. Thank you for it. Beautiful. I appreciate you. Thank you.
wow trisha that was beautiful. i'm so proud of you, thanks for sharing your feelings- it makes me love you even more:)
Awesome. Wow I can relate to this in so, so many ways. I am intrigued to hear about HOW you got to the point you are now... I so often just don't know how to get over myself... Thanks for sharing so deeply- I think of your posts and am motivated by them often!
Glad you shared that, so many of us have these insecurities but we never express them!!! I'm glad you had the courage to do it, and I'm sure it feels good to talk about it, because that is how we grow!
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