Just being and being OK.

acceptance, adequacy, complacency, personality, self-acceptance, shadow work

My homework from last time was to be aware of my inner judge and to keep track of answers to these questions:

  • What does the inner judge say about you?
  • What impossible standards are you setting for yourself?

Oof! Keeping track of this was awful. If anyone was as mean to me as I am to myself…I just would not talk to them anymore!

He had to ask me to stop as I was reading the list of things I had compiled over the course of two weeks. I…will not reproduce the list here as I don’t want to dwell on it. I am refraining from deleting it for now.

I have trouble being. I have trouble with myself as a being.

I engage in a lot of self-torture. It kinda works but makes me miserable. I ran my fastest mile in years today and that was motivated by forcing myself to work out and regularly taking pictures of myself wearing a sports bra and shorts or less. It was very painful to look at first but now I do it every day. I am also signed up for my first race in years and that is really exciting, too.

I need to understand the line between motivation and self-torture.

Affirmations seem dumb. Find a few that work and just…do them anyway until you don’t think they are quite so dumb.

Picking up on the theme of internalizing I am OK as I am.

  • What if I don’t think that being OK is…..OK? To me, being OK is awful.

Consider: What is wrong with complacency?

Wonder: What would it take for me to love myself?

We talked about the unpleasant parts of our personalities and this led to an overview of the shadow self, a concept from analytical psychology, usually associated with Carl Jung. From what I understand so far, I think that this is a really important journey to continue down. I had independently wanted to bring up the concept of the less pleasant parts of my personality. That’s the best language available to me but it sounds like shadow work dovetails rather nicely with it. Separately from all of this, I had been planning a refresh on Jungian psychology anyway.

Homework: