Are you respecting yourself? How to appreciate YOU!

Do you feel people ignore you or don’t listen to what you say?

Do you feel unsupported and as though you’re not appreciated?

Do you get upset and frustrated by these feelings?

Do you dream of being valued and admired?

I do. I feel unappreciated and undervalued regularly. I feel unsupported by those around me and ignored generally. But what I’ve realised is that I’m the one who is ignoring me; I don’t appreciate or support myself emotionally, and I definitely struggle with valuing myself.

“If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price”. – Unknown

Recently my husband did something minor that upset me and I thought to myself ‘he doesn’t respect me!’ But then I stopped and asked myself, is that true? And I realised it wasn’t. Then I thought about why I felt that way and asked myself, it’s you who isn’t respecting youself, isn’t it? I was reflecting how I felt about myself onto my husband.

You see, I’ve been working toward self-trust by feeling and listening to my feelings, setting boundaries and limits as a way to create self-confidence and self-assurance. I’ve been working on self-care and self-love to build myself up, but I hadn’t stopped to ask myself if I was proud of how far I’d come and earnt some self-respect through this process.

It hasn’t been easy. I’ve been angry at myself for a long time, especially about moving overseas for someone who I felt let down and unsupported by. And that anger has led to behavior that has damaged my marriage and affected my ability to parent effectively, frustrating my desire to be a calm interactive mum. And I’ve had a lot of feelings from my abusive childhood to confront and work through before I could begin on the current stuff. It’s been hard. 

So I ask myself: do I respect the effort I've made to repair the damage in my marriage and the commitment to being a better mum? And I realise I struggle with being proud of myself about anything.

So how do I change this and earn some self-respect? What do I need to do to change my thinking to achieve that?

“Self-respect, self-worth and self-love all start with self. Stop looking outside yourself for value.” - Rob Liano

I start by looking at how I approach the things I want to do. My expectations of myself are low. I accept that I am not disciplined or have no will-power to follow through as quickly as I would like. I avoid committing myself to anything - including my dreams. I delay and make excuses and procrastinate – a procrastination that’s based in fear.

But the fear is not about failure, it’s about success. If I succeed then I have to sustain that success and hold myself to a higher standard and have an expectation of myself. But what if I let myself down? What if I’m not good enough?

When I back-track the feeling of not being good enough, I arrive at my parents. As a child I wasn’t enough to get their attention or their interest, or hold it for more than a few minutes. Most of the time I felt like a burden – and they often told me I was. The wounds from that live on in my current life, showing up in the form of not feeling good enough in my present relationships or friendships. I feel undervalued and as though it is my fault in some way and that I’m doing something wrong. 

I am doing something wrong – I’m not respecting myself. 

I’m busy looking for validation or approval from them, rather than from myself. I’m waiting for other people to tell me I’m ok before I let myself feel ok. I’m forgetting that the only approval I need is mine; that the only person’s permission I need to feel good about myself is my own.

 “Respect yourself and others will respect you.” - Confusius

The next thing to do to start valuing myself is look at all the things I’ve achieved that I can be proud of, like giving up smoking, finishing my novel, and self-publishing a collection of my writing. But I need to also look at my day to day and all the things I do on a daily basis too.

A few years ago I worked through a book called ‘Have The Relationship You Want’ by Rori Raye. One of the chapters is called ‘Overfunctioning’, which offers an exercise where you write a list of all the things you do day to day and prioritise them from 1-4: 

1 = ‘must do’

2 = ‘can do but can let it slide’

3 = ‘not sure if that is for me to be doing’

4 = ‘it’s not my job’

When I first did this I was shocked at how much I did and how many things weren’t really my responsibility, as well as how many I could let go, or pass over to my husband. Doing this exercise again I see that I’m still doing a great deal.

So I need to acknowledge that and appreciate and value how much I am doing. Take a moment to feel good about that.

But is that all I need to do? Write a list and pat myself on the back and maybe do some positive affirmations and I’ll respect myself? No.

It goes deeper than that. I need to believe that my dreams and goals are inevitable and not a 'maybe or a ‘one day’ – that with persistent continuous action they WILL happen. I need to believe I have the determination and self-discipline to see them through.

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.” - Clint Eastwood

It’s only through action that I can earn my self-respect. I need to show myself that I take myself seriously. I need to value everything I do as well as acknowledge how much I do.

And not only the big achievements either; it can be small things too. Not just the publication of my book, but creating the schedule that I followed to keep writing regularly to complete that book.

This, coupled with a commitment to self-care, nurturing and loving myself, and not judging or critcising myself, can build a foundation of self-respect.

If I see what I can achieve and how capable I am, it will spark me to do more, rather than make excuses.

Self-confidence is the most attractive quality a person can have. How can anyone see how great you are, if you don’t see it yourself? - Unknown.

Book Review: Beyond ADHD by Jeff Emmerson

Beyond ADHD: Overcoming the Label and Thriving by Jeff Emmerson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I came across Jeff Emmerson on twitter, as I have a son who was misdiagnosed with ADHD and in fact has autism (aspergers). I was concerned particularly by one organisation that just pushed medication and refused to do anything without my son being put on meds (he was 6 years old at the time). They had only observed my son in play for half an hour, and an hour at school and that was that. They refused to do an IQ test, which the next organisation immediately did - shocked that one had not been done by the previous organisation - and it immediately revealed the aspects of his autism. And I live in Holland - not in the US, where all the research for this book is focused. To me this showed immediately that there is something wrong with the system of diagnosis for this and many similar conditions - particularly ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) as well as ADHD.

In my case it was picked up by his first school at 4 years of age, who immediately said he needed to go to a special school (a system the Dutch use). And my second son, who has no issues besides his stubbornness, was also put through diagnosis because of his brothers diagnosis. The labeling and black listing that goes on in the school system is a serious issue for parents.

So I was keen to read Jeff's book as it looks at all these issues in depth with heavy research to support it.

I read some of the other reviews on this book, where people claim this is a book against medication and judgemental on those that use it. I don't agree. Jeff doesn't say anything about who should or should not be taking meds, or that those that do are bad people. What Jeff says is that if you are putting children on such a serious drug as this particular amphetamine, make sure you have the diagnosis correct and that you have been thorough in making sure you have it correct. That it shouldn't be the first thing offered as a solution and each child should be thoroughly investigated first.

My son was medicated for a couple of years, and now fortunately he is no longer. It helped, although the minute I saw there was research showing how his meds (methylphenidate) cause problems with bone density in children, I took him off them. His side effects while on them were significant - he lost his appetite and felt sick the entire time they were in his system. He lost so much weight I only medicated him in the morning for the longest part of his day at school.)

This book provides detailed research to support why we should be very concerned about the current method and rate of diagnosis, and it provides accounts of interviews with professionals in this field who discuss what they think about the current diagnostic process - most of which feel it is not adequate. Personally the data scares me for the future of our children, if we let it continue as it is. Just the list of medical conditions that share the same symptoms as ADHD is concerning enough. There needs to be a massive change in this.

Here are a few quotes from professionals in this field that bothered me a lot:

"Are they selling ADHD? You bet. Why? Because it's a proven profit maker."

"Do we call this struggle of teens to focus their attention, with this degree of information overload and equal need for constant connection to others, clinical ADHD?"

"Functional Medicine should be a norm - why aren't all children evaluated properly looking at all factors of their history & not just symptoms? How could LC [a patient] have been allowed to slip through with those symptoms at 5yrs of age? Failure of medical team."

"The development of the child's mind is a kind of unfolding or flowering that we can't wholesale create but we can nurture into fullest bloom. The metaphor is in the garden not the factory farm and certainly not the neurochemist's laboratory."

To anyone who has been diagnosed with ADHD (or ADD) or has a child diagnosed with it, I urge them to read this and get informed and maybe consider seeking further investigation into their particular issues (as I did with my son when I wasn't satisfied). Or to anyone interested in this topic. I really do wish all professionals would read this.

For me the only shame is the price of this book being so high, making it less accessible to people who would really benefit from reading it.





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What is Integrity? How to Create Limits & Boundaries

Do you give in to what others want to keep the peace?

Do you compromise your feelings on a topic to avoid confrontation?

Does this make you lose respect for yourself?

Do you get angry with yourself afterwards?

Integrity is a word that gets used a great deal when talking about personal issues. People with integrity are considered people to aspire to and respect. But what is integrity, and how do we obtain it?

Integrity meaning: 1) the quality of being honest & morally upright; 2) the state of being whole or unified. (Oxford English Dictionary)

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I get so angry with myself, and mostly it’s because I’ve said yes to something I don’t really want to do. I say yes because I feel guilty if I say no. Maybe the other person wants to do it and I feel like I am stopping them if I don’t; maybe I feel like I am disappointing them if I don’t. Either way I’ll agree to things to keep the peace, to try and please someone, but I end up annoyed with myself.

I’ve spent a lot of time working out how to start listening to myself and my feelings, and learning to trust myself and put myself first, but I have struggled to do that when it comes to interacting with other people. On my own I am quite firm, but with other people, especially those close to me like my husband and my children, I will let their wishes override mine because otherwise I feel like I’m being mean or selfish. But it hasn’t helped me – or them. I have ended up becoming frustrated with myself, and angry with them. And then no one has a good time.

What I realised I needed to do was set personal limits and boundaries. And on the face of it, that seemed quite simple. But it is not just setting up rules for yourself, saying, ‘I’ll accept this, but not that’, ‘I’m okay with this, but not that’ – although that can work - it goes deeper, it is about your sense of self and your personal identity. And I realised that was what people meant when they talked about ‘integrity’. 

“Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity.” – Erich Fromm

It wasn’t just about setting some rules and teaching people those rules, as in ‘okay, this is what I will and won’t tolerate from you’, it was about listening to myself inside and knowing who I was and what I stood for within the relationship to myself as well as to those outside of me.

It wasn’t just about what things I wanted to do, what places I wanted to go, or what my politics were or what I believed in, it was about my very sense of self, my right to BE. It was about my self-worth.

“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.” – Brene Brown

Only once I realised I was valuable as a person, that I was worthy of everything in life, was I able to think clearly in terms of my personal limits and boundaries. And I could only hold those limits and boundaries once I was sure that I wouldn’t violate them myself, that I wouldn’t try and second guess and persuade myself to do something I didn’t really want to do, for the desire to please another. (A desire they were oblivious to, I might add, as in most cases they were unaware it wasn’t something I wanted to do – until I got angry after the fact!)

Once I was true to my heart and able to trust myself to care about my own feelings, could I say I had integrity. And then those limits and boundaries weren’t rules I had to set and make sure I followed and keep a tight hold on, like a referee making sure no one goes over the line, they became the standard, the foundation of who I was and the basis I made decisions from. 

“Your personal boundaries protect the inner core of your identity and your right to choices.” - Gerard Manly Hopkins

It took me several years to understand this and several steps:

1. First I had to listen to my feelings and be a friend to myself. Realise that the inner me was as important as the outer me, and that I was worth giving my own time and attention to. 
2. Then I had to trust my feelings and show them respect, not belittle them or overrule them all the time, or second guess them. I had to stand up for them – I had to stand up for me.
3. I then had to care about those feelings, and nurture them, consider myself someone I wanted to love and care about. (NB: caring about the thoughts I have about myself is as important as caring about my physical body. If I want my body to be well and pain-free I need to feed it healthy food and exercise it, so if I want my mind to think clearly and be able to make good decisions I have to feed it positive thoughts that are supportive of me as a person and constructive to what I want).
4. Once that had been achieved, the limits and boundaries came naturally. I could think more clearly about what I was and wasn’t prepared to do to please others. I started automatically considering myself in all my decisions: factoring in my own wishes and desires.

From there on out I factored myself into everything I did – something that people who have integrity don’t even have to consciously do.

“Boundaries are a part of self-care. They are healthy, normal, and necessary.”- Doreen Virtue

It’s not easy to work all this out. We all have to find our own routes into this. I definitely didn’t have a full understanding of integrity until I understood what limits and boundaries were (and that I had none) and how to set them. It took active action.

I would look up information about how to set limits and boundaries and write out what I wanted mine to be and focus on them. I had to stop myself and ask myself whether I was going along with something to please someone or if I genuinely wanted to do it, especially whether it would be a decision that I would regret later on down the line.

I would also ask myself, what would happen if I said no here? Often the result of saying no to something was a lot easier than my guilt had led me to believe.

Learning to say no is part of building self-esteem and self-worth, thus coming full circle. Integrity is knowing your worth and not compromising it.

“Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.” - Barbara De Angelis