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.





View all my reviews

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

Book Review: I'm Ok, You're Ok by Thomas Harris

I'm Ok, You're Ok by Thomas A. Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My therapist in my 20s used the sequel to this book - Staying Okay - as a basis for the tools he taught me to deal with past traumas and events that still affected me, so I was aware of Transactional Analysis, or the concept of Parent/Adult/Child before reading I'm Ok, You're Ok.

I was daunted at the idea of reading this book, as having read many self-help books, some can get very bogged down in the language and terminology, but I found this refreshing and surprisingly easy to read and understand, especially considering it was written in the mid-60s. Thomas Harris uses a conversational narrative which helped it flow.

I found the breakdown of the chapters clear and succinct. The author starts by explaining the concept of Parent-Adult-Child (PAC), which are states of mind that we move between. The Parent comes from the recordings in our memory of things our parents have said to us as children, and the Child is the emotional side of ourselves that feels and reacts to things and is often the victim. The Adult is the rational between the two, which enables us to find a balance so we don't berate ourselves or others with the voice of our Parent, or overreact or create drama from our Child. The mindset we are in can affect our interaction and communication with those around us - our Transactions (hence Transactional Analysis) and understanding which of the mindsets we are in can enable us to improve our interactions.

The author then explains how this works within marriage, referencing a book called Games People Play by his colleague and founder of Transactional Analysis, Eric Berne. And then with children, moving through the different age groups. He uses examples of his own experience as a therapist, giving dialogue and real interactions. I found this helped me understand how it can be applied.

The last couple of chapters in the book felt a bit like fillers to me as he discusses his own thoughts on topics of morality and how this system can be used globally. Some areas were dated - the author has no idea of how much society will change from the time he first wrote this to now, and it reflects in some of the examples he gives of working with clients. Although his views in some areas were quite progressive for the time, in particular about religion. I can imagine religious people might be offended by this book, or dismiss it due to some of the things that Thomas Harris has to say about the dogma and doctrine of religion and how it can be destructive, as it restricts people's ability to question and be open minded. I personally agree with his view on these topics.

I am rather excited about re-learning this system of analysis, and can immediately see how it can help me relate better within my marriage and with my children, although it would be nice to train properly in it. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have become as widely used as the author had hoped and speculated, which is a shame because many people could benefit from this system of relating and understanding both oneself and other people - particularly people like myself, who have suffered trauma and have very contaminated recordings from their childhood that affect them on a daily basis.

Should you be interested in a brief description of this method before delving deeper into this book, I found one here - http://changingminds.org/explanations...

View all my reviews

Book Review: It's All Mind: The Simplified Philosophy of A Course in Miracles by Edwin Navarro

It's All Mind: The Simplified Philosophy of A Course in Miracles by Edwin Navarro
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is a summation of another book (A Course in Miracles). And from what I understand it does this quite concisely. My problem with this book is less about the writing than it is about the content. I am not religious & don't believe in or subscribe to any dogma or doctrine relating to the bible, so putting the context of this summation in a religious framework doesn't work for me.

I am spiritual however & cross paths with the idea that we are all one energy & that love & compassion is the key to a happy fulfilled experience in this life. But I am cautious of the concept that what we see externally is an illusion & there is no physical world & that it is all perception, & this is our ego trying to separate us & make us think we are seperate & not a part of something greater, & that is why we experience pain & loneliness.

They are interesting concepts - but for me that is all they are.

If you are religious maybe this book might offer you something, but for me it is far too wrapped up in 'God' & too rigid in its ideas which are based off someone (whoever wrote A Course In Miracles) having a psychic experience they have interpreted in this way.

View all my reviews

Trust issues: how to resolve them & be more you

Do you struggle trusting people? 

Are you never sure if they are going to support you?

Do you second guess the decisions you make?

“Trust is earned when actions meet words.”- Chris Butler

I’ve spent a lot of my life being unsure about the people around me. I want to trust them but I don’t know if I can. I pledge myself: my loyalty, my time, my care, my interest, but time and again I am let down, disappointed and hurt.

For me it started within my own family, first with my mother and then with my sister. Being family I automatically trusted them to love me, to care about me, be there for me and be supportive of me. And when their actions and their words said otherwise, I believed that it was my fault, that I was doing something wrong. So I’d remain open and trusting, leaving myself open to more abuse, allowing the cycle to repeat itself. 

I knew with my mother early on that it was her and not something I was doing, so I took steps to limit the contact I had with her once I left home, reducing the toxic effect on my mental and emotional health. I did, however, have moments where I thought it was safe to ‘let her in again’ only to find that I was mistaken. By the time I started my own family I had learnt to keep a tight control on how much I interacted with her, which continued until her death.

With my sister it took many more years to realise the extent to which my trust was being abused. My sister had been someone I could turn to about my mother, but I realised that although she showed me one face, she showed another to my family, telling them private things I had trusted her with, as well as claiming I had done things I hadn’t. When I refused to continue tolerating this, it created two large show downs over a span of five years, and resulted in a breakdown and physical stress-related injuries, which led to me choosing to disconnect for about 10 years, only my mothers illness & imminent death brought an end to it, but only when she unexpectedly acknowledged her behaviour & apologised. 

“The only way to win with a toxic person is not to play.” - Unknown

Looking back, I realise that the abuse of my trust and the self-blame I put myself through had been going on since I was a young child. It affected my ability to form and create lasting relationships and friendships. It caused me to second guess everyone around me, breaking off perfectly good friendships and in some cases withdrawing entirely, especially from social interaction. 

I reached a point where I knew it had to change. I couldn’t continue to live in isolation, emotionally and physically. So I asked myself, how can I change this? How can I start trusting and being open again? 

I understood the reasons behind my problem, but I needed to heal from the trauma of it. I had taken the first step by removing the people who were toxic to me, but how did I risk exposing myself to other people who could be potentially toxic too?

I found the answer in the dictionary:

Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of someone or something. 
Synonyms: confidence, faith, belief, sureness.

And the person I had to have confidence, faith, belief, and sureness in was myself. 

“Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.”- Benjamin Spook

I realised that trust is like seeking approval: you can seek it externally but only once you give it to yourself will you start to live the life you are looking for. 

If I started to trust myself and be sure of myself, then it didn’t matter what the people around me said or did, I knew I was there to support me and care about me. If they wanted to as well, great, but I no longer needed to worry about trusting them, because I could trust myself.

But how do you start going about doing that? 

It starts by listening to yourself: hearing how you feel about something, hearing what you believe about it, and being honest with yourself. 

“Listen to your own voice, your own soul. Too many people listen to the noise of the world, instead of themselves.” – Leon Brown

I don’t mean listening to the chatter of negative thoughts in your head, I mean listening to your heart. 

Be still with yourself a moment and ask: 

How do you feel about you?
What do you want to do with your life?
Who do you want to be?
Who do you really believe you are?
What are the things you love?
What are the things you hate? 

Listen to the answers.

All of us have an inner child:  a version of ourselves inside that still feels as we did when we were a child. Sometimes that child still feels sad or upset or disappointed by life and people. We need to nurture that child within, comfort them, and love them. Listen to their feelings, believe and trust them. Because that child is us. 

“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?” – Danielle LaPorte

I then understood that the inner peace and calm I was looking for came from connecting to my feelings: listening and believing them. Being honest with myself meant that I could trust myself to live my truth. I no longer second guessed myself and thus the people around me. I knew who I was. I no longer had a desire to alter myself to suit others: if they weren’t happy with who I was then they didn’t need to be in my life. 

And as an added bonus, as a result of trusting myself, I gained a sense of security within myself, of self-assurance and self-belief, and the feeling that I was OK, so everything around me was OK. 

Why don’t you try it? Surely no one is more deserving of your trust than you. 

"The more you trust your intuition, the more empowered you become, the stronger you become, and the happier you become." - Gisele Bundchen

Book Review: Your Aura and Your Chakras: The Owner's Manual by Karla McLaren

Your Aura and Your Chakras: The Owner's Manual by Karla McLaren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was very interested in reading this book to clearly define in my mind the meaning of each of the Chakras and this book did do this. It also gives information on Aura's and how to ground yourself. I found this interesting and very helpful. Karla McLaren goes into detail about how she goes about doing all these things.

My only difficulty I have with this book, and have experienced with other writers of these types of metaphysical things, is that she writes as though what she does and how she does it is the only way and is kind of fixed and factual. To me it is individual and each person perceives things in their mind their own way. As someone that does energy light healing in colours, although I found Karla's methods interesting, I chose to pick and choose which pieces worked for me, and used my own interpretation of some of the things Karla talked about.

I did learn a great deal from this book however, and would definitely return to it for reference.

View all my reviews