Changing Your Relationship With Yourself

As children, we are just taking in the world.

Believing other kids and their stories on the playground.

Trusting our siblings and what they tell us.

Learning from our parents, grandparents, and the people around us. 

Everything is a fact, and we don’t have the developed prefrontal cortex to question what we are taking in.

We don’t know how to take in the good and leave out the bad. We don’t know at a young age that our parents carry their own wounds. Or that the kids on the playground are full of it. Or that what your siblings told you was a joke!

So we learn seemingly truths that don’t serve us or even make sense.

My grandma would give the dog a piece of bologna and tell me she was changing the dog’s tongue. It took me years to learn she was teasing. I seriously thought, as a child, she was changing the dog’s tongue!😂

As we grow older and mature, it becomes our job to begin to question these beliefs and make sure they hold up when questioned against our values and what’s best for us.

What I see happening is that we take these beliefs into adulthood, and they become the very thing we go to therapy for.

They are so painful they need all this attention, medication, and millions of soothing unhealthy behaviors we must do to keep this pain at bay.

These are not easy to uncover without an experienced coach. They are so hidden and intertwined with who we believe we are that they don’t get questioned.

In our minds, it is just a fact.

This is by no means a complete list, but these thoughts are not uncommon.

Wounded people raised us because EVERYONE carries wounds. Our human love is tainted because of these wounds.

We all parent based on the needs we didn’t get met or what is important to us.

Instead of seeing what the individual child needs, we parent through our own wounded lens. If some of your kids are similar to you, they will feel less wounded than completely different kids.

This isn’t parenting advice but more just how the world works and why we need to do our work, not blaming our parents.

As an adult, you must question your beliefs.

That is what maturity looks like. It’s taking full responsibility for what you think and your choices.

It’s not doing what your parents did even though you don’t agree or want that.

This is hard work.

It feels like a family betrayal. It feels like you are going to die.

But if you don't, here's what happens. You begin to war against that belief.

You rail against what you were unknowingly taught instead of just letting it go.

Instead of holding onto the fact and being angry, disappointed, frustrated that it wasn’t what you thought it should be, you just let it all go and choose what you want to believe.

If you grew up believing our family struggles with weight and we aren’t skinny people, you might fight against that belief insisting you will be thin. Working out constantly, watching every bite you eat, obsessing over the scale, and constantly thinking about your weight.

When what you could believe instead is, “I eat healthily and am naturally thin. Eating garbage and too much food doesn’t make me feel good.”

Then live your life this way. 

That is how we do this in coaching. Not by dieting, deprivation, or willpower, but by changing your relationship with your body, food, movement, and all your beliefs.