It’s hard to know how to self soothe, if we were never soothed as a child. We now know our brains grow and develop dependent on input from those closest to us. This is wonderful for children with loving parents but a potential nightmare if your mother was not sufficiently soothing or loving towards you. If we are never soothed by a parent we do not know how to self soothe; how to comfort ourselves in difficult times; how to comfort ourselves when feeling depressed or just in need of some loving. Those people who had a loving mother are able to soothe themselves, to love themselves out of bad moods or uncomfortable situations. So what do you do if your mother never soothed as she might have done? It is important for you to know that it is very difficult to soothe yourself or comfort yourself, so admire yourself for trying. Then recognize that you need to teach yourself how to self soothe rather than looking for some one else to do it, as that ultimately leads to dependency and a sense of inadequacy. One way to learn to self soothe is to buy a doll that looks like you and to try to hold that doll and love that doll as you would like to be loved and held. This is very hard if you were not loved enough, please don’t give up on the exercise, it may take months to even buy a doll, let alone hold it .Ring us at Heal For Life if you would like the doll exercise. Then try something else, Just stroke your arm lovingly – right hand stroking left arm, can you do that??? The harder it is, the more you need to do it, and if you are repulsed by the thought, it means your brain doesn’t even believe you can love yourself, your brain believes it is not OK to love yourself. Another idea is to watch daytime TV or watch shows about happy functional families and see what they do to care for each other, what they do to be loving towards each other and give that same loving to yourself. Start each morning saying “I am lovable”, “I am doing a great job of living”; congratulating and loving yourself. Again you may find this very hard and if you do find it difficult... do it MORE!!!! If it’s easy, then you don’t need it as much! We can all overcome any childhood adversity. Sometimes however, we need to learn very basic tools that other lucky people were taught by their parents. Don’t give up; it will be hard because your self-belief system is programmed to be negative about your ability to succeed. I repeat, Don’t give up and as always when you need to or when you find the going too tough, come and do a healing week so others can help you on your journey. It would be great to hear from any of you about how you have learnt to self soothe.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 00:19:04 +0000
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