Happy Friday!
This week in Singapore it’s a short work week with the public holiday. I hope you enjoyed your time off. Did you think about your feelings? Did you become aware of any feelings that you may have been labeling as good or bad? What was that like?
In dealing with loneliness we must learn about ourselves. Most people who feel lonely are often alone. Other times, you may be lonely but have many people around but don’t feel connected to them or perhaps not at easy. This is often a product of ineffective or lacking boundaries.
We have been discussing boundary develop to help you feel more confident to move outside of your comfort zone to address your loneliness. We have also talked about becoming aware of our feelings as indicators of boundaries and how we want to be treated.
The next step is to become aware of how much you like or dislike yourself. For many people who self-describe as having low self-esteem, they are also suffering from not liking oneself. Does this seem like an unusual concept to you? Or are you able to recognize it.
IF you struggle to like and accept yourself, not only will this be hard to create healthy boundaries, but it will make it difficult for you to relate and feel comfortable with other people. Our ability to understand ourselves and all our imperfections that make us human, make it easier for us to relate and accept other people with the same human imperfections.
So, reflect, how well do you know and like yourself? What parts of yourself are you most accepting of? Do you find that you struggle to name anything good about yourself? If you do, how do you think this affects your ability to relate and interact with other people?
If you find that you can name some good aspects, but the bad outweighs the good, how does this affect your confidence to meet and interact with people? Do you often struggle to find why someone would want to be with you?
As human beings, we are instilled with the ability to have a huge range of emotions, feelings and thoughts. We have an immense capacity to learn and develop. We also have a huge memory capable of storing all the knowledge of our life. Unfortunately, not everyone is getting the best experiences or lessons of life. In childhood, you may have gotten message about your being. Did you get messages from your parents, family members or friends that aspects of your being were bad or not acceptable? How did you make sense of that? How did you address those issues? Most importantly how do you think that is still haunting you today?
As children, we are dependent little beings who are imperfect. We are being raised by imperfect parents. Many times, parents do not have the necessary information or skill to help little people deal with their imperfections. Children may get messages that aspects of their being or personality or wants or feelings are bad. In turn, that child may start to accept that and reject parts of themselves. Does this resonate with you?
For this post, think about the message you got as a child from your parents, siblings and extended family about who you are? Did you feel liked and accepted? Did parts of you get messages that you are not acceptable or bad? How did you deal with it? How does that affect you today in making relationships? How does it contribute to your sense of loneliness and self-esteem?
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