You’re in an abusive relationship with yourself

How do you treat yourself? Do you find yourself blaming that less assertive, innocent and soft spoken part of yourself whenever you’re under stressful situations? Do you use buzz words like ‘Stupid’ ‘Dumb’ ‘Hopeless’ ‘Pathetic’ and a slew of other synonyms for ‘I hate myself’ rather frequently? Well, if you do (and please for the love of God say yes, I really need to feel like I’m actually not dumb…damn it! I did it again, didn’t I? I’m so stupi…nope. stopped myself ), I’ve got news for you. You’re in a toxic relationship. Not with another person, but with yourself. Quite the mind fuck, isn’t it?

Think about it. How do you choose a partner to be in a relationship with? The first criteria, atleast for me, would be that I actually like spending time with the person. Isn’t that so obvious? Then why oh why do we hesitate to apply that same criteria to the relationship we have with ourselves? When you don’t like spending time with yourself, when you never want to be alone in a room- just you and you, when the only time you actually connect with yourself is when you need to throw a little pity party…You’re abusing the shit out of yourself.  And the funny thing is, you can break up with a significant other all you like, but how do you break up with yourself without…well, you probably guessed where I’m dragging this metaphor to.

So, what’s the probable solution to this mess of a situation? It’s easy, really. You find the things that you like about yourself. The things you do when you’re alone that truly makes you proud of yourself or just fills you with joy- and you crank that motherfucking lever up to max. For example, I like my speaking voice. I love hearing myself speak…but I’ve never been a big public speaker. So what do I do? I talk to myself. Whenever I can. Whenever I’m working on a write up, I keep saying the words that I’m typing; outloud. Whenever I’m reading a book with dramatic passages and colorful dialogues, I read it aloud. Whenever I have a really intense emotion I’m stuggling with, I talk it out with myself and before long, I find myself smiling and laughing at my own silliness, at my own humour, at my own goofiness. And just like that, the person inside me isn’t scared of me anymore. She loves me, and I love her and we’re in this together.

Man, this article’s just been a huge clusterfuck of pronouns. I hope you made it this far with a few braincells still intact.

Love always,

Prady 💕