Stop Self Abusive Thoughts. Come into your Full Glory!

Everyday I talk to people who feel lost. Some days it is I who is grasping. Funny enough, it is usually the most giving people that find themselves feeling the most downtrodden. What is common among all of us? Self-abuse through negative self-affirmations. Self-abuse damages confidence and inhibits the ability to receive love - and it is powerful. Are you self-abusive? Do you say any of the following on a regular basis:

I am too fat (or skinny).
My (body part) is too (pointy, long, ugly, stupid, etc).
I'm never going to find a partner who loves me.
I am stupid.
I make bad decisions.
My home is ugly - a reflection of me.
If only I could be better...
I don't deserve love.

Maybe some of these sound familiar. Maybe they all do. The truth is, you are a divine, beautiful, perfect human exactly as you are! There isn't any one else just like you in the whole world. We hope you will see that someday, because life is too short to live with someone who is constantly hard on you, even if that is you.

Whether you are tall or short, skinny or fat, rich or poor, all of us experience overwhelming feelings of self-doubt and self-dissatisfaction. Some of us even believe this cruelty is the reason we continue to succeed. Do we also realize that it is the reason we continue to feel alone?

If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't giving to yourself. -Barbara DeAngelis

Self-care and positive self-affirmations are the most necessary, yet most often neglected actions, we can take on a daily basis. We spend much of our time doing for others. We work at jobs where we follow directions, we have families we feel the need to appease and we often throw ourselves into relationships, spending the majority of our time thinking about someone else - or how that someone else views us. Our own needs and desires often come after these external obligations. So, if you, like thousands of others out there, are asking "Why wasn't I better? "Why haven't I found the one?" or "Why is my life so cluttered?" Maybe its time to take a look at how YOU are taking care of yourself.

Why Self-Abuse Isn't Motivation:

When feeling of worthlessness increase, we cease loving ourselves. When we stop loving ourselves, we begin to doubt or question the intelligence and validity of those who do love us. This can increase feelings of jealousy, possessiveness, and fear on a massive scale. Love heals. If we can't love ourselves, we can't truly accept love from others and we inhibit this healing from saving us.

Self-abuse also increases problems with emotional eating and over-exercise. How many times have you punished yourself with one extra hour at the gym for eating dessert or given yourself the gift of a whole bag of Doritos after a hard day at work? Behavior that is motivated by self-abusive thought simply reinforces negative patterns. If you saw how beautiful you were right now, perhaps emotional eating would cease to be a problem, and you could really hear what your body was craving.

Allow me to repeat myself. If you don't take care of yourself first, you will never be able to take care of others! When we don't feel that we deserve to take care of ourselves, many areas of our lives can suffer, adding to the sense that we're not being nurtured.

How Wellness Suffers from Negative Internal Dialogue:

Of all attitudes, self-hatred and neglect cause the most harm. They prolong the feelings of depression, and in some cases make success practically impossible [Was 10 pounds less ever enough?]. As your emotional wellness starts to suffer from negative affirmations, the rest of your world begins to bear the weight as well. Here's how we've seen it play out: