It's fascinating to watch young babies as they discover themselves. Their whole bodies seem to radiate, to vibrate with delight and joy in the moments when they discover their fingers or feet, shake a rattle, splash in water or set a mobile in motion.
Young children, too, if they haven't yet been damaged, are openly, unabashedly delighted with themselves. They seem full of joy-proud, thrilled with themselves for what they say, what they do, what they make, their made-up songs or dances. Their glee in just being suggests that this easy, unself-conscious enjoyment-of-self is our natural state, our true birthright.
For those of us who grew up in certain minority cultures (e.g., African-American or Jewish), praising, openly acknowledging or simply feeling and acting full-of-oneself was seen (often quite validly) as an endangering invitation to retribution, punishment, malevolence, misfortune and violence from the larger collective (or the “evil eye”).
Those of us over thirty grew up in an era when the conventional wisdom of the larger culture held that praise was likely to “go to a person's head,” to encourage both conceit (swell-headedness) and a tendency for one to “rest on one's laurels.” We learned that feeling excited with oneself and/or openly showing that excitement was evidence of socially unacceptable swell-headness, of “getting too big for your britches.” We were often warned, “pride goes before a fall.”
And, many of us have had damaged mothers and/or fathers whose critical competitiveness has taken these pervasive cultural biases even further. Unwilling, and perhaps unable, to acknowledge or to celebrate anything about who or how we were or what we had accomplished in the world, they instead offered endless criticism and dismissiveness.
It's no surprise, then, that so many of us have toxic and persistent inner voices that diminish, undermine and disparage much of what we do and how we are. These inner critics serve to “keep us in our place.” We feel cautious, constricted and self-deprecating in the moments that we might otherwise have felt expansive: joyously full-of-ourselves and delightedly self-affirming.
My own emotionally crippled mother died when I was just 30. Still, her life-long, damaging mean-spiritedness toward me continued to live on in such an internalized disdainful voice, a voice that I've called the “Hatchet Lady.” (See Criticizing Yourself, Loving Acceptance and Doing Better, for more about this and her.)
It wasn't until my mid-forties that I actually began to emerge from living under the Hatchet Lady's constant tyranny. Yet, my ongoing struggles with her profoundly influenced how I worked with clients, from the earliest days of my graduate school psychotherapy practicum. My painful and bitter experiences had allowed me to know just what we who've suffered in these ways might need to help us to heal ourselves. I spent my first twenty years as a psychologist dedicated to helping people find the permission to be more loving, gentle, accepting and acknowledging of themselves than I myself had yet been able to be. I could foster this permission in clients, friends and even in grumpy or mean service people. Despite my ability to teach it, I never seemed able to trust in or to feel that I was allowed to receive or accept for myself that same permission-to-be. For so many years it was clearly a case of “we teach best that which we most need to learn.”
I witnessed the ways my clients found to tell themselves negating, unforgiving, demoralizing stories about who and how they were being in their lives. It was all so familiar to me from my own parallel inner process. I learned to invite my clients to look for ways to tell the stories that would give them the benefit of the doubt. I encouraged them to find the stories they might tell about those same experiences and struggles if they were consoling a beloved friend who was upset and hurting over similar experiences or struggles. As they continued with this reframing practice, they gradually developed the capacity to bring that same compassion to themselves. Though so many of them grew to look more kindly, lovingly and unconditionally at themselves, I continued to berate, find fault with and be unremittingly ungenerous with myself.
I helped my clients to acknowledge the tiny baby steps along the way of their journeys. They were learning to celebrate these small bits of progress that they had always, before, dismissed and demeaned as insignificant. Still, I continued to belittle my own progress as negligible.
I encouraged my clients to see, acknowledge and even marvel at their persistence, their willingness to hang in there with themselves. I fostered their capacity to develop an appreciation of the miracle of their courage as they struggled. They learned to have this appreciation of themselves even in the middle of the most difficult, slow and challenging passages in their unfolding. Still, the standards I held for myself left me always critical of my own ways of being.
Toward the end of this most disheartening period of the Hatchet Lady's reign, a friend told me about a creative arts therapist with whom she had starting working. She described a session in which she had, scribbling intently, covered sheets and sheets of paper with angry red and black crayon and pastel. Then, while shouting ragefully, she'd torn sheet after colored sheet into jagged confetti. Afterward, she and the therapist processed the experience and came to the end of their session. Then, my friend got to leave the therapist's studio without cleaning up any of the mess she'd made.
Some deep part of me started shouting Yes! Yes! I didn't really understand why this felt so right to me, but I knew I needed to call the therapist and to try working with her. I reached her the very next day and had a session with her before that week ended. It was such a right and profound choice. This intuitive, gifted woman was able to be for me what I had been for my own clients. She continually and effectively encouraged me to give myself permission to be my very own self, just as I might be at any moment. In her studio she offered the safety and unconditional acceptance I had never before been given. (Or, perhaps, never been given in ways that I could trust and be ready to let in.)
In some fantasy work-while dreaming to music-I discovered the tiny, exuberant, radiantly joyful, nakedly vibrant little being that I had been before the early damaging experiences had begun. I felt her breaking free into my consciousness and I adored her. I couldn't imagine being anything but loving and fiercely protective of this precious creature that seemed to know just what she needed, just what was right for her. I could really hear her. I wanted nothing so much as to listen to and to take really good care of her. (For the story of this process, see The Little Ones Journey.)
Taking this little one home with me I began, at last, the journey I had been teaching my clients about for years. I started becoming a fiercely protective, compassionate, unconditionally loving mommy to all the parts of my self. I could no longer allow the Hatchet Lady be mean to these vulnerable parts of me. I even began to work with her, to talk with her, to find out what she needed from me in order not to be so awful toward me.
As I practiced mothering myself in this new way, I continued meeting with the therapist over a period of almost three years. The little one and I called our intermittent meetings with her “our play therapy.” It was wonderful to have someone who not only had such magical and creative toys but also was clearly delighted to have us come and play in her space. It was amazing to have permission-for what seemed the first time in our life-to make messes that we didn't have to clean up.
It's been a long, slow, layer-by-layer process to come to a place where, these days, I can almost always delight in myself all the ways that I am (even when I'm in the most crabby, whinny, pissy places). In the more than 20 years since I first met the little one inside of me I've been living the practice that, before then, I could only teach to others.
It never ceases to amaze me how much more richly we all grow and flourish when we work on being kinder, gentler, more loving with ourselves; when we practice being more accepting and-in the safe spaces we create for ourselves–more permitting of all the ways that we are. We all deserve this kind of treatment from ourselves, as much of the time as we possibly can give it. And, we deserve it most especially when we seem to think that we probably don't deserve it at all.
Consider treating yourself with exquisite kindness and acceptance.
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
If you'd like a deck of your very own to support you in your journey, click here to download Order Form.
Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you!
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