Gaslighting Yourself

Many people gaslight themselves when it comes to their own emotions. This episode talks about how to know if you are doing that and how to stop. 

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Beat Provided By https://freebeats.io
Produced By White Hot
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Transcript

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Welcome to drop the bags, bitch, the podcast where we talk about healing from traumatic marriages and divorces. I'm your host, Melinda Gerdung, certified life coach, domestic violence survivor and THE divorce coach for women who want to get over their ex and live their best life. Hey, my friends, how's it going? So there's something that I talked to my email list about that I want to talk a little bit more here because I think it's really important. So I was talking to a friend this week, and she's also a coach, and she's working on building her business. And it's been kind of slow going. And so she was telling me about this group, this coaching group that she's a member of on Facebook. And she was telling me about it. And then she said, Oh, this is going to sound so bad. But sometimes I get really jealous when I go in that group and see people that are really successful. And then she went on to say that she's trying to make herself go in there instead and look at them and tell herself that they should be her inspiration instead, and that they prove that it's possible. And I found this to be really baffling. And I think firstly, because I don't buy into the premise that jealousy is bad, and that we shouldn't be jealous. I think that jealousy is a natural human emotion, the same as any other emotion. And it's really not any better or worse than any other emotion. Right, like, emotions are just vibrations in the body. That's it, there really isn't one that is superior or inferior to the other. I think we get so confused because we equate reacting to an emotion with feeling it. But you can feel jealousy without taking it out on anyone, like feeling it doesn't do anything. Right. It's when someone is unable to tolerate their own emotions that they act out on them. Which ironically, I think you are more likely to do when you are judging an emotion as good or bad. And the second issue that I have with this is that I think whenever you are telling yourself that you shouldn't be feeling a certain way that you are invalidating your own experience. I think it's essentially gaslighting yourself. Right? Like how many times in your toxic relationship were you made to feel like your feelings were wrong, because your feelings aren't wrong, like all your feelings are valid, all of them. And I think when you try to suppress or deny them, that it becomes an internal reinforcement that something is quote unquote, wrong with you. And I think that's when shame enters. And that's when feelings of unworthiness and not good enoughness come in. And I think this tendency people have of shaming themselves for feeling certain things is perpetuating trauma within themselves. I think that is way more damaging than feeling the vibrations of jealousy in your body, and certainly longer lasting. And I think it's a colossal waste of time to beat yourself up for being a human and having a normal human experience. Like how about some damn self compassion instead? Like, of course, she's jealous of those successful coaches. It's something she really cares about and is important to her. Like, it's something she really wants. Of course, she feels that way. There's nothing wrong with that. I had an experience with this recently as well with anger, which is another emotion that I think gets shamed and suppressed a lot. So every once in a while, I'll remember something from my childhood, and I'll just get really angry about it. Like some of the things my mother did to us as kids were just really fucking awful and like had a huge damaging impact. And sometimes I get really pissed about that. And so this latest time, I was pissed about something that I remembered and my knee jerk reaction was to try to talk myself out of feeling that way. Like I started to tell myself Hey, it was a long time ago. You can't change the past what good does this do like total dismissiveness. And then I realized no, when someone hurts a child there is supposed to be a pissed off adult to deal with. In my case that pissed off adults showed up like many years later as adult me, but there's supposed to be someone angry about a child getting hurt. Like this is the first time it's been right. My anger is the first time it's been Right. That child version of me deserves my anger. It's supposed to be here. And it's really hurtful to dismiss your emotions. Like, have you ever shared something really personal with someone and been like really vulnerable, and then just blow it off? Like it was nothing. I certainly have. And like that hurts. It hurts when you do it to yourself to every time you try to tell yourself that you shouldn't feel the way that you do, you are doing that to yourself. And it's really hard to develop a good relationships with yourself while you are doing. Like so much of healing is repairing the relationship that we have with ourselves. And I think this is a big part of it. I think an important part of healing is to start honoring and allowing yourself to feel your feelings and to be with yourself with compassion for that experience. And so I would invite you to think about this week, what emotions you might have been not letting yourself feel. And how can you start to accept that part of yourself and be a friend yourself in those feelings instead? Anyway, that's my challenge for you this week, should you choose to accept it? Until next time, my friends be well. Hey, my friends. If you're ready to get serious about your healing, I have a video of exactly how to recover from a toxic relationship. You can download it at Melinda Gerdung coaching.com/subscribe. See you soon