Mindful Living

I had felt ashamed of myself since a young age. My parents certainly did the best they could, but you can’t heal what you don’t name- they felt ashamed of themselves, and just passed those feelings onto their children. Shame is a negative emotion, for the most part. There are times when we should feel ashamed (such as when you call others names, deliberately hurt someone, etc), but most of us feel ashamed way to often, and it becomes a way of being, versus a passing feeling. If the shame starts to cause us to feel inherently bad about ourselves, it has taken over. It is no longer just a feeling, but has us in its grip. When we internalize the feeling that there is something wrong with us, we have problems. We all do things wrong make poor choices, say things we don’t mean, etc, but at our CORE, we are OK-worthwhile beings in our own right, who occasionally make mistakes. But when life or other people tell us otherwise, we tend to believe them, at least as children. We don’t have the fi...

I see many people who carry wounds with them into adulthood often because they were "different" as children/teens. How difficult it is to not "fit in"? To be made fun of because of our weight, clothes, lisp, height, teeth, naivety, etc. So many times our physical features are what we are made fun of about, and it smarts. I have seen people with complexes about chest size, feet size, bone curvature, teeth- things we have absolutely no control over. I will see a beautiful person in front of me, both inside and out, but they don't see what I see. And our work begins! In some cases, we feel stronger because of the adversity- we are stronger in our beliefs and enjoy being our own person with our idiosyncrasies. And how wonderful that is when it makes us stronger inside and more OK with ourselves! Do not believe the negative things you were told about yourself! All it was, was people who were deeply wounded hurting others because they didn't know what to do about ...