abusive relationships

I hate myself – Part 1

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Not the sort of phrase you’d expect to find in the Self Love Academy central.

Do you hate yourself? I do. I hate myself with passion.

I literally can’t stand myself. Furthermore, I hate myself back.

How can that be?

If you are one whole entity, how can you possibly hate yourself?

One miserable family

There is this thing called splitting. It is 100% real even if it’s not proven by the scientists, even if it’s not material splitting, it manifests in the material world with an illness, an accident, or another unpleasant occurrence.

My mind, my body and my spirit are splitting – I am not one whole entity.

I am the mind that hates the spirit, the spirit that despises the mind, and the body that plays a role of a child being torn apart by its divorced parents.

The mind is the father: rational, controlling, strict, pragmatic, busy, ambitious, punishing, righteous, arrogant, ego-driven.

The spirit is the mother: fragile, kind, gentle, emotional, feeling, timid, artistic, free, eccentric, empathetic, powerful, loving.

The body is the child: incapable of making its own decisions without its parents, dependent, suffering from the conflict in the household it can’t escape.

Although the father is arrogant, in reality he hides his deep-seated humongous insecurity.

Although the mother is fragile, she cannot be controlled forever due to her inner strength and the magnitude of her power.

Although the child is dependent, its parents cannot ignore its suffering for too long.

That has to live together

No matter how much misery runs in this household, they cannot escape each other.

They are a family, a unit. They constitute a person.

However, and unfortunately, if they don’t find peace, their unit will be breaking down.

I have realised it fully only recently. I am working on finding a compromise.

I can no longer be the “dog in the burning house saying it’s ok”.

If the house burns down, I will go down with it.

The backstory

When I was a child, I would often sit in my wardrobe and call myself horrible names, and cry.

I would tell myself that I am nothing, I’m nobody, no one loves me, no one understands me, it would be better if I didn’t exist at all.

I’d bully myself like that.

And I’d believe myself, and cry.

Where did it come from, I was only a child and no one really bullied me in real life?

That’s when it began to manifest itself, and I started to split into pieces.

When I grew up, I was weirdly feeling well and happy with myself but only when I was on my own.

And I’d turn into a total complete chaos in a relationship.

It was so easy to lose myself, get dissolved in another person, in the interaction between us.

I felt as if my partners were my crutches, my armour, my door to the world.

Unfortunately, I found myself in a relationship shortly after leaving my parents’ nest.

And after I broke up with the first person, three months later, I was in another ship.

From one nest to another, and 14 years later, I’ve been single for 3 months of my adult life, which I spent crying over my first boyfriend.

I’ve been feeling as if I was in some kind of mental prison.

If you take away one thing from this whole post:

It’s not healthy to jump into a relationship unless you’ve already got a good understanding and sense of who you are.

Self-Love Academy

That prison is not material but it’s very real to me.

I remember sitting in the apartment and literally looking out of the window, as if it was a prison cell window.

I feel it physically. My mind is holding my spirit hostage, and I’ve been emotionally abused by my mind.

Kind of twisted, right?!

The manifestation

My mind doesn’t get along with my spirit, to say the least.

They are way too different. How my freedom-loving, deep and old spirit ended up in a body with such a rational, controlling and ruthless mind is beyond my understanding. You know there are so many artistic, eccentric people who are a bit out there and they’re not ashamed of themselves. But I am.

This has resulted in a physical illness.

My spirit has been suppressed for way too long, and it’s started to try and break free, causing pretty exhausting and debilitating symptoms in my digestion. Heartburn is my joy killer and my body’s way of telling me that it can’t stand conflict for years and years.

Only recently I finally realised with full conscience that I’ve been splitting, and I can no longer filter myself, no longer let my mind rule the house, but I also cannot give in to a different extreme of my spirit ruling and my mind suffering.

In real life, if you have an abusive partner who tries to prove his / her worth through bullying and suppressing you, you can just leave. I can’t leave my abusive partner because he is me.

I have to learn how to make my splitting parts love each other, and help each other, and forgive each other.

The solution

I don’t have one yet. I know what the end result should be: harmony. Forgiveness. Peace. Love.

I don’t quite understand how to get there, when so much has gone down between the two of me.

I will figure it out though because there is no other choice.

Therapy, hypnotherapy, energy healing, diet, exercise, living and trying to practice harmony, meditation, supplements, changes in lifestyle – I won’t shy away from anything because there is no other choice left for me. My body – the suffering child has had enough and deserves to live in happiness and love rather than conflict and tension.

P.S.

I hope that for some of you this has been helpful, or insightful.

You are your own love, your own hate, your own problem and your own solution.

You are not one whole entity until you learn to love and appreciate every part of your being.

Physical illness is not just a doctor’s issue, it’s your body’s way of trying to restore balance.

Listen to your body, and make changes to your mind and spirit.

With love,

Self-Love Academy

Malignant shame

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Malignant shame and how to overcome it. Photo credit: cottonbro on pexels.com

I want to share something that has been hurting me my entire life and perhaps it might be relatable.

Shame and guilt.

I grew up witnessing people take advantage of my parents’ kindness and generosity. Whether it was their money, time, help, positive emotions – they used and abused it.

I don’t want to paint too dramatic a picture but it did affect me to the point that at 31 years of age, I feel incredibly stressed around people who I think might take advantage of me.
It is hard for me to trust people and I only want to do good things as long as it’s not at the expense of my own well-being.

When I was growing up, and guests would come visit (the kind of guests who I knew were not genuine), I would stay in my room refusing to come out and say hi.

Yes, it was a form of anti-social, weird behaviour.

And my parents shamed me for that big time. They used the word “nekrasivo”, which roughly translated from Russian means “impolite”.

Needless to say, I felt inadequate. I questioned whether I was doing the right thing or whether they were correct in calling out my actions. But I couldn’t make myself pretend I liked them. I just couldn’t. I still can’t pretend, all my emotions are written in bold caps lock all over my face and in my body language, my energy.

Many years past, none of those guests is our friend now. They got what they wanted and never had another reason to talk to us. Some of them were our relatives, some – friends, colleagues, business partners.

Yet my inadequate antisocial behaviour stayed with me. And instead of my parents I now have other people around me shaming me for that, saying I’m not “normal”, I’m not adequate, I’m impolite, I’m rude, I should be ashamed.

And it is true that I need to own up to my actions and admit that I don’t always treat people nicely because of my childhood. I am excessively cautious, sometimes excessively nice and then abruptly distant.

I need to work through it with an expert because it does affect my life and relationships with the loved ones, I might be hurting people’s feelings as a result, too.

However, I refuse to be shamed. I refuse to accept that I am an inadequate, antisocial, rude human being.

I refuse to feel guilt – taking responsibility is not a problem at all but feeling guilty for the pain I carry inside like every other person is not something I can subscribe to.

Instead of feeling guilty and ashamed, take responsibility. Don’t look back, look forward. You are enough.

Self-Love Academy

Nobody knows that I am my own biggest critic, harshest judge, that I sometimes drown in self-doubt especially after doing something that has even a 1% chance of hurting someone else.

There are still a lot of things I can improve about myself, and things I can get rid of as they’re not a genuine part of me but an acquired habit.

And I want everyone to know that while we may be imperfect and make mistakes, hurt others’ feelings unintentionally as a result of our own inner struggles, it is not really us. It’s our baggage. We at the core are enough, we are perfect.

And the more we accept ourselves as perfect and enough, adequate and normal, the better we become. No matter what anyone says or thinks, the only way out of shame, guilt and misery is knowing that I am enough. I am normal. What I feel is normal.

The only way to have a good relationship with the world and everyone in it is by accepting yourself the way you are, knowing yourself and cutting yourself some slack.

And accepting others as well, they are just the same.

I don’t identify myself with my acquired fears and emotional baggage. I do need to get rid of it because it’s not me, but the less I hurt myself the less I hurt others. The less I allow thoughts like “I’m rude, I’m weird, awkward blahblah”, the less I am any of those things. Instead, I can change the narrative to

“I’m empowered to be better and to let go of the fears that control me”.

Malignant, useless, unfair shame is not something you deserve. You deserve love, and, most importantly, self-love.

Sincerely Yours,

Self-Love Academy