My *Complicated* Relationship with Myself

Ok so I ask that you bear with me initially in this episode, as I find my feet and direction of thought.

Today I talk about self esteem. Having self esteem has not always been something I’ve had the privilege of experiencing. I’ve worked hard and managed to build a more secure base of self love for myself over the last few years but I do find myself still in spirals of doubt or convincing myself I’m not capable. 

This shows up ten fold in dating for me. Something I know others also experience. Almost like me in isolation, on my own and single, is fine. I am secure in myself and my capabilities, I’m fine with pushing myself and getting rejected by job opportunities or new friends because I am able to detach my self worth from that situation. However, the minute someone is placed in the ‘potential boyfriend’ category, I lose sight completely! Im working through it, as you see in this episode, but I wanted to share as it is a genuine thing I’m currently navigating and that’s what this podcast is all about. I hope you enjoy ♡ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to A Curious Mind. Today's episode um I have a couple of like I have a few things that I would like to open up and explore, but I also don't want it to be too structured because I just feel as though I've been feeling a lot recently and I feel like I'm I could potentially capture something quite authentic in today's episode and I would like to honour that um and so yeah this is this episode I I can feel that this episode is going to be quite intimate maybe and um personal um which is scary but I think but I've been you know I've been able to do that in the past I think that because um I'm feeling it currently it feels a little bit more raw but that's kind of the whole point of my podcast is I just want like if my younger self was to stumble upon my podcast I would want her to feel as though there are people out there that are going through things similar to what she's going through um feeling things similar to what she's feeling navigating the feelings and the life experiences and um and that's the beauty of life and that's the beauty of the of living and so I think that I think that I might capture that quite well in today's episode because I feel like I'm currently in a moment um I reckon I'm gonna end up calling this episode self-esteem which I've alluded to in the past but is something that I've massively struggled with my whole life it's something that I've um I've very much fought with and it's really funny because I used to really struggle with self-esteem as a whole so I would like I would struggle with like my academic self-esteem at school I would struggle with my body image like the way that I looked self-esteem I would struggle with my self-worth um I just felt as though I was constantly like on the outside of society looking in and I think in all I think that for me to make sense of it you know I would I would blame myself for those feelings you know you're you're too much or you're annoying or you're stupid or you're not enough and it was all of these like labels and um ways that I would justify why I felt so on the outside of everything but I'm really I'm coming to terms with the fact that like I was never on the outside I was there with everybody and I had just as much of a right to be there with everybody and people like me and people value me people love me people respect me because I'm just me because that's all I am and that's enough and that's not something that I need to improve or manipulate or make better me being me is enough. And so I've hugely hugely changed my relationship with self-esteem around and I mean like pursuing my career in becoming a therapist and taking that leap and making that change um massively helped my self-worth because I am pursuing something that I know I can do well at I know I can be good at I know I can be great at and I know that I can help and that has hugely hugely helped me with my my self-worth um and I would say that I over the years have really worked on my friendships and and that kind of relationship that I have with people in my life and um knowing what I am worthy of when it comes to friendships and being quite discerning with friendships and not just making space for any type of person in my life because um like I want to like feel that like abundance of love and attention from several people and you know I have been there and I have had that but it actually it it was quite empty and I realized that what suits me is like less quantity and more quality friends you know people that I can genuinely rely on and um relate to and experience and not be judged and so that's been a process as well um but I've really really struggled with my self-esteem when it comes to romantic relationships I um I've done so much work on myself over the last few years and I feel as though I've done work on myself over the last few years in isolation to the work that I've needed to do when it comes to dating and being with somebody and having a relationship like a romantic relationship with someone and it's so funny because it's probably the thing that I've read the most about like I understand the theory behind it all and I've watched so much stuff because it fascinates me. I find love and relationships fascinating um but when I'm in it I I just lose I lose all sense of self I lose all like all of the toolkit and like all of the all of the things that I've um I've worked on and I've really you know strengthened within myself when it comes to self-love and self-worth feels as though it just goes out the window when I start to like somebody romantically and so it's like I go through like a thousand ego deaths and that's so un like it's not fun it's unpleasant it's painful it's kind of ugly um but it's also really beautiful and I'm in that right now like I'm currently feeling that right now I feel as though my logical rational adult mind is just not able to s to overcome the child within me that is that yearns for validation and love and it comes up when I'm dating one person and so I feel as though it's that person that is bringing these feelings out within me but it's not that person it's me it's my relationship to relationships it's my my my way of processing these relationships that comes up for me when I start to feel those feelings you know like the biological changes when you're getting to know somebody the feelings you start to feel the future you start to envision the imagination like your imagination goes crazy and um the exploration and the vulnerability and the intimacy and all of those things cause this like hurricane within me that um causes me to to lose rationality to lose direction and I've been doing a lot of reading into this because I can't quite understand like how I feel so out of control when I know the theory I know logically I'm being irrational but I can't I can't quite grasp myself and my feelings and so yeah I've been doing a lot of reading into this and the funny thing is I made an episode a little while ago on um the confessions of an overthinker where I spoke about being too much and now I understand that that feeling of being too much that fear of being too much stems from me having an anxious attachment style which you think that it could like your anxious like your attachment style is how you attach and relate to all types of relationships but what I'm actually starting to realize it is is it's it's exclusive to romantic relationships. Um now I don't exactly understand why it is so solely exclusive to romantic relationships with me but I get how this too much has come up for me in the past and how painful it was in past relationships to feel that way because of this anxiety that I I I have I've noticed that in isolation like on my own single without a crush without like you know any kind of romantic relationship going on in my life I feel pretty secure for the most part like I feel quite confident in myself in my abilities I feel like you know I know what I'm deserving of I'm you know I'm I'm actually like I'm I'm in a good place with myself but the minute I start to relate to somebody else in a romantic sense it's like the the concoction of all of the imagination and the exploration and the intimacy and the stories and the vulnerability and the oxytocin you know and and all of these things that that come from like the initial stages of dating the combination of that with my logical mind just like creates a hurricane within me that I can't seem to like grasp I can't seem to like sturdy my feet and understand like what direction it is that I'm supposed to be going in and so I just yeah I I just I I lose sense of self and I try so hard to come back and I almost berate myself and I judge myself because I'm like you know what look at you like look at what you've done look at all of these amazing things you've achieved and you've accomplished and look at all of the amazing people in your life that love you so much um like why are you losing yourself and your mind over these over this person that you barely know um the minute that I almost categorize that person in my mind as like a potential partner rather than a friend like I I I just I just look at the situation in such a different way and I yearn for validation I yearn for attention I yearn for like for them to tell me that I'm okay we were doing um we were doing some work um in therapy school last week and the week before on uh a modality of therapy called transactional analysis which is all to do with how we transact with each other like a transactions between people and um one of the things that um that there's like um a grid that my tutor brought up that was like different states that you can be in there's four the first one is I'm not okay and you're not okay so this is the person that is like consistently just like down about life about the world about everything going on they are really sad and upset and probably depressed and nothing in the world is going right and everything is just like awful you've then got the I'm not okay and you're okay which is like must be nice kind of like I'm not okay but you're okay so I you've got a better life you're in a better place than I am must be nice kind of approach you've then got the I'm okay and you're not okay which is somewhat like contempt I guess right so it's like you know you you need to do some work to get onto my level and like you know yeah contempt and then the last one which is the ideal one is I'm okay and you're okay we're both fine like I'm fine with myself you're fine with yourself I like you you like me I respect you you respect me like we're fine and what I find is that for the most part in my life I'm in I'm in the I'm okay you're okay state I I used to not be like this I used to very much be an I'm not okay you're okay in all of my life but for the most part I would say like I'm okay you're okay I don't I'm not competing with you I don't like I'm really happy for you if you do well I'm here for you if you don't if you're if you're struggling like but we're okay we're fine you know we're figuring this life out and we're doing it in the most gracious way that we can um and that's okay but the minute I get into any type of romantic relationship with somebody I instantly turn into that I'm not okay and you're okay like I something is wrong with me something is so deeply wrong with me how the hell could this person ever want to relate themselves to me and then I start to almost question their judgment I question their judgment of like why they would choose to relate themselves to me and I go down this spiral of I just break myself I just look at all of my ugly angles and I shine a light on them and it's it's so awful like it's so unfair it's so unpleasant it's really it's really just not constructive at all and and it almost makes me not want to get into a relationship with anybody because the thing is is like it doesn't actually matter who the person is that I'm relating to I just have this pattern of doing of of relating myself so no unless I start to break the pattern like it doesn't matter who it is that I will be dating I'm gonna carry on in that I will I will just copy and paste this process and I so badly want to change this I so badly want to like identify and work through and I genuinely feel like I'm in a place currently in my life where that is happening like I am identifying the fact that I do this and I'm trying so so hard to work through but it's like a compulsion it's like I can't I don't have the strength sometimes to override this anxious spiral that comes up and this self-deprecation that I that I just I instantly jump to and yeah it's like oh like if any if anyone can relate to me like even in the smallest way first of all I am so sorry that you're going through this and you're feeling this because oh my god it's actually crippling sometimes but if you do relate to me and if you do feel similar to me it's not your fault it's not your fault we we we create all of these these methods of of self-sabotage because it's familiar it's what we know and we protect ourselves from pain and from hurt potential pain and from potential hurt but we don't in the end because we end up feeling it anyway I'm in pain and I'm hurting at the moment like it's just completely caused by me you know um and if it was caused by somebody else there might even be an element to it that might be a little bit easier because there's a lack of control there. If you choose not to relate to me if you choose to stop the relationship that you want with me even though in my mind that is quite literally the worst thing that could happen but actually when I work through it if I'm dating you and you turn around out of the blue with no explanation and say I don't want to be with you anymore. It would almost be a relief. Because I'm like, okay. That's your choice. Like, I can't, I'm not gonna sit here and beg you to change your your your mind. It's probably a you thing. And so then it relieves me of the responsibility of the feelings that I'm that I feel towards this person. Does that make any sense? I don't know if I've made any sense up until this point. But it's like because this person is consistent and seems healthy and seems good for me, I'm then trying to find any reason as to why this is definitely not the right thing for me. Because I don't deserve something like this. Fundamentally, I do not believe that I deserve something like this in a romantic relationship. So I'm gonna read a little part of a book that I read not too long ago called Tuesdays with Maury. I really really recommend this book, it's so beautiful. My friend Holly got me onto it because our friend Emma got Holly onto it, and it's a tear jerker, by the way. Don't even know if jerk is the right word, it's a tear streamer. But I'm gonna read this section from the book that I think is just really beautiful. So it's from pages 102 to 104. I'm gonna read a little part of it. Um so for context, Tuesdays with Maury is about a guy called Maury who um sadly um gets ALS disease and is slowly and painfully dying. And his um former student Mitch comes every single Tuesday to spend time with Maury and to learn as much as he can from Maury in his last few days. Um so this is like the context. And this book is written from Mitch's perspective. Um, and I I'm not like I'm not uh ruining the book by any means, it's literally like um it's like literally the first few pages of the book, but I would seriously seriously recommend I would really really recommend reading this book if you're okay with reading about death and and whatnot. Right, I'm gonna get onto it now. Um The small horrors of his illness were growing, and when I finally sat down with Maury, he was coughing more than usual. A dry, dusty cough that shook his chest and made his head jerk forward. After one violent surge, he stopped, closed his eyes, and took a breath. I sat quietly because I thought he was recovering from his exertion. What I'm doing now, he continued, his eyes still closed, is detaching myself from the experience. Detaching yourself. Yes, detaching myself. And this is important, not just for someone like me who's dying, but for someone like you, who's perfectly healthy, learn to detach. He opened his eyes, he exhaled. You know what the Buddhists say? Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent. But wait, I said, aren't you always talking about experiencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones. Yes. Well, how can you do that if you're detached? Ah. You're thinking, Mitch, but detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you're able to leave it. I'm lost. Take any emotion, love for a woman or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from your deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions, if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them, you can never get to being detached. You're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief, you're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in all the way over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is, you know what love is, you know what grief is. And only then can you say, Alright, I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment. Maury stopped and looked me over, perhaps to make sure I was getting this right. I know you think this is just about dying, he said, but it's like I keep telling you. When you learn how to die, you learn how to live. To fully allow myself to feel the fear of abandonment, the fear of not being enough, the fear of not being pretty enough, funny enough, intelligent enough, old enough, young enough, good enough, the fear of being alone forever. That's probably what it is. It's the fear of being alone forever and not finding the right person. And I think that if I allow that fear to really penetrate me and to really feel that, then I can finally detach from it. I can finally detach. Because I wasn't thinking about not being chosen by someone, not being with someone for the rest of my life. It was somewhat of a dream in the distance. But now that I'm in it I'm in a situation with somebody, and I'm scared that I'm gonna lose them, even though I barely know them, these fears of a lonely future start to wash over me. So I guess I need to just sit with them and let them wash over me and let myself detach from that fear because it's a familiar feeling. And it doesn't serve me. Being scared of being alone for the rest of my life isn't something that serves me. Because if that is what my future holds, that can still be beautiful, because I won't be alone. Because I have so many people that love me around me. And in fact, when I have not been alone, when I've been in relationships in the past, that is sometimes that they have been some of the times where I have felt most alone because you're with somebody that you're supposed to feel so attached to and connected to, and you don't. So it's like you're lying to the world and to yourself and to that other person. You feel like a farce, you feel fake, and yeah, that's quite an unpleasant feeling. So maybe yeah, maybe I need to just sit with that for a little bit. I know I'm not the only one that feels this way. I am sorry if you do feel this way though. It's not nice. But I encourage you to perhaps explore what that underlying fear is and sit with it, journal about it, talk about it with people you love and you trust, your therapist. Um let it penetrate you fully, let you let yourself really experience it, and then realize that it's a feeling, and like Maury says, okay, this is fear, step away from it. Alright, it's just fear. I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is. Alright, that's my moment with loneliness. I'm not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I'm gonna put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world that I'm gonna experience as well. Detach. I love it. I love this book. This is only one of the thousands of gems. Thousands thousands of gems in an a hundred and eighty no thousands of gems in an a hundred and ninety-two page book. It's an amazing, amazing book. Yeah. Allow it to wash over you. Give yourself permission to feel it and let it go and detach and live. You're okay, I'm okay, we're all okay. Thanks for listening to this episode today. I mean, I'm literally in my gym gear. I I needed to I needed to film this episode. I felt quite discombobulated, I felt quite uneasy, but I I felt like I needed to record it. I just I I don't know. And I don't really know how it's come out because I feel like I was almost disassociating for half of it, but um one thing is that it's genuine and it's authentic, so that's kind of all I want. So, yeah, thank you for listening. Um, I will see you again next week. I love you so much, you're okay, and I'm okay, and we're all okay, and it will be okay. I'll see you next week.