Nothing Needs Fixing

We spend so much of our lives trying to improve ourselves, fix ourselves, and become someone better. But what if the problem isn't that you're broken? What if you've simply forgotten who you are?

In this episode, we explore mirror work, the labels we carry, the roles we adopt, and the critical voices we internalize. Through the metaphor of the diamond, we look at the possibility that beneath the shame, expectations, and conditioning, nothing essential has been lost. Can ever be lost.

What if the journey is not about becoming someone new or someone better? What if it is simply about remembering who you have been all along?

Unmask. Awaken. Live.

Transcript

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Hello, I'm Madley and welcome to Cake for Breakfast, a podcast about the joy of remembering who you are, discovering what you truly want, and giving yourself permission to live it, to go for it, even if that means eating cake for breakfast. Welcome. Today we're going to talk about mirror work. Louise Hay coined this term, and it's really, really important. It's what the mirror shows us, what you see when you look in the mirror. And questioning for a moment if what you see is a true reflection of who you are. My hope is that by the end of the session or by some time in your life, you can look in the mirror and realize that nothing needs fixing. In the words of Richard Bach, nothing needs fixing. This has at its roots the diamond theory. Remember, I spoke about us being born whole, perfect, like a diamond. This diamond is quite like a fingerprint, actually, because each one is unique. This diamond has all its different sides, which can be the qualities that we are born with, and it reflects light. It is just a reflector of who you are. But then we are shamed by society, oftentimes by well-intended parents, by humans, other humans, and expectations, and we start to hide. Gunk covers this beautiful diamond, and after a while it loses some of its shine. The diamond is not lost, it's just hidden, hidden underneath the gunk. And after a while we forget we are the diamond. We just see the di the gunk, and then we start playing roles, pretending and forgetting that who we truly are is a magnificent, glorious, reflective diamond. Last time we spoke about the roles, the roles that we are cast into by others, and some of the roles that we choose ourselves according to who we are and what our personalities naturally slot into as we grow up. We also looked at labels, these labels that were thrown to us with Valcro on it, and then oftentimes unfortunately stuck. The label of being the difficult one. The easy one, the funny one, the demanding one or the not demanding one, the clever one. Sometimes even the stupid one, the ungrateful one, or the one that is never satisfied. These labels are often from our are often from our parents, but they are often from siblings as well. And then it's carried on. It's very, very difficult. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance in siblings to see us as anything else than we than the way they saw us when we were children. I often find a lot of my patients come in with difficult relationships with siblings, saying to me they are so frustrated because the sibling has a way of seeing them. And whenever the family gets together, they are just cast into these solid roles again. And oftentimes siblings or parents can't see that you are not that person anymore, who maybe you have never been that person. And it causes a lot of a lot of difficulties over family gatherings. Um, I'm very busy over Christmas time. Reflect for yourself how many of your friends, maybe yourself, you see that have a really difficult time at Christmas because we're forced back into these roles and relationships that don't necessarily work for us. If you're not one of them, then I'm very happy for you. But it's the exception, unfortunately, in my experience, that is not the rule. So we if we look at these labels, we must understand that these labels can be positive, but then even if they are exceptionally positive, there still is the pressure of having to live up to them. I know that that sounds very strange, but if you are seen as the positive one and the funny one, what do you do if you hit a depression? Do you feel safe enough to show it to those closest to you? Or do you feel obligated to carry on with the role and pretend like nothing is wrong? It sometimes makes me nervous, still to this day, if my friends give me too many compliments. I start becoming a little uncomfortable. It's not an easy position if anybody puts you on any form of pedestal because we want to please inherently. That's part of human nature. And then suddenly you think, oh my goodness, don't see me as all of this. I can be very difficult and I can be this and that. And I often tell my friends, please, please, please, don't see me as this. I can be exceptionally grumpy, but don't put me on anything. Um, and I try not to do that with my friends as well. It makes us nervous because in that diamond, it has all different sides. I'm not going to call it positive or negative, but all different sides. And it is very difficult if we think people expect us to just be certain sides of the diamond. And then these labels can obviously be very negative, and they then become the internalized mixtape that we spoke about, the critical voices telling us that we are not good enough and that we will never amount to anything. And the goal through all of this is not to judge, not to judge any of our qualities, not to call it anything. The goal is to find acceptance for all our qualities. So if we look in the mirror, it is just really important that we see the different roles. We recognize the different labels. We recognize this critical voice as well. We do not immediately try to resist the critical voice, because oftentimes when I work with clients, they start to recognize the critical voice, which is a wondrous thing. But then you know that old English expression, whatever you resist, persists, or try not to think of a pink elephant. If you resist it too much, you make it stronger. You don't resist the critical voice or the mixtape. The trick is just to become aware of it, that there is a voice in your head that is not necessarily you. Even questioning it create already creates distance between you and that voice. There's a voice in your head that's not necessarily you. And then you ask yourself if it calls you unworthy, or if it calls you difficult, or if it calls you not satisfied or ungrateful, just stop for a second and just question it. Just ask yourself, am I truly this? Am I truly this? Because the goal is to realize all the aspects of yourself that you truly are and to accept them. I read somewhere that all suffering comes from not accepting yourself or reality exactly as it is. But that's a very big statement. So in this mirror work, I want us to let some attention fall on never calling yourself out loud or in your head the negative names. We are so quick to do that. If you do something and you immediately think, oh my goodness, I shouldn't have done it, look how stupid I am. And some people actually say that out loud to themselves. They perpetuate this idea of not being good enough. A lot of work has been done in terms of affirmations as well. You will have heard of it. I think it is an amazing tool, but I also believe our brands are not stupid. So if you have questioned yourself in terms of, say, for example, being ungrateful, you cannot just say in the mirror to yourself, I am very grateful, I am very grateful, I am very grateful, if you do not truly believe it. So affirmations are an important part of this mirroring process. But please make sure that they are true. Go for affirmations like I am worthy if you believe it. If you have gone through difficult times and you're still standing there to look in the mirror, please tell yourself I am strong for just surviving, I am resilient, I am brave for even looking myself in the eye. Also look at things like if you were called never satisfied with anything, you will see I use that example often. That was one of my labels, never being satisfied. Maybe just change it slightly. If that is true for you, then just go to I strive for more. For example, if you were called demanding oftentimes, just give it a positive twist. I know what I want. Right? So affirmations are very good, but make sure that they always are true. And start very small at the beginning. Um, if you haven't done this work and you feel very uncomfortable with it, just find something, even if it's something external in yourself that you like. If you like your eyes, go into the mirror and say, I have beautiful eyes. And just do that until you recognize something else about yourself that you truly appreciate. I just want to touch on the roles that we spoke about last time as well. And I feel that it's really important to say that if you start looking at the rules and you truly want to shift them, I think seeing some kind of therapist in this is a very important part of it. Because the roles become part of how you see yourself. It's almost like the scaffolding that holds up this identity of yourself until you realize the diamond in the center of it. So we just don't want to take a sledgehammer to the scaffolding immediately because that identity has served you over many years, probably. So even if a role is not true, you have spent a lifetime building an identity around it. Um, and there's oftentimes a need attached to these roles. For example, the caretaker role, by now you may need to be needed. So we just can't take the role away. We look, we need to look at the need behind the role. So if we look at all of the roles, my advice would be to ask yourself, is this role currently working for me? In my life as it is right now, is it working for me? And then if it isn't, if it is, then great. If it is not, we may have to look at it and just adjust it slightly. Like we said, these roots, these roles have their roots in your childhood. But it's also very important to realize that they embody a very positive intent for you. This is actually exceptionally important. All of the different roles come from a very good place inside yourself, whether you believe me right now or not. We love our parents. A child is born into the world loving their parents. They adore them, even if they are abusive parents. And that is why so oftentimes you see when a child is taken from a home where there is abuse, the child just wants to go back. They want to go back because they truly and utterly care for the parent. They cannot believe that something is ever wrong with this figure that we have put on a pedestal above us. So if something is not wrong with a parent and they treat us badly, we believe that something must be wrong with us. Now as an adult, we can start questioning it. We can ask ourselves, what if nothing is wrong with me? What if nothing was ever wrong with me? And that is why therapy is so important, because you can hear how deep-rooted these roles are. So if the intent is positive, let's just take a quick look at some of the roles and see what the intent, the positive, loving intent of who you truly are, we're behind them. If you were cast or chose the Euro role for yourself, a good question to ask is who did you want to rescue back then? Look at your life now. How are you projecting it onto your partner or your children? Do you want to rescue them now? Was there a parent that was sad or lonely or depressed that you just wanted to help? And remember, these thoughts are not conscious. We are not aware of them. It is just an instinct for a child. We just feel like we want to help. But at the root of the root lies the caring. And isn't that a lovely way to look at yourself? Even if we look at the helper role, you want to help. Which parent did you want to help? Were you possibly parentified by them? Did you feel like the parent? But the intent is still to make better. And now you are in the helper role, and like we said last time, you're sometimes giving up yourself and not of yourself. And I once saw a podcast with Gabor Mate that really touched me. He said, if he said his um supervisor, I think, spoke to him about his need to help. And he said, if you have to choose between guilt and resentment, always choose guilt. And I had to think about that for a second. But if you think about it now, if you look at a situation and you want to help, if you didn't help, will you feel guilty? If you did help, will you feel resentment? So always choose the guilt. I now use that as a barometer for myself because I'm very much a helper, a little bit of a hero, very much you can hear, and a lot of a helper. So I use this as a barometer. If I look at my if I feel myself wanting to help, I ask myself, is say, when I help, when I do this, will I feel just good and free, or will there be resentment involved in it? And if there's a resentment involved, then I stop myself. So you can hear, I'm not moving away from the helper or this is intrinsically who I am, but I'm questioning it. I'm asking myself, is this truly and honestly what I want to do in this moment? So celebrate these intents behind the goals. Celebrate the fact that you wanted to help. And then the helper, as we said last time, also has the tendency to fall into difficult relationships where they are taken advantage of. And then understand that the empathy behind it is so positive. You have this empathy, you feel for others, but also distinguish it from my term toxic empathy, where you excuse bad behavior because you understand a backstory. So, in all of these roles, look at it as not fixing a role, just becoming aware of a role, and then consciously choosing whether you want to adopt them or not. Is this me? Do I will I feel resentment if I do it? Is this making me exceptionally tired? Or does it bring joy to my life? Question it. Question is this my instinct to do it, or is this just habitual patterning? Am I just used to do it? Another important question is is it fear or love making me do it? Fear would involve who am I if I am not doing it? Will everybody still accept me if I step out of this role? And it's not necessarily an unjustified fear. If the helper suddenly stops helping, there might be some resistance around you, family members and friends that are used to you being the one to step up. What happens then? So it's not unrealistic, but you've got to ask yourself, what am I willing to give up for this? And is the acceptance true if it is based on what I can give? Even if we look at that mascot role, look at the positive intent. I just want to make somebody happy. Possibly your parents were depressed, and you just wanted everybody to lighten up. The lost child. Oh my goodness, the lost child's intent would be they are carrying so much. Let me not be a burden, let me not be a bother. Even the scapegoat, the most difficult of the roles in society's eyes, their intent is positive. The scapegoat just wants everybody to wake up. The scapegoat wants to free them all, sometimes to the extent that they even pull the anger towards themselves so that it doesn't go to other family members. So the goal of today is to see you, for you to see yourself in the mirror for who you truly are. And ask yourself the question or just open yourself up to the possibility. What if I am inherently beautiful? What if I do not need fixing? What if all of my qualities are acceptable? Please find something you love within yourself, even if it's one thing, and tell yourself that again and again and again. Please find some one thing that you want to do truly and give it to yourself. Give it to yourself, even if it is cake for breakfast. Thank you.