Rejecting the Lies I Told Myself
I am enough and so are you
TW/CW: mentions of childhood sexual abuse
I have lived life not treating myself well.
That realization came tonight as I was reading “I Came All This Way To Meet You: Writing Myself Home” by Jami Attenberg. A line from the book drew my attention.
A great lesson: When someone tells you not to bother dreaming, they’re not on your side.
— Attenberg, “If I Came All This Way To Meet You”
I have not been on my side.
I have belittled myself, not believed in myself. I have thought about myself in ways I wouldn’t think about most people. I have believed lies about myself. The lies are probably familiar to anyone reading this that survived childhood sexual abuse. They read like a litany of self-negativity.
And those lies I believed, what are they?
I believed I wasn’t enough. I was damaged goods. I wasn’t worthy of self-love. I have told other people not to believe those lies about themselves, yet I believed them about myself.
There is something about sexual abuse that causes negative beliefs about oneself. Those beliefs hang around until being exposed. This past year, I chose to expose them to the bright light by writing them down in my journal. Every time I wrote down a lie I believed about myself, I also wrote, “I reject that lie.”
You Are Enough
I first heard the phrase, “you are enough” in a tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) meditation on The Tapping Solution app. And what is tapping, you might be wondering?
EFT/Tapping is a brief intervention that combines elements of somatic stimulation, exposure, and cognitive therapy — and you use your own fingertips to do it. In short, it involves quick, repeated light-touch on specific acupressure points — or energy “hot spots” — to restore balance to the body’s system.
— Michele DeMarco
This tapping session was one of those “aha!” moments in my life.
Something inside of me lit up like a Christmas tree. I realized that I never felt like I was enough. I began doing the tapping meditations on that issue over and over.
I still have negative thoughts that run through my head. Maybe we always do. I suspect that is the truth. We live in a world where negativity is all around us. What is different now is that whenever I do, say, or think something I am not proud of, I can say, “I love myself anyway.” I can conjure up enough self-love to ward off self-condemnation.
Through tapping, I have been able to teach myself that I am worthy of self-love.
Be On Your Own Side
Are you racked with negative thoughts about yourself? Do you hate yourself? Take a few moments and breathe deep. Write down what you think about yourself, and then write down, “I reject those lies.” Choose to be on your own side. Choose self-love.
Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. If you can’t love yourself, how can you love others?
