When we’re born, we learn about the world through the people close to us. If our adults tell us Santa is real, we believe them. We only stop believing in Santa when enough of our peers or enough of our media content gives us reason to believe something else. If the systems that we’re born to teach us the world is out to get us, or that human needs are a character flaw, we’ll believe that too.
The systems that I was born to – family, religion, class, culture, race, education, etc. – gave me a certain view of the world. My purpose was to be submissive and subservient. No one was interested in my point of view. I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. My security would only be found in a man finding me desirable. I could only keep that man through having babies and sex on demand. Demonstrating feelings made you crazy. Drawing attention to yourself invited ridicule. Sharing strengths or talents was rude because it threatened the hierarchy. Any abuse or harassment you experienced was actually a compliment you invited. Or it didn’t hurt the way you said it did. Or it didn’t happen at all.
When I did have experiences with people from outside of my system, I found it so confusing. Therapists would encourage me to live up to my biggest self and I’d look at them like they were asking me to play in traffic. One of my first therapists asked me why I was looking to my parents as a “Human-o-meter,” and I stopped midsentence wondering what else a parent would be for if not telling you about yourself.
Therapists who didn’t understand made it hard. Some would get frustrated with me as if I was “non-compliant,” while I’d get frustrated with them for not seeing that what they were talking about just Did. Not. make sense from my social location.
It took me a long time and a lot of work to transition from the life I was born to, to the life I built for myself. I spent a lot of time in therapy and learned all the cognitive reframing tools, and I spent a lot of time opening up to the world beyond what I had inherited and discovering that there was a lot more out there than I had been told.
Reframing is basically just looking at things from a different point of view and seeing how that changes things. Like: Is she bossy? Or does she have future leadership potential? Did you get sick because you manifested it? Or because that’s what happens to human bodies?
To make actual, sustainable, lasting change in your life, it’s got to go to the source: the thoughts behind the choices you make. I have learned that most people who struggle with self care tasks do so because they don’t believe they are worthy of that kind of care. I know that was true for me, and it’s true of so so many of us.
Of course you can’t just DECIDE you are worth care. You can’t just DECIDE you love yourself. That’s spiritual bypassing. Pretending. White knuckling. That is a band-aid, not a cure. It will fall apart the first time you’re tested, and leave you feeling more shame than when you started. Like any other relationship, you GROW to care.
When I started my surgical recovery, I was about a year out from leaving the high demand religion that made up my whole heritage. I was cynical and broken and needing to rebuild my life – and my belief system – from scratch. So one day at a time, as slowly as my skin knit back together, I hauled out some ancient belief lurking in my brain and examined it from my new point of view to see if it was going to come along for my new life.
I put these different mindsets to the test as I healed and kept only the ones that yielded productive results. That set of new approaches became the Mind of Body Loyalty.
Take Your Body’s Side
You are your own advocate. We are rewarded for ignoring, minimizing, and denying our human needs. But when you take your body’s side you choose to sacrifice that reward to care for yourself. Take the perspective of your body and examine what it has gotten you through. Then stand up for it.
Start Sarcastic
You don’t need to have a ‘positive attitude’ to start getting health results. Behavior and self care is what counts. Showing loyalty is more effective than professing love.
Conduct Experiments
Effective self care choices are based on what yields individual positive outcomes, knowing that trial and error will always be part of the process as body needs change.
Validation Over Minimization
We have been encouraged to disconnect from our bodies’ sensations and cues. The way back to your body is to change that habit from minimizing your cues and needs to validating them.
Nothing is Just One Thing
Every self care choice affects each of us differently. Food, movement, medicine, solutions. Even aspirin treats us all differently. There is no way to be “right”. Different solutions will work at different times. You just have to meet your needs.
Care Builds Trust
Self love is not accomplished by declaring it. You love people you can trust to care for you. Including yourself. Care leads to trust which leads to love.
This set of mindset approaches couldn’t be more different than the worldview I inherited. I was taught to see the world in a very black/white, right/wrong, us/them kind of way. But that viewpoint caused me immense pain. In the privacy of my own head I am intimately aware of the ways I fail by that standard and I spent so much of my life hating myself for it.
But just because someone tells you Santa is real, doesn’t make it true. When I found a way to make room for the full complexity of human experience, I also found a way to make room for myself.