It’s so easy to beat yourself up when you binge eat. Especially if you begin to suffer health complications as a result of increased weight.
“It’s my fault”, you say. “I’ve brought this on myself”.
Except you haven’t.
“One way to encourage clients to accept themselves is to remind them that it is human to err and make mistakes. This will enable them to see themselves as human and learn to replace self-judgement with humility and laughter, rather than being crippled by shame. When clients are able to laugh rather than become embarrassed by awkward situations, they are able to redefine their experience and maintain social bonds. In this way, good-natured humour and laughter has a positive effect in disrupting the cycle of shame (Scheff 1990). Moreover, shared laughter is quintessentially human and a powerful tool for connecting to others.”
Christiane Sanderson, “Counselling Skills for Working with Shame”
Continue reading “Expert Insight: Seeing the Funny Side of Our Mistakes”
I saw a quote the other day that stopped me in my tracks:
“When you keep criticising your kids, they don’t stop loving you, they stop loving themselves”.
Its stark simplicity hit me hard.
It’s absolutely true. If children are criticised relentlessly, they don’t start hating their parents, they start hating themselves.
“Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.” – Alice Miller
“I forgive them”. This is what victims of crime sometimes say when they’re interviewed on the news days, or even hours, after some terrible violation has been committed against them. Perhaps they were brutally attacked. Perhaps someone they love was murdered.
“I forgive the people who did this to me”, they say.
I always feel a sense of concern when I hear this.
Their forgiveness seems so immediate. It makes me wonder what happened to their feelings.
Continue reading “Food for Thought: The Rush to Forgiveness”
Self-trust. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?
Actually, if you’ve experienced a lifetime of self-doubt, it’s more like difficult difficult lemon difficult.
It can be hard to connect to that quiet, assured, trustworthy voice within you.
But it’s there.
You may struggle to hear it, but it’s there.
“Boundaries can be used in two ways – by limiting the actions of the people who have hurt you, and by including the people who’ve shown themselves to be trustworthy. In other words, boundaries prevent harm and allow benefit.
…When a friend proves trustworthy, see that friend again. Risk a little more. Notice when you are treated kindly. Pay attention when someone offers you trust. As you become more discriminating about the people you let in, the spaces of your life will fill up with positive people, and you’ll have less room for the harmful ones.”
Anne Katherine, “Where to Draw the Line”
Often we think of boundaries as a means solely of keeping toxic people out. But, as Anne Katherine explains, they’re also how we let trustworthy people in.
But how do you know who to allow close and who to keep at a distance?
Continue reading “Expert Insight: Filling the Spaces of Your Life with Positive People”
Julie de Rohan 