I used to kind of crash and burn once a month.  Usually around, well, ‘that time of month.’  I would to limp through whatever responsibilities I had and then collapse into my bed to ride out cramps, headache, body pain, bloating…well, you get the point.  This doesn’t happen any more. 

In my coach training, I was taught the concept of social and essential selves as a way to imagine and describe our individual nature, characteristics and behaviours.  Our social-selves develop in response to our environment.  We learn from our culture, family and peers expected behaviours and attitudes.  The more we adhere to these ‘rules’ the more it appears’ we are accepted. Our essential-selves are the parts of us that come naturally.  The characteristics, likes, dislikes and inherent habits that are core to us, no matter who or what or where we are raised.  This ‘self’ tends to be silenced or edited by all the big ‘social’ noise that goes on around us and by our huge need to belong and be accepted.

But,(a Big But, which reminds me of a joke - only trust people who like big butts, because they cannot lie! anyhoo, sorry, I digress) But, our essential-selves are very clever and will only stay silent for so long.  You may not be aware of it, however, your essential-self will get the attention it needs,(uh hum, like mine did, just there!) to steer you into the life where you are the most, best YOU.  Some examples of these essential-self tricks, patterns and strategies:

1)  Energy Crisis – you are plain old tired.  All the time.
2)  Sick, Sick, Sick – recurring maladies.  You seem to get everything that goes around. Or once-a-month, like me. Or before/after a big event (think Christmas!)
3)  Forgetting – no matter how hard you try, there is just some information you cannot retain.
4)  Bundles o’ Blunders – you trip yourself up.
5)  Social Suicide – you don’t act like yourself – lack confidence and behave or speak in a way that embarrasses you.
6)  Fight or Flight – you are easily angered,defensive, pick fights or you retreat and don’t participate.
7)  Addiction – stuffing emotions with substances or risky behaviours.
8)  Moody Blues – a general lack of enthusiasm.  Bouts of depression or anxiety that seem unexplained.

PAY ATTENTION.  They are clues. These are all signs that you are heading away from your essential-self. Your essential-self hijacks your social-self so that it can no longer just plough ahead. 
We may ‘use’ these strategies to get out of what we don’t want to do, instead of facing up or speaking out.  The essential self does not communicate in words.  It is a signs and symbols type of being.

Maybe I don’t suffer monthly any more because my hormones balanced out, or because of my age, or any number of other reasons, but I do know I have less sickness in general since I started paying attention to my essential self needs and wants and then using my social self skills and understanding to honour those needs and wants.

What are your clues?

Is there someone in your life that constantly irks you?  You talk about how much this person bugs you with whoever will listen, because this person, well, always bugs the H out of you.  If only this person were not so irritating, your life would be so much better.  Anyone come to mind?

The theory is that we focus on things that are psychologically important to us.  In Martha Beck’s “The Joy Diet” book, she offers an exercise to help uncover what’s going on with you and your ‘obsession’ with this person.

The first thing is to Identify said person.  Write their name down.

Step 2:  Make a list of all the behaviours that mildly annoy, to out-and-out make you nuts that said person does.  This is the really fun part. Go ahead.  Get it all out.

Step 3:  Review the list and consider that these are parts of yourself that you either need to incorporate into your own behaviour or accept that these are traits you are denying in yourself.

How does that feel?

You may be obsessing about this person because they are your mirror. Enlightened masters will tell you that you can’t perceive in others what is not in yourself. The things that we judge, condemn or brood on in others is the way we resist things that we believe or have been told are ‘bad.’ 

Of course your enemy may not be morally right and I’m assuming here that they are not a criminal.

When we consider that some of the traits of our ‘enemy’ may be a possibility for us, it helps to get us out of our tight boxes and frees up our imagination and creativity.  It is important to adopt some of your ‘enemy’s’ traits especially if they have or do what you wished you had or could do!  This enables us to start to look for new ways to pursue things we may not have otherwise thought possible to pursue. 

At least, consider that some of the irksome traits that you listed are some of the traits that you possess and use the information to be more accepting of yourself.

My colleague and I were discussing Silken Laumann’s article in MacLean’s magazine about her new memoir.  My co-worker believes that Silken should have waited until her parents died to reveal all of her story, because it was their story too.  I explained that I understood the need that Silken and the many who have written their memoirs may be experiencing to ‘come clean.’  Once you have a platform where you are trying to inspire or change or speak into the lives of others, there is an inner urge to purge.  I know this from experience.  As soon as I offered myself as a Life Coach and began blogging ‘inspirational’ material it seemed all of the dark lurking shadows of all my shame rose to torture and mock me.  All of the ‘work’ I had done previously in various forms of therapy seemed to suddenly not have worked.  What I did was join a memoir class.  The only ‘cure’ for my shame was compassionate witness. I needed to share my story.

Shame is a social-self affliction.  We all experience, well experiences…moments of significance and for whatever reason, whether we are told specifically we are bad or we reach that conclusion on our own, we take in the notion that not what we have done is ‘bad,’ or what was done to us was not our fault, but that we must be ‘bad.’

I accepted shame very early into my life.  Once it set up residence inside of me, I began to collect evidence from almost every ‘experience’ that proved that I was ‘bad’ – deserving of shame.  The shame that most needed to be ‘cleared’ once I started writing my memoir was sexual molestation.  I had never talked about it before.  I didn’t believe it affected me.  It did.  One of many beliefs I needed to give up.  I needed my experience witnessed and acknowledged by others in order for it to cease affecting me in the present.  Shame, to me, is like mold.  It lives and grows and has its way in the dark.  Once it is exposed to light and air, it dries up and blows away. 

The great discovery for me, and for most shame survivors/overcomers is that our inside, essential-self part, remains intact – undamaged.  Our inner core remains our true nature, our true self.  Once all the shame mold is exposed and cleared, the essential self is still there, as it always has been, ready to do and be and become all that it was meant to.  And most of all, ready to assist all the other essential selves to expose and clear their shame mold. I keep a solid white crystal ball that reminds me that my essential-self remains untarnished. 

I haven’t published my memoir.  I don’t feel the need to.  Writing it and having it read was what I needed in order to move through my shame.  I share my stories when they can be of service or help to another.  I am no longer ashamed.