How To Love And Nurture Your Neglected Self

 Opportunities To Love And Nurture Our Neglected Self

What is the relationship you have with yourself? Are you aware of your inner dialogue related with your self-worth? How do you treat yourself when you're angry, fearful or sad? How we relate to ourselves during our darkest moments shows what type of relationship we with ourselves. Everyone experiences positive emotions when things are going right, but what about when life isn't going according to plan? These are opportunities to love and nurture our neglected self because the disowned self is the one we must come home to. What do I mean by coming home to ourselves? It means creating a place to honour our emotions, especially the difficult ones which call for our attention.

Many people run away from their negative emotions, and I used to be one of them. Besides, who wants to experience negative states regularly? We want to feel alive and happy and negative emotions don't fit into that plan. Or do they? Negative emotions serve a purpose and we mustn't run away from them but deal with them with openness and compassion. Because they are important messengers and running away delays our emotional well-being. Think about the negative emotions you experience from time to time? How do you process them? Do you journal how you feel and notice what they're trying to tell you?

Consider the following scenario as an example of why we must love and nurture our neglected self. Your boss constantly criticises you on your work performance, and you feel a sense of: sadness, frustration and anger. Over time, you bottle these emotions because they remind you of the disparaging comments from your boss. But what if there's an underlying message contained within these emotions? Perhaps by connecting with them on a deeper level, you learn not to take the criticism personally but improve respective areas of your work thus leading to a promotion.

Make Room For Negative Emotions

Emotions are transitory events that come and go from our nervous system, hundreds of times a day. Most people are not mindful of them because there's so much going on inside their heads. That is why we should listen to what is taking place beneath the surface of our lives, otherwise we will succumb to the negative emotions like a tsunami. Connecting with our emotional life means checking in with ourselves to see how we're doing. It means stopping, feeling and listening to what the emotions are trying to convey. A practice I undertake when anger, frustration or fear emerges is to stop what I'm doing and place my hands on my heart to observe my emotions. I sit and feel them, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable they are. I know these emotions will pass, and my job is to connect with them through an embodied experience.

An embodied experience means to somatically perceive through our nervous system, the emotion/s without deferring them. Many people distract themselves via: drinking, drugs, food, shopping, etc. when negative emotions surface. But eventually the emotion will seep through and grab our attention, when we least expect it. Our emotions are our soul's calling card. They don't have an agenda other than to communicate the essence of our true selves. They help us to make sense of life, so we can live in congruency with our authentic self. For example, if you're not receiving adequate love and affection from your partner, your emotions will tell you something isn't right. Some people try to rationalise it by telling themselves their partner is busy at work or has a lot on their plate. But our emotions don't lie because they are the foundation of our intuition, if we care to listen. Perhaps we're afraid to tell our partner we need more intimacy in the relationship? We might fear putting our demands on them will make them think we're being demanding and so we hold back.

Have you experienced something like this before? It might start out as a gut feeling that grows and turns into confrontation because you haven't communicated yourself properly. Therefore, we must love and nurture our neglected self because it is the part of us we need to come home to. The neglected self is the comfortable sofa we lay our weary body after a long day at work. It is the comfy pyjamas we wear on a cold winter's day. But like all emotions, we must also make room for negative emotions and process them with openness. The key is to be with your emotions and feel them in your body. Simply, stop what you're doing, and breathe into that area until the emotion dissolves or transforms.

I did this exercise recently after experiencing anger and tension from a busy day that didn't go as planned. I was sitting down late one evening, looking forward to reading, and was repeatedly interrupted, which led to anger and stress. I remember a thought entering my mind that said: "I don't have time for this right now." In the next moment, I dropped what I was doing and breathed deeply for three or four minutes, whilst moving my awareness to my chest where the anger was situated. What took place moments later was the most exquisite love I have experienced. Its presence was reassuring and comforting and I didn't want to return to what I was doing. I've since experienced many more moments like this because what I learned is that on the other side of our negative emotions is a pure and abiding love that beckons us to come home to. It is this love we must nurture often, instead of neglecting coming home to our true self.

https://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Love-And-Nurture-Your-Neglected-Self&id=10257218

5 Reasons You Shouldn't Fear the End of a Relationship

The pain of leaving will pass. The pain of staying will not.




      

For married couples, it's a good idea to keep working on your marriage when both you and your partner are invested and committed. Otherwise, if you find yourself stuck in the same old dispiriting patterns, you may wish to tackle your fear of change.

Here are 5 reasons why, in some cases, divorce may be the right decision:

1. It is not always better for the kids to stay married.

It is heart-wrenching for many who are chronically unhappy in a marriage to even consider the idea of divorce because of fear that it will forever harm their children. It is important to take children's feelings about divorce seriously, to empathize and help them to talk about how it impacts them (not you). However, the notion that staying in a bad marriage is somehow better for kids is dubious. What is more harmful and even traumatizing to children is spending a great deal of time in a home filled with negative emotion, tension, and chronic conflict. Children tend to absorb these feelings and even believe they are responsible for them in some way. If you are in a chronically unhappy union and eventually make a thoughtful decision to end it, you are modeling for your children that they do not have to be passive participants in their own unhappiness.

2. You'll improve your physical health and emotional wellbeing.

Healthy couples are able to resolve disagreements, where both people feel better about the issue at hand and sometimes the couple can even feel closer and more understood as a result of the disagreement. However, when negative relationship dynamics chronically play out between partners, resentment grows. Before you know it, not picking up milk on the way home becomes a knock-down, drag-out fight. When there is no resolution to chronic marital distress, both partners live in a fight-or-flight state. They may have difficulty sleeping or eating healthfully, or trouble with short-term memory; they may gain weight and fail to go to the doctor or nurture themselves emotionally. Their cup is so full between work, children, and the chronic negative emotion they experience, there is no room for self-care. The toll negative relationships take on physical health should not be underestimated. There is even some research to suggest that chronically negative or abusive relationships can shorten one's lifespan. Ending a toxic union is the first step in a chain of events that leads to taking better care of one's self. 

3. You'll open the door to find a more fulfilling love.

Sometimes working through a difficult marriage and developing greater self-awareness around what your role may have been in the demise can open the door to a path that leads to a happier union. If after thoughtful work on yourself and your own weaknesses and consideration of your partner, you do not notice progress in your marriage, then the longer you stay, the longer you deny yourself the right to romantic happiness. Instead of fearing facing the world alone, fear spending a lifetime with someone with whom you are unhappy. Fear of being alone is not an adequate reason to stay in a marriage and actually increases the misery, as one feels trapped and powerless.

4. The grief will pass.

For some who know they need and want a divorce, the fear of unbearable pain keeps them stuck in an unhappy or even unhealthy union. As hard as ending a relationship can be, many find that they learn something from the heartache—they find they grow in some unexpected and meaningful way. For example, they become more connected with family and friends, they pull more meaning from the relationships they do have, they connect with feelings of gratitude, or they have an easier time not sweating the small stuff. The problem comes not for those who experience grief, which is a natural and necessary stage in processing a divorce, but for those who do not allow themselves to take time to grieve. Make sure you give yourself space to experience the loss and to process your feelings around ending such a significant relationship. Working through it for many is a way to self-rediscovery.

5. Giving up the fantasy that things will improve is ultimately liberating.

Many have lived for years with a hope and expectation that things will improve. Hope is important but without noticeable action, it is misguided. If you have been in a long-term relationship that has been filled with discontent for a long period, you have probably tried to tell yourself, "Things will get better." Although in the moment this thought can be relieving, in the long run it sets people up for defeat and disappointment when things don't get better. If you and your partner are not taking active steps to improve the marriage; not noticing small improvements; and not both equally committed to this work, then hoping things will get better could keep you stuck in a no-win-situation.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/having-sex-wanting-intimacy/201412/5-reasons-you-shouldnt-fear-the-end-relationship