If we wouldn’t talk to other people the way we talk to ourselves, why is it okay that we talk to ourselves so poorly? After all, the most important relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves.

A few years ago, I saw a therapist. One of the things we talked about was the fact that I had some people in my life who compounded some of the negative beliefs that I had about myself and my own worthiness. She said that spending so much time with these people, made it harder for me to see the good inside myself. Yeah, your girl had to change some of her people and change it fast.

You can either surround yourself by people who hold you in low regard or you can spend time with people who uplift you and challenge you to become a better version of yourself.

It was a hard lesson, but I learned something. It is okay to remove yourself from people who treat you like your time doesn’t matter, like your feelings are worthless or like your soul is replaceable. Last year I wrote a post all about this, which you can read in full here. But I want to highlight some of the feelings I had about myself at the time that caused me to stay in situations that were harmful to me.

• I give people the benefit of the doubt too much or too many second chances.
• I worry about offending my partner if I stand up for myself.
• I have a hard time recognizing when I am being disrespected. Sometimes it takes someone else pointing it out to me.
• When someone hurts me, instead of setting a boundary with them, I feel like I need to prove my worthiness and why they should value me more.
• When someone hurts me, I need them validate me and my feelings by admitting that they were wrong or disrespectful.
• I don’t even know what respect feels like in a relationship.
• I feel guilty when setting boundaries and worry that I am being unfair. Sometimes I even convince myself that by setting the boundary, I am overreacting.
• I would rather put up with shitty treatment than be alone.

If you can identify with any of those feelings I had, I really get it. Relationships are hard as it is, but when you struggle with seeing your value, it makes them more challenging. And from my experience, you end up attracting people who don’t see your value, either. Which makes being able to see your value much harder.

It is a lot easier to change how you see yourself when you surround yourself with the right people. These are the people that will lift you up, challenge you and be there for you when you need it most. They will accept and value what you have to offer in return as well. And believe me, you be amazed at what you attract when you start believing in what you deserve.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In the 1991 movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, there’s a scene that fully encompasses the saying, “Necessity knows no law.” Robin has just gotten back from fighting in the Crusades and sees several soldiers and their dogs chasing a small boy who hides up in a tree. When the men start to cut it down, Robin intervenes and asks why six men and their dogs are chasing this small boy? Guy of Gisborne (the leader of the soldiers) tells Robin that “this boy killed one of the Sherriff of Nottingham’s deer.” The boy then interjects and says, “You starve us. We needed the meat.” A fight ensues, and when Robin has Guy pinned down, Guy tells him, “That little bastard was poaching deer.” Robin, clearly livid, says, “Poach? Is it not a greater crime to starve a family?”

The truth is, a person who is in great need of something will find a way to get it, and break the law if needed. We hear stories of people who die unnecessarily because their basic survival needs aren’t met, and we listen to stories about people who are in jail because they have stolen things to pay their rent, so their kids have a place to sleep at night. Is it fair that these people are locked up? They broke the law. But they aren’t criminals, are they? They are just fighting to survive.

We used to have cleaners come to our house and clean it every week. I started to notice small items of food missing from our pantry after each cleaning. At first, I assumed someone else in the house ate it and I just hadn’t noticed. One night after mentioning it, I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that it is possible that one of the cleaners was stealing from the pantry. So, I set a trap. (Admiral Ackbar warned y’all.)

And sure enough, I discovered that one of them was stealing. It was heartbreaking. I couldn’t be mad at them for taking food. They were taking these packs of Justin’s Peanut Butter Cups out of the pantry. And in my head, I tried to rationalize it as not a big deal, it’s just these candies, it’s probably for their kid, etc. But the trust was broken, and I had to fire them.

Another place where necessity knows no law is when it comes to justice. In various jobs that I have had, I’ve seen a lot of crazy things happen in our judicial system. I’ve seen people get away with murder (literally) and people who have been later proven innocent convicted of murder. What do you do when you feel like the system failed you?

In the movie Sleepers, Fat Mancho says, “If you got cash you can buy court justice. But on the street, justice has no price. She’s blind where the judge sits but she’s not blind out here. Out here the bitch got eyes.” If a great injustice has been done to you or someone you love, it can be tempting to enact street justice. Obviously, one shouldn’t take that path and I’m not advocating it…but I can see how someone would have those thoughts and want to go full blown Frank Castle aka Punisher. We cheer for the vigilante because we want justice to prevail.   

In an interview with Brené Brown, Oprah Winfrey talked about shame when it comes to sexual abuse. She said that the act itself is something that people are able to move beyond, but it is the shame that you carry that makes it so damaging long term.

Like Brené says in the video, shame is lethal. She says that shame needs three things to grow in our lives: secrecy, silence and judgment. Those three things will cause shame to grow into every area of our lives. However, she says if you take shame and douse it with empathy, you create an environment that is hostile to shame. If something happened to you that caused you to feel shame and you talk about it with someone and they show you empathy, shame cannot survive.

It is so difficult for us to talk about the things that make us feel shame. But when we don’t talk about it, our beliefs aren’t challenged. So we stay stuck feeling bad or not good enough. When we are shown empathy when we feel shame, suddenly, we aren’t alone anymore. It isn’t a secret and the person who knows about it, isn’t judging us. They are showing us empathy and compassion.

We are only as sick as our secrets and monsters flourish in the dark. Shame needs to be talked about more. The truth is, so many of us experience the same feelings, but we don’t talk about it, so we feel alone. We feel like we are “bad”. But I think if we knew how often others struggle with similar feelings, we’d feel more connected and hopeful.

When we feel shame and remain silent, distorted opinions about ourselves aren’t challenged. If we aren’t challenged, how can we even feel like we are capable of change?    

The present is really all we have right now, yet many of us spend way too much time in both the past and future. We knowing thinking about the present comes from anxiety of what will happen, but what about the past? Why are some of us preoccupied with things that have already happened?

While it is human nature to time travel, prolonged thoughts about things that have already happened are usually fueled by guilt, shock and grief, depression and post-traumatic stress from trauma.

Guilt

Feelings of guilt can have us thinking about something that has happened because we feel like we may have been able to alter the outcome. For example, if you behaved poorly in your marriage and it ended, you may feel bad about how you contributed to its end. I wrote an entire post on how to overcome feelings of guilt about the past.  

Shock and Grief

We tend to ruminate on things we didn’t see coming. When we struggle to make sense of what happened, we go back to the past to look for clues about how we missed it. We want to be able to connect the dots and see how it happened. We may mind ourselves analyzing our own behavior, wondering about what we could have done to see what was happening and what we may have been able to do to prevent it.

Depression

Depression can cause us to think about the past, too. When you have feelings of depression in the present, you tend to look to the past to make sense of why you are feeling depressed in the present. Because the past has already happened and we can’t change what happened, it tends to make one even more depressed. We are also more prone to see the past in a much harsher light because our perspective is colored by our current emotions.

Post-traumatic Stress

Any kind of trauma from your past can be triggered by things in the present. And sometimes they are innocuous things that you wouldn’t expect to be a trigger. When this happens, you naturally go back to the initial trauma in the past.

How can we move beyond our past?

First, honoring your feelings about it and accepting it as part of your story is important. But remember that these things in your past are just things – they do not define you as a person. They are something that happened, that is all.

If you find yourself time traveling to your past often, ask yourself what is it trying to tell you? What need to you have in the present that is trying to be fulfilled? Are you really seeking forgiveness? Are you seeking closure and acceptance?

In the case of depression and post-traumatic stress fueled rumination about the past, a therapist may be able to help you see what happened from a new perspective. We tend to judge ourselves harshly and lose sight of our own objectivity. A therapist may also be able to help you separate your current feelings and mood from how you view your past and/or trauma.

Aside from writing this blog, I have a growing, successful YouTube channel that I work on with my husband. It is completely unrelated to this blog, and it is extremely labor intensive. We write, produce, and edit everything ourselves. We’ve been working on it now for two years and when I think back to our humble beginnings, I am proud of how far we have come.  

When we first started the channel, as much as I hate to admit it, the criticism we received really got to me. But what I have learned through experience and from other creators is that no matter how on point you are, no matter what your message is or how good your production is, there will always be haters in your comments section. And it is really easy for someone to spew hate anonymously from behind their screens. 

Early on when we got some hateful comments, I doubted myself and my abilities. I wondered if I was really cut out for YouTube. I wondered this even though significantly there were more comments that were encouraging and complimentary.

When I started seeing all the hate other YouTubers got, I was shocked. People who I admired and respected in the space were getting much more hate than us, and in some cases, the people spewing the hate were freaking dangerous. A friend we have collaborated with on a few occasions had to call the FBI because he was getting death threats. He wasn’t even doing anything controversial and is the kindest person and his videos reflect that.

Creators have also been doxed. I know one YouTuber who had to move because she was worried about her family’s safety and another one who had a woman stalk her who was obsessed with her children. She would drive one hour to sit outside of this YouTuber’s house and watch her children play out in the front yard – which is just beyond creepy.

Before being on YouTube, I watched it often, but I never really left comments on videos or anything. Being a creator has given me a whole new perspective on the community – which overall is great. But there are some people out there who just want to tear you down. They’ve even created forums where all they do is hate on YouTubers.

The truth is, the more your channel grows, the more you will have people taking bites out of you. It is sad and I wish that these people who do that found more ways to enjoy their time. But they feel better about who they are, dragging others down.

Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by what other people say about you. Sometimes we get constructive criticism, which is always welcome. We are always trying to find ways to improve and bring as much value as we can to our viewers. Constructive criticism is great.

But when people leave hateful comments now, we really get a kick out of it. We laugh about it a lot. Many times, the people leaving those comments are not well informed or are just miserable people. And what I have found, too, is that the community we have built will see the comments before we even do and respond to these haters. So come at me, bro 🙂

But seriously, a lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinion of sheep. If you are getting criticism, just keep putting one foot in front of the other and focus on what you are trying to accomplish. The person who is trying to drag you down is already beneath you and just wants some company.

In Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he said this quote. Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. His book chronicles his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. He describes how he got through the horrors he lived through while in Auschwitz. He also explains his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then focusing on imagining that outcome. His idea about finding meaning became what we now know as logotherapy.

In his book, Frankl talked about how a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity. In a Nazi concentration camp, the only thing you really have control over are your own thoughts.

When you don’t have control or the ability to change your situation, you have 100% control of how you think about it – and ultimately, respond to it. And that can be powerful.

Obviously, Viktor Frankl’s prompting events that caused him to come to this conclusion is drastic and something I hope we never see again. But on a much smaller scale, living day to day, there is much wisdom in this quote.

Recently, my husband got stressed out and lashed out at me. It was completely inappropriate, over the top and I was taken aback by it. I recognized what was really at play in the situation, but instinctively felt the need to stand up for myself and dish it right back. But I slowed things down and intentionally chose to focus on the kind of calm I want to maintain in situations like this.

Instead of yelling, getting hyperbolic and mean like he was, I empathized with him and asked him what I could do to help the situation. I was empathetic to what he was expressing, kind and understanding in my responses. I maintained an even, compassionate tone (if you do this, you must mind your tone, Malfoy – otherwise it might come across as condescending). And the thing that made the biggest difference in my response was that I took no offense to his craziness and how he was acting towards me. I knew I didn’t deserve it and that it was uncalled for. I know he knew it, too. And I also knew that the crazy-town that was transpiring in our kitchen wasn’t the norm. Remember, people tend to cope by projecting, so learn to take nothing personally.

You see, we tend to personalize other people’s behaviors and what they say when it is directed at us. We take it as a statement they are saying about it or our value, which is very human response. But more often than not, how people act and what they say as very little to do with us personally.

The truth is, when my husband reaches the level he was at in the situation above, there is literally nothing I can do to influence how he acts. The only thing I can do is control how I respond. And I knew from previous experience, if I lost my shit and dished it back, in the state he was in, he would have focused on my response rather than his behavior or even what was really going on with him. So, a jedi mind trick was needed and I responded in a way where he was forced to sit with his own actions and words.

But seriously, I am proud of how I responded because I didn’t allow his behavior in those moments influence me and I didn’t contribute to crazy-town, either. And honestly, it is in my nature to be compassionate and empathetic in situations like this – within reason, of course.

A couple of hours later, my husband came over and apologize profusely and told me how much he appreciated how I responded to his craziness (<- his words).

What situations have you been in where you were challenged to change yourself or your response?

In the 1998 movie Hope Floats, and Birdie Pruitt has been chosen as a guest on the Toni Post talk show on the premise that she’s getting a free makeover. They blindfold her, put her on the stage, and when she takes the blindfold off, she’s sitting on national television with her husband Bill and Connie, her best friend. Unfortunately, it’s soon revealed that Bill and Connie have an ongoing affair. He requests a divorce, and she’s blindsided. The cameraman pans to her daughter in the audience, who’s visibly heartbroken. This traumatic scene from the movie reveals how vital trust is and how devastating it can be when it’s betrayed.

Trust is a part of everyday life. We need it to build relationships with family, friends, workplaces, and leaders. But, unfortunately, it’s often tricky, difficult to gain, and even more difficult to rebuild if lost.

As a general default, I give people the benefit of the doubt and believe that most people are good and have good intentions. However, I am tuned into my intuition to know when something doesn’t seem right.

In a post last year, I talked about how love without trust is a river without water. In it, I was tempted to write about how you can know if you can trust your partner. But I kept coming back to one universal truth – trust has less to do with your partner and more to do with you. Wait, what did you say, precious?!

While it is important to vet our partner and know if they are a good match for us, at the end of the day, how much we trust others is a reflection of how secure we feel about ourselves. See, people are inevitably going to hurt us and betray us at times. But how we process those experiences and how we feel about ourselves sets the stage for how well we can trust going forward.

When you trust your own abilities to be okay and weather the storms that come your way, the freer you can be to trust other people. Like I wrote in that post, “You trust yourself because you aren’t dependent on how someone else treats you. Your value and worth aren’t tied to what someone else does or doesn’t do.”

You can only ever really trust yourself, which is why the best relationship you will ever have is with yourself. Trust your own ability to be deal and be okay of someone betrays your trust. Know that if someone chooses to betray you, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. No matter what someone has done, or hasn’t done, it doesn’t give people the license to go out and betray people.

All that being said, it is important to be mindful of red flags and things that you see that might indicate deception. I’m strange in that I will let that information come to me. I truly believe that bad behavior will reveal itself…it’s really only a matter of time. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t consider the possibility of something being off or that there might actually be danger on the horizon and take appropriate action.

I tend to go with my gut feeling on most things. Our intuitions can be a great guide. But it is important for us to learn the difference between intuition guiding us and trauma misleading us. 

When you feel wounded, insulted, or offended by another person, it’s a wonderful opportunity to look a little closer at your own self-perceptions and beliefs. Very often, the people around you are simply mirroring the way you feel about yourself, or revealing a belief you hold about yourself.

For example, if you often feel dismissed or devalued by the people in your life, it could be because on some level you believe that your voice doesn’t matter, or that no one cares to hear what you have to say. If you often feel victimized or afraid, it could be because deep down inside, you feel vulnerable and powerless.

Did you notice the key word that reveals the path to the solution? It’s all about the way you feel, and most especially the way you feel about yourself. Your feelings offer a big clue about your beliefs and perceptions.

Take a moment to think about the patterns that keep repeating in your life. How do you usually feel in your interactions with other people, and what might that reveal about the way you perceive yourself? Also notice if there are recurring themes of scarcity or struggle in your finances, your relationships, or your health and well-being.

Then use this awareness to begin building a new perception of yourself as a person who cannot feel injured, or insulted, or offended. A wonderful thing happens when you begin to recognize that no other person has control over your thoughts and feelings except you. You cannot be devalued if you refuse to feel invaluable. You cannot be wounded if you refuse to see yourself as weak and vulnerable.

Spend time each day deciding who you want to be, and then practice seeing yourself that way. See yourself being fully confident, strong, self-reliant, and fearless. See yourself being respected and appreciated by other people. See yourself having genuine, mutually beneficial interactions with the people around you.

Create a daily practice of feeling good about yourself, building yourself up, and accentuating your positive characteristics. Treat yourself the way you wish to be treated by other people. Speak kindly to yourself and be more gentle and understanding of yourself in all things. The more you do this, the more you will notice that other people are starting to treat you that way too. The more positive and empowering you can make your self-image, your outer life will reflect those qualities in your interactions with others.

Then repeat this same process with your overall quality of life. If you noticed patterns of scarcity in your finances or your state of health, begin changing that perception of yourself to something better. Rather than seeing yourself as a person who struggles financially, begin seeing yourself as a person who is truly abundant, with endless opportunities to receive more abundance. Rather than seeing yourself as ill or unwell, begin seeing yourself as a person who is getting better and stronger every day.

Whatever you wish to see reflected in your outer life, create it first within you. Feel it as if it were your truth, and the outer reflection will change to match the inner truth.