1ST TECHNIQUE

Techniques
With all this talk of why change, maybe it’s time for some techniques to help this come about. So here are just a few that you might like to consider.

This first technique relates to our skill of beating ourselves up and thinking we are awful people. The list of things that is wrong with us, those characteristics that make us bad. Such as being stupid, ugly, daft, and all the mean words we can get to feel about ourselves.
It is so easy to think up a great big pile of nasty words that make us be us. But are they true?
Of course, the answer is no.
And are there any good qualities, when your full of self hate it is difficult to answer yes, but of course there are.
So how are these mythical good qualities going to be found?
Okay, let’s start with the one word that describes a characteristic that you have. The one I use when I do this is; Tactless.
I have an amazing ability to be tactless, to open mouth well before engaging brain. And for years have beaten myself up for not being anything other than tactless.
But for me to understand that I am tactless then I also have to know that I can be tactful.
So using your quality, write it on a piece of paper and then on a separate piece of paper write what your opposite of that quality, as in tactless/ tactful. Some characteristics are obvious as the above, but others are more difficult to pin down, such as generous, now my opposite might be mean, but that might not be the word you would use. That is fine as these words are your words and it really doesn’t matter if the opposite of funny is hamburger as long as it makes sense to you!
So with your two words, one in each hand stretch your arms out as far as they will go. Now what is obvious in doing this is that your body is in the middle of these two words. Which is exactly right!
When we are beating ourselves up we hook into a belief system that says we are only the thing that we hate and nothing else. This is not true, as in, I can be tactless but I’m not tactless 24/7, well at least not on a good day anyway!
We have ever changing characteristics, not as in we become different people every five minutes, more our mood changes. In that we can wake up feeling good and if the day goes wrong we can end up in a really bad mood. And our feeling will subsequently alter as to how we perceive things around us from our state of mind.
Going back to these two words say that the one in the right hand is 1 and the one in the left is 100, now ask yourself exactly what number you are in relation to that quality right now. What you will find is that you are, neither 1 or a 100. You may go either end of this imaginary line, but you won’t stay there. It is impossible to so do.
Let’s use the words Stupid and Clever here, now can you seriously tell me that you are 100% stupid all the time? If you are stupid all of the time, how come you understand what I’m asking you to do here?
You may have moments of utter stupidity, don’t we all. Equally you may be very clever but not all the time. My point is that we move up and down this register all the time.
Have a go with more words, don’t start with all the bad ones find a good quality you might have, and you will find that your body is in the middle of that quality all the time with little trips to both ends.
We are in constant flux of behaviour/ feelings/abilities. Such as knowing we can do our jobs, run a home, do the household budget all successfully, but then we get a new piece of equipment and suddenly all our brain cells are out to lunch as we no amount of making a shopping list actually matters when trying to work out how to use a new mobile say! But we wouldn’t beat ourselves up for this inability for long. If we couldn’t sort it we would find a child that could. We wouldn’t be filled with self hate because of our technophobic behaviour.
So why hate yourself cause some of the time you can go to the nasty end of the spectrum in one characteristic. You have a million other characteristics.
Think about your life, do you have friends, do you hang out with your family. Do both these groups of people like you or do they just hang around cause they feel sorry for you? I don’t think so, they are not so self sacrificing that they can be bothered with you if you are not worth bothering with!
So the people around you are there because they love and like you. They do not think that you are ‘stupid’ 24/7 they know you can sometimes be daft but not all the time.
So by doing this exercise and seeing that really you are in the middle of these qualities and not at an end, plus thinking about why others bother with you then maybe you could just stop beating yourself up for not being good enough or whatever. And maybe just start to believe positive things about yourself, just the way others do!