The Therapy Edit - On how to be better

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Why do we so often have the feeling we need to be better? In this episode, I explore how the most therapeutic type of growth, is often an undoing.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello and welcome to episode 15. 15 of the Therapy Edit. I'm going to be talking on, I don't actually know, I haven't got a title. It's my last podcast of this series. and I have sat down at my laptop trying to think about what to say obviously I wanted to end well

but I thought do you know what I'm not actually going to have any notes this time I'm just going to talk to you call it a pep talk I'm just trying to think what would I want to say if I was with you wherever you are now whether you're walking

through a field on a dog walk or whether you're sitting in bed before the kids have got up and I just want to take this opportunity to tell you that fear Fear, oh fear gets in the way of everything. I didn't even nearly start this podcast. I've wanted to do it for a couple of years now

and it was fear that was in the way. It was fear of what people would think. It was fear of being misunderstood. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear gets in the way so much, doesn't it? It gets in the way so much. But do you know what? Often the cost of getting it wrong,

the cost of failure, the cost of someone not liking you, someone not getting you, the cost of what you're doing, not working out is so high for us because underneath it all we're often beating ourselves up already. We're often berating ourselves. The cost of failure is so high because we already feel rubbish. We are often already berating ourselves so much behind the scenes. We are already beating ourselves over the bottom with a massive stick of our critical internal dialogue that to fail that to get bad feedback feels like the cherry on the cake is like the jenga game if you ever play jenga where you're so convinced it's going to topple you can't actually understand why it's still standing when it's full of so many holes and then someone

comes along and they put that last block on the top and it comes tumbling down and i don't know about you but sometimes i already feel rubbish and not enough so that bit of feedback is just that final jenga block shoved on the top sometimes when we get that feedback that we fear it's that well i knew that all along and now it's just being confirmed which is why if you take anything away from any of my words be it on instagram or on my podcast you can change things you can add to yourself you can self-develop the living daylights out of every corner of your personality but if underneath it all you don't feel worth it it's fruitless that is what we have to work on it's it's that sense of you know what if you wouldn't speak to someone you

love the way you speak to yourself it is not good enough if you if you are not treating yourself with respect and it's not even about treating yourself with this wonderful love you know doing spa treatments at home it's about respect often that we are not even respecting ourselves in order to hydrate ourselves with enough water or get enough rest. We are resting at the end of the day when we collapse into a heat because we are spent, not because rest is a building block for mental health. It is a way to be productive. Life should come from a place of rest, not falling into a place of rest at the end of the day because we've got nothing left. I want you to think about worth. I want you to think about if everything in your world that

makes you feel worthwhile, useful, valid, valuable is taken away, the letters after your name, the certificates from your qualifications, your job title, the road you live on, the number in your bank balance, the weight on the scales, if that was all taken away, what would be left? What would be left? Because your worth is not a changeable. It's not a changeable feat. We're all worth the same regardless of where we've come from, what we've done, what we believe. And I think we try and make ourselves better people by giving ourselves away. We try and learn stuff. We try and get tools.

We try and get tips. And all of those things are so worthwhile. But you can't self-improve your way out of low self-worth. The work has to be incremental. It has to be looking at your internal dialogue. It has to be treating yourself. as if you are someone worthy of respect. Think about the pilot on the plane.

We need him to prioritize his needs. We need to know that he has had enough rest. We need to know that he hasn't just had a bag of harrowbeau for lunch. We need to know that he is hydrated. We need to know that he's listening to his needs because if he isn't, he puts everyone at risk, regardless of the turbulence, regardless of the amount of leg room that we have in front of us, regardless of how comfortable we are on the flight, that pales into insignificance if our pilot

is not looking after himself. And so often I think that what we have equated love with is with giving ourselves away. The more we love, the more we give. It's sacrificial. But that's not what love is. Love is putting yourself back up to the top of the priority list and thinking, you know what, I'm the pilot in this situation? And if I am not looking after myself, then regardless of how comfortable, people are regardless of what that journey looks like it will not be safe it's about self-respect because if I cannot anchor myself then I cannot be an anchor for my children if I do not work on my own sense of worth then anything negative is going to topple me over and man I feel fearful sometimes when I look even on my podcast and at the words that you have written and the feedback that

you have given and it is kind. But I fear negative feedback when I'm feeling wobbly because I don't feel worthwhile. I'm fearful. We try and make ourselves better add to ourselves when actually what we need to do is to strip back. What we need to do is to strip back all of the things and all of the words and the treatment that we have had along the way, you look at a child. You look at a child with a parent that loves them that can provide that stable base. They know who they are. They can express their wants, their feelings, their needs. They haven't had them squashed yet. Sometimes growth isn't about adding, it's about stripping back to who you were, who you are before all the labels got stuck to you and you looked at them and you read them and you thought, well, that must be true.

before that boss shouted at you and you looked at that and you thought well that must be true before that boyfriend or that girlfriend treated you in the way that they did or the parent that treated you in the way that you did and you thought man well that must be what I'm worth growth is often a stripping back to who you are beneath the labels that you have stuck on the labels that have been stuck on to you it's an unsticking and that's what therapy is as well. It's the rooting through and it's the shedding and the taking away. And I think I just want to encourage you if I'm to leave you with anything. It's that your worth is not something that you can grow because it doesn't change. If you're unsure of it is because you don't yet know.

And our fear is often driven by this sense of low self-worth and critical. internal dialogue, because we're just fearful that people will see the truth. But actually, you know what? Do you know what? Sometimes it's because we have not seen the truth of our own worth, that it is not a moveable feat. I don't even know what I want you to get out of this podcast. It's just hope. Maybe it's hope I want to give you. Maybe I want you to question what you know about yourself what you've believed about yourself who has led you to believe what think of that child that's had nothing else added bad yet for them to question who they are and whether their needs and their thoughts and their feelings are even worth verbalising whether their needs are

worth meeting so there we go stuff to think about i think but hopefully i'll be back with another series. I never intended to do more than one. It was just something I wanted to put out there in lockdown. But hopefully I will be back soon. Take care. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe and review. You can find more from me on Instagram, Anna Martha. You might like to check out my two books called Mind Over Mother and Know Your Welf. I'm also the founder of the Mother Mind Way. a platform full of guides, resources and a community with the sole focus on supporting mother's mental and emotional well-being. It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.