motivation

Mental Health Matters: Resources

~ kegarland ~ 79 Comments

Thank you for indulging in my year of discussing how mental health issues showed up in my life and how I’ve managed to become a healthier version of myself. I wanted to close out the year with a few resources that supported me over the past six years just in case you planned on working on yourself in the future. *

Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Pexels.com

Oprah & Deepak Miraculous Relationships 21-Day Meditation: I remember doing this meditation like it was yesterday. I’d sat down to figure out how I could have better relationships with everyone in my life. At that time, I wasn’t speaking to one of my favorite cousins because he hadn’t introduced me to his then fiancée, had missed my doctoral graduation, and had begun drifting away from me. Two of my goddaughters hated me; one of them, according to their father, didn’t even want to vacation in Florida because then, they’d “have to visit Kathy.” And my marriage was a hot mess. When I sat down to do this meditation, I thought for sure it was going to offer a prescription for how to be better at relationships. Instead, it focused on the relationship I had with myself. It truly was miraculous, and I recommend it for anyone who has so-called relationship issues.

Mindvalley: It’s hard to explain what Mindvalley is, and I don’t even remember how I stumbled across it, but many of the videos and podcasts that the founder, Vishen Lakhiani offers have helped me develop a new perspective of the world and everything in it. For example, Lakhiani created a term called brules, which stands for bullshit rules. In short, these are cultural norms that we all learn that limit who we can become. One brule is “your success should look like someone else’s success,” something that I think we can all agree isn’t true. Mindvalley offers information from people you may (or may not) have heard of, such as Lisa Nichols, Michael Beckwith, Jim Kwik, Marisa Peer, or Neale Donald Walsch. Each person has a specific message about a topic intended to increase your personal growth. I especially suggest listening to the podcast whenever you can.

Mirror Work: 21 Days to Heal Your Life: Louise Hay, the author of this book, is an internationally and well-known healer. But before I praise the contents, I do want to say, that of course, no one can heal themselves, no matter the issue, in twenty-one days. However, this book is a great example of something that can jumpstart the process. I enjoy it because it provides you with four things: 1) a short explanation of the day’s concept, 2) the day’s mantra and mirror work, 3) a journal prompt, and 4) a free meditation you download from Hay’s site. With the exception of two, I spent approximately fifteen minutes per day doing this mirror work. Even though I’d done a lot of introspection and healing over the course of six years, this book was very helpful in showing me where I still needed to heal and grow. It highlighted people with whom I still held resentment and anger and provided me with healthy ways to acknowledge, accept, and move forward in processing these emotions.

Other resources that I won’t explain in great detail:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is like a self-help book masked as literature. The overall message (for me) seemed to be that all of our lives are spiritual journeys and how we walk them is up to us. Essentially, we can do what we want here on this earth.

“The 7 Essene Mirrors” explained by Gregg Braden shows how we’re all, essentially, mirrors of one another. Everyone with whom you’re close to is showing you something about yourself. This video is two long hours, with no glitz or glam, but it helped me process possible reasons for why I judged those close to me.

Get Over It!: Thought Therapy for Healing the Hard Stuff is a self-help book that is a little woo-woo. If you believe that perhaps your mother’s mental state and overall health condition during the time you were floating around in amniotic fluid impacted you in some way, then this book is for you. It’s mostly centered on cognitive behavioral therapy concepts, which loosely explained, demonstrates how thought processes can lead you to a better way of dealing with past trauma.

As we enter 2021, I hope we remember that no matter what’s going on around us, we still have a responsibility to name, heal, and process what’s going on inside of us. Each of these resources have helped me to deal with my mental health in some way, which has also shifted how I function in most relationships.

Please feel free to add anything in the comments as I believe you never know what may support someone else.

*Disclaimer: I have not been paid to market any of these resources. Statements are my personal opinion.

Mental Health Matters: 3 Ways to Develop Self-Worth

~ kegarland ~ 68 Comments

As promised, I’m shifting the focus of Mental Health Matters to discuss ways I’ve learned to be a less codependent version of myself. This week, I’ll discuss one of the characteristics of being codependent: having low self-esteem.

Self-esteem is defined as the manner in which we evaluate ourselves. For example, I’ve always believed myself to be a pretty and intelligent person, thus creating high self-esteem.

However, self-worth is the belief that you are loveable and valuable regardless of how you evaluate your traits. Your self-worth is directly related to your childhood. For example, because I was abandoned as a baby and then later as an adolescent, I believed I was literally worthless. Underneath my highly rated self-esteem was a very low self-worth. I truly believed I didn’t deserve love.

But over time, I’ve developed a higher sense of self-worth with these three practices:

Remove Personal Value from Abandonment. As a person who was abandoned by her birth and adoptive parents, I constantly wondered why? Why was I left? What was wrong with me? Because I’m analytical, the conclusion that made sense was…I guess they didn’t love me. To establish a higher self-worth, I had to separate my parents’ actions with how much they valued or loved me. Like all adults, each of my parents had their own reasons for how they lived life. And although their actions negatively impacted me in some ways, it had nothing to do with my worthiness but, rather, everything to do with their own issues and rationales. There is no reason for me to take any of my parent’s choices personally and there is definitely no reason to assign my value to their decisions.

Enact Self-Love. The other day, I was listening to Dr. Shefali Tsabary. Loosely paraphrased, she suggested that if four basic needs weren’t met by aged two, then you’re not going to receive them unless you give them to yourself. My experience tells me she’s right. Once I realized I had low self-worth, I knew one thing I had to do was love my own self. So, six years ago, I visualized myself as a five-month-old abandoned baby. Being a mother, I knew a baby needed physical contact, food, and security. In my imagination, I picked up baby kg, hugged myself, and told myself: I love you. You matter. Just last month, I learned that you can also give yourself a hug as a way to show yourself love. This month, I’ve continued my self-love work practice by reading and enacting Louise Hay’s mirror work. Self-love, for someone who hasn’t had it, can be ongoing work. But it’s worth it. I mean, who else is better equipped to remind myself that I’m worthy of love than me?

I AM Statements. A therapist once pointed out that I used the phrase I’m not important a lot. Whenever a family member or friend didn’t do something I’d asked, then I concluded it was because I wasn’t important. The therapist suggested a homework assignment: Write I am important, repeatedly. I’d already been keeping a gratitude journal, so I began writing it there. After I realized I had to love myself, I added I am love to the list. I also write I am adequate as a way to remind myself that I am fine just the way I am…today…in this moment. Whether I have achievements, people, or neither…I am adequate being who I am. I’ve written these statements at least four times a week for almost ten years.

So, what does this have to do with codependence? Although Beattie only mentions self-esteem, I firmly believe that low self-worth can also lead to unhealthy, codependent attachments. For me, each relationship, including my marriage, served to prove that I was lovable and worthy of love, that I mattered.

These three strategies have helped me to know my worth, and consequently, have made me less likely to develop relationships to prove my value. 

If necessary, I hope what I’ve shared works for you, too. And if you have more suggestions to add, please feel free to do so in the comments.

***

Here is more information about the difference between self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence, and self-knowledge.

How to Establish 4 Types of Boundaries

No More People Pleasing!

Monday Notes: 18 Thoughts from a Phone Dump

~ kegarland ~ 45 Comments

I began Monday Notes a few years ago as a self-accountable way to transfer thoughts from the Notes section of my phone to this blog. But sometimes, I have more ideas than writing time. When my notes outweigh my writing, I do a phone dump to share.

Here we go:

  1. Relationships take effort and not everyone’s willing to put in the energy. What do you do when others don’t exert the same energy, whether it is familial, romantic, or friend?
  2. To be a mother, you have to get used to others judging what type of mother they think you ought to be. I’ve been on both ends of this, so at this point, I think it just happens. Either you think you know a better way for someone to mother her children, or someone thinks the same about the how you’re doing it.
  3. “I ain’t popping no pill, but you do as you wish” is one of my favorite rap lines. It’s from a song called “Middle Child,” by J. Cole. I love it because I think it’s representative of live and let live, which of course is contradictory to #2, but hey.
  4. Life was easier when I wasn’t as conscious.
  5. It’s not my job to make you be self-aware. It’s not any of our jobs to make someone else be self-aware.
  6. Acceptance does not mean approval; I think I read this in Iyanla Vanzant’s, Get Over It!
  7. Has anyone written about how patriarchy is reflected in the American presidency through age and race?
  8. img_3091There’s a difference between being influenced by someone and copying someone. I prefer the former.
  9. Some people think they have an open mind, but really, they just are open to listening to people who share their worldview.
  10. Seeing how people treat others in their life may be an indicator of how they will treat you as well.
  11. When someone says they wished they were married or had a husband/wife, I always think what they’re wishing for is a fairy tale. Marriage is not a fairy tale, even if the two people have immense love/like for one another.
  12. Love is deeper than your love language.
  13. You’re either committed to your craft, or you’re committed to your excuses. I think this may be a direct quote, but I’m not sure…maybe I made it up. I’ve Googled it and can’t find it, so I’m claiming it.
  14. I could complain about the person who didn’t hold the door for me, or I could just hold the door for the next person.

  15. Is it fair to ask someone to change their behavior to suit your needs? I’ve decided it’s not fair, which is why I’d rather change myself than ask anyone in my life to change how they function around or with me.

  16. Don’t ask people to change their review of your book. This happened to me last year. An author didn’t like what I had to say, so that person DM’d me on Twitter and asked me to change my rating and comment. My answer? NOPE. I thought this was hella tacky.
  17. The threat of male privilege is showing through American comedians. I wrote this when I happened to watch a series of comedy shows, where men seem very threatened by the LGBTIQ community. This has ranged from Dave Chappell to Bill Burr. They all have a segment specifically focused on sexual identity and how it’s affected them, but opinions/jokes seem to be fear and insecurity based.
  18. If there’s a vast difference between how you present yourself on social media and how you present face-to-face, then the problem isn’t social media.

Please feel free to comment on any of these. You know I’m always up for a conversation in the comments 😉

Corona Chronicles: Creativity

~ kegarland ~ 29 Comments

Sooo, I was scrolling along on Facebook and ran across a friend from grad school, Amanda. She and her husband, Josh have created a PODCAST to hash out how they’ve been handling the pandemic with their teenage daughter and three-year-old son.

I thought it was a creative and authentic way to show that we’re all figuring things out in our own way, and I understand the constant need to create during pandemic times, so I’m passing it along. It’s about 30 minutes. I hope you enjoy The Wilsons Do A Podcast During a Pandemic.

What have you been doing? Have you been more or less creative during these past weeks?

~kg

4/14/20

Here’s the FB link.

Mental Health Matters: Unlearning Perfectionism (II)

~ kegarland ~ 35 Comments

medalPerfectionism also used to dictate how I showed up in personal and work relationships. There was a time when I did things because I wanted to be perceived as the best fill-in-the-blank person. For example, I wanted to be the best co-worker, so I overextended myself, attended meetings that had little value, and was always the first to complete a task. I wanted whatever director or department chair over me to see me as “the best.” Oftentimes, I functioned similarly with family. I wanted to be seen as the person whom everyone could count on, the person who my cousins could call no matter what. So, I visited for holidays even though it wasn’t ideal; I showed up with my family in tow, no matter how it impacted my household. This was due in part to the perfectionist identity I’d unconsciously developed.

But functioning like that bred resentment. There were many times when I would be the “best co-worker” and when it went unnoticed, I took it personally and grew bitter, wondering why no one acknowledged my extra efforts. Or better yet, I’d be mad because someone who’d done less received accolades for minimal activity. When we drove our family out of state year after year, I grew angry. Few family members ever planned holiday visits to my home.

woman standing near body of water

Around 2015, I stopped worrying about being the best co-worker, best family member, best friend, or best anything and started just being the best version of me for me. In action, this simply means that instead I focus on being present and doing the best I can in that moment. I avoid doing things that don’t physically or emotionally feel good or that cause my family or me distress. And the last thing I think about is how the other people to whom the answer is sometimes, “no” may feel.

Functioning this way takes practice and sometimes I lapse. For those times, I pause and become more conscious. For example, the chair of a committee I’m on sent an invite on a Sunday evening for a meeting that began at 5:00 PM on Monday. Not only was the meeting scheduled at the last minute, but it was also 20 minutes farther from where we typically meet, which would add on to my already hour and 45-minute commute. My first thought was to rearrange everything so that I could make the meeting. But then I stopped and asked myself why? Why am I doing this for someone who scheduled a meeting at the last minute? The only reason I would is to appear like the “best co-worker.” It had nothing to do with the value of the agenda. Instead of acquiescing, I simply told her I couldn’t make it. And you know what? The world did not end. I’m not fired. I’m still on the committee, and I saw them the following month.

I hope this isn’t confused with the idea of “doing your best.” No matter what I do, I give 100%. I’m fully present and invested. I’m just no longer concerned with being perceived as the best.

Unlearning Perfectionism Part I