Confessions Of An Ex-Approval Junkie

From as early on as I could remember, I was an approval junkie. From my grades to what I wear and the people I hung out with, the main driving force was the need to look good in front of others. Well, maybe that’s not exactly right, because half the time I was trying not to let others disapprove of me. Any slightest hint that people do not like of the way I look, talk or behave would make me cringe and shrink into invisibility.

For ten years from 11 till the age of 22, the fear of looking like a failure in the eyes of society became the whip that I used to flog myself to do more and be more.  If I felt exhausted from my already long hours of mugging, I would mentally imagine different groups of people taking turns to throw me scornful looks or derisive remarks. The terror brought on by these images would be enough to make me dive straight back into my books again. To keep my already depleted mind awake, I would down coffee and Redbull, with devastating effects on physical and emotional health later on.

When I was diagnosed with my first clinical depression in 1996, it suddenly hit on me that I had been living my life as a people pleaser. For all of my 22 years, it was the only means of survival I had known. My life was built around trying to be what others think I should be, not who I really was. I had no self-identity, no opinions of my own, no confidence and zero self-esteem. To put it briefly, I was an empty shell.

Naturally nobody really respected me, due to the obvious reason that I never knew how to respect myself. I would hang on to every word that my friends say, cave in to the requests of others, always asking for others' opinions before I would make a decision about anything, never having an honest opinion of my own and putting my own needs aside, even those as important as my career and when to get married. Defending myself was a huge thing for me. If I did muster the courage to say ‘no’ to unfair treatment or to express my needs, I would spend the next couple of weeks feeling guilty for being selfish. God forbid if anyone thought I was selfish!

They say ‘no pain, no gain’. The depression at age 22 was a wake-up call to shake me out of my false mode of being. It made me realize that I had to stop caring about what people think of me! Not doing so would mean a slow sure death or a permanent residence in a mental asylum.

So I spent the next 10 years getting acquainted with and learnt how to shut up the negative voices in my head, the voices that were saying;

I’m not important
I’m invisible
I don’t belong here
I have no right to exist
I’m not good enough
I’m not wanted
I’m a burden to others
People are only tolerating me
I’m not okay if people don’t think well of me
Why did God create me? WHY WHY WHY????

And there were many others which I had lost track of. These voices kept me believing in the lie that I had to please anyone and everyone. Feelings of guilt, shame, rage, grief, insecurity, fear, hopelessness, and despair were my loyal companions.

Using emotional healing process known as Emotional Freedom Technique, hypnosis, and many others, I eliminated the negative voices one by one. With each voice that got eliminated, a huge sense of relief and well-being would follow. Gradually guilt, shame, fear and grief got replaced by increasing sense of security, peace, and self-acceptance. No longer do I feel anxious around people, since the need to be accepted by them has become more or less a non-issue.

Naturally my self-confidence grew as the negatives voices in my head got silenced one by one. It was then I realized that our positive qualities like self-love, confidence, courage, peace, and acceptance have always and will always be a part of us. We just need to throw out the mental garbage that had taken possession of our minds since we were innocent little children. How did those self-sabotaging voices get in there in the first place? From our parents, main caregivers, teachers, and other authority figures in our lives. These people and the ones that came before them had been the unknowing victims of negative programming themselves. If this sounds like a nightmarish vicious cycle to you it is!

But the good news is it is a nightmare that we can all wake up from. The only question is when. And the question of when is answered at the point you decide to wake up from the mass hypnosis that your happiness depends on someone else’s consensus.

The healing process wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, for most of the time I had to face my inner demons alone, on top of dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome, recurrent bladder infections and multiple allergies, all ramifications of living in a life-long state of powerlessness. Not even my husband knew what battles I was facing inside. But the result was definitely worth every effort made.

From the time of my clinical depression, I had made it a life goal to get rid of this addiction. Deep inside me I knew that as long as any of my life decisions were made based on how someone would think of me, I would never be free. Unconscious compulsive conformance got increasingly replaced by consciously created freedom as the basis of my life.

Once you have tasted freedom, you would never want to go back to your old ways again, especially when what has been keeping you imprisoned has been something as inane as needing someone’s approval.

Everyone is here in this world for a good reason. There is something unique and valuable that we can each give to this world. No one can tell us what that is. But unless we stop thinking, feeling, and doing what others think is best for us, we will never get to find out who we really are. Until that day, the unique talents and gifts we possess will never see the light of day.

Thank you for reading my ramblings. Feel free to share your thoughts about this topic.
If you too find that your life is being controlled an insatiable need for approval, I hope my experience can bring hope and healing into your life.

Use This Simple Method To Uncover Your Negative Beliefs

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I’m sure you agree with me that working towards your goal is already challenging enough. Unfortunately many of us have to deal with self-sabotaging beliefs at the same time. In this article I would like to share with you a simple way to uncover your negative self beliefs, so that the path towards the fulfillment of your goals can be smoother.

First ask yourself  “What do I really want to achieve in my life? What is that one thing that will make me really happy if I get it?”

Next, hold the image of your desired goal in your mind and ask yourself “Can I have it?”

If the answer is no, ask yourself why? This is when all your negative self talk will surface. The easiest way to observe what you are thinking is to check your feelings about your desired goal. Does it feel good when you think about working towards it? Do you hear self-talks like ‘I don’t think I can make it’, ‘ He or she will get it, but not me,’ or ‘I don’t have what it takes to make it happen’ etc etc?

Now there is a good reason why I said observe your feelings instead of your thoughts. It is simply easier to track your emotions than your thoughts because there can be hundreds of thoughts running through your mind any minute, but within this one minute there are usually only one or two emotions.

Once a negative emotion surfaces, ask yourself why are you feeling this way? What thought is behind this bad feeling?

Take a pen and piece of paper and start recording down the first negative self-talk that comes up. Keep track of the emotions that come up and soon you’ll have a long list of reasons why you cannot have what you want.
If your answer to the first question was a ‘yes’, on a scale of 0 to 10 (with 0 being nil possibility and 10 being absolutely possible) rate how likely do you think you will reach your goal. If you have given it a rating of anything below ‘10’, chances are you have some negative self-talk lurking at the back of your mind.  Follow the method I have described above to ferret out any remaining negative beliefs. Why keep it when it only gets in the way of your fulfillment?

Here is a simple illustration of the process.

Question: What dreams do I want to fulfill?
Ans: I would like to own a successful internet marketing business. (Image of checking your bank account online every morning and seeing lots of money deposited into your account during the previous night)
Question: Can I fulfill it?
Ans:  Feeling: Doubt;  Thought: ‘Uh uh…not likely’.
Question: Why not?
Ans: Feeling: Shame; Thought: ‘I’m a lousy writer’.
Question: What else am I feeling?
Ans: Feeling: Inferiority; Thought: “Even if I can write, I’ll never be as good as so and so. I’m just not good enough.
Another feeling emerges: Fear;  Thought: ‘Besides if people come to know about it, they will all say it’s wishful thinking. Who do I think I am to be successful at something that nobody I know has ever tried? I’ll be laughed at. People will be envious if I get what I want.’
A third feeling: Shame; Thought: ‘I’m just no good at running a business. Nobody in my family has. What makes me think I can?’

Note that the beliefs that have been uncovered through this simple process are ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘if I’m successful I will make someone unhappy’, ‘I cannot be successful’, and ‘I can’t do it’.

The point is this. Do you feel good when thinking about your goals or do thinking about them makes you feel so bad that you have given up your dream totally? Nothing stirs up negative self-talk more quickly than when we are projecting an image of a desired object in our mind.

It should feel genuinely good to strive for your goals. If it does not, it is best not to do anything until you have cleared all self-doubts, otherwise you will spend precious time and energy running around in circles.

If you need help in eliminating your negative beliefs, I can teach you easy-to-learn techniques that you will bring results in no time. Call me at 65-96980688 or make an appointment here to enjoy a 30 minutes free demo.

Anger As A Cover-up for Shame

Frequent explosive anger can cause a great deal of havoc in relationships, both personal and professional.  Angry people find themselves increasingly isolated. Other people do not want to be near someone who is likely to become hostile or filled with rage.

Families and friends eventually get sick and tired of walking on eggshells with you to avoid getting hurt. The tension and hostility causes frustration and resentment in the very people who you want to support and love you.

You may find yourself the labeled as a ‘bad-tempered person’. And you may also somehow have the sickening feeling that this ‘character flaw’ of yours is going to be stuck with you forever. But the truth is this is not who you really are.

Explosive anger actually comes from a deep sense of powerlessness, inadequacy, and despair, which is another description for shame. The anger outbursts are just a cover-up to avoid feeling shame.
Shame is often initially created when you were hurt and wounded by people who were important to you in some way. As a child, you could have been humiliated and treated disrespectfully in some way. Shame builds up across time and leads to the global belief of "I am unworthy. I am unlovable. I am bad. I am not good enough."

Such beliefs create enormous tension and the accompanying anxiety that you will be ridiculed when found out. When you are imprisoned by shame, the perceived flaws within yourself are so humiliating that you will go to extreme lengths to hide them. Like flaring up at another person to get them to back off!

It is essential to understand that you were not responsible for the shaming that happened to you as a child, since children naturally believe all that their parents, grandparents, and teachers tell them. However you do have responsibility as an adult now to change those untruths you have unconsciously believed in for so long.

Your anger affects not only your life, but the lives of others as well, especially that of your children. If you are unhappy with the isolation that was brought on by your explosive streak, you can heal those relationships by first healing yourself of those shame-based memories. Once your memories are healed, you will begin to treat yourself and those around you with more compassion. What used to trigger rage in you will no longer affect you the same way.

Introduction

Do you find it hard to get your partner commit to your relationship?
Do you attract the same abusive relationship again and again?
Do you find it difficult to get close to someone?
Is your partner threatening to walk out of your relationship?
Are you always in conflict with your family members, colleagues or superiors?
Do you feel undervalued by the significant people in your life?

The above problems all have one thing in common. You guessed it. They all have to do with unloving relationships.

But do you know what the root cause of all these problems are?

Your unloving relationship with yourself.

Why do I say that?

The most important relationship you will ever have is the one that you have with yourself. You are with you all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The relationship you have with yourself is the foundation from which every other relationship you have is built. You will not be able to have healthy relationships with other people until you have a loving relationship with yourself.

Perhaps you are struggling with this concept. After all, you have been ingrained with this age old belief “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. You have been told that you should always put other’s interest above yours and it is wrong to love yourself. The emphasis has always been on ‘loving the neighbor’. Anytime you try to love yourself you become paralyzed with shame and guilt.

But if you understand this at a deeper level, you will realize what this means is that you will only love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. If you love yourself only a little, you will also love your neighbor a little. Didn’t God himself tell us to “Love others as much as we love ourselves”?

You know you do not love yourself very much if your mind contains these beliefs:-

I am unlovable

I am insignificant

I am worthless

I am hopeless

I am stupid

I am not good enough

I am unforgivable

I am a failure

I am undeserving

In my coaching sessions, I will teach you how to erase these self-sabotaging beliefs so that you can replace them with those that empower you to create fulfilling relationships.

Traditional psychological methods like psychotherapy and counseling can take years before any significant results can be obtained. The advantage of working with me is that you get to learn cutting edge mind process technologies that dissolve your negative beliefs in as quickly as one session.

Call me today for a free demonstration at 65-96980688. You may also like to send in your enquiries to mindstuffalchemy@gmail.com.

Sincerely,

Evelyn Yeo