“I’m so busy being a wife, mother, daughter, and nurse that I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’m always taking care of others and trying to keep them happy. I’m not even sure what I like, believe, and value.”
“I’m really self-critical. It’s hard for me to accept compliments. I dwell on my mistakes and imperfections.”
“I don’t know how to show my family, my friends, or the rest of the world who I really am. I keep hearing that I should “show up and be seen,” but that makes me really scared.”
These are the kinds of statements I hear everyday from men and women. My clinical specialty is helping people overcome codependency and perfectionism. The roots of both codependency and perfectionism lie in a lack of understanding and valuing yourself. Your focus is outside yourself – either on other people or on achievements.
Learning to know yourself, love yourself, and be your authentic self will help to heal codependency and perfectionism. These core tasks target the low self-worth that permeates perfectionism and codependency. When your focus is outside of yourself, you’re always working to prove yourself, take care of others, fix and change others, keep the peace by people-pleasing, denying your own feelings, and keeping yourself “small.”
Even if you don’t identify with codependency or perfectionism, you may find that you struggle with knowing, loving, and being yourself. These seem to be common struggles. Our lifestyle keeps us so busy, distracted, and disconnected that it’s common to lose your sense of self and self-worth.
[For more of this story, written by Sharon Martin, go to http://blogs.psychcentral.com/...ourself-be-yourself/]
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