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Looking for Love and acceptance
Healing starts with self love and acceptance. But the voices of the shadow, self sabotage, self sacrifice and self punishment will do everything to keep you from loving yourself. Is it possible to love and embrace your shadow self? Here are some ideas to get you started.
Toxic positivity
If you are on the path of healing and self discovery you are familiar with the concept of focusing on the positive. This means to focus on what you want to experience instead of what you want to avoid as most people do.
And while this is a useful concept in life in general, it can become an obstacle in your healing journey sometimes.
The truth is that we live in duality. There is no beautiful without the ugly. You can’t hide from your shadow side. You have to look at it and embrace it to break its control over your life. But how?
Facing the shadow
First you have to be courageous to listen and acknowledge your shadow part with any judgement. Most people fail at this part. But once the shadow is exposed, it looses its power and change becomes possible. Until that moment you are under its rule.
I am here to help you to demistify this process so you can take back your power and change your life for the better.
The voice of the shadow has a very similar message to most people. They are the voices of self sabotage, self sacrifice and self punishment. I know you want to naturally resist those parts of you but I have an invitation for you!
What is you could love that part of you too?
Really embrace all parts of you? The good, the bad, the beautiful and especially the ugly?
Positive affirmations won’t heal you. Love will heal you. And it all starts with you.
Here are some ideas to get you started!
Self love for real
“I absolutely love rejection. Especially when everything goes so well, and then boom, the rejection comes and hurts like a punch in the gut. Now I feel satisfied. I knew all along that things will go wrong.
But after all, none of this is my fault. And I love this game, the victim and the blame. And I love giving my power away so I don’t have to take charge of my life and I can just watch it go by.
I adore being the victim and the martyr too, feeling sad and angry because I was so unjustly hurt.
I love complaining about all the unfairness in the world. There is always something to blame, God, the guy next door and the movement of the planets for all my challenges and deny any responsibility in my suffering. I think it’s easier this way and I like it.
Insecurity is a beloved part of me. I love doubting and questioning everything, I enjoy worrying all the time, sowing seeds of doubt, occasionally being terrified, fear is definitely my element. I love letting fear hold me back. When I feel small, powerless and paralyzed there is nothing I can do so I don’t have move forward. Fear is my great excuse and my powerful weapon of self sabotage.
Sabotaging myself and working against me is also something I enjoy enormously. I love standing in my own way, putting myself down and punish myself for any perceived wrongdoing. And I have and endless list of how I failed and reminding myself of my biggest failures is something I do diligently and take very seriously.
I love being lazy, wasting time, doing nothing with my precious life, it’s part of my self sabotage. Of course I can justify why I am wasting my time, I can weave elaborate tales to procrastinate and make myself believe that I can’t change, I can’t make the next step, I can’t be myself.
My favorite emotions apart from feeling sorry for myself is anger and resentment. I just love tasting this sweet misery. And I have a right to be angry. My anger is totally justified. And I am right. I am the one on the right side. When I feel angry, at least I feel I am living.
I am also deeply antisocial and love isolation and withdrawal. I enjoy being alone and I prefer my own company to others because I am superior of course. People can fuck off. I love the feeling of arrogance because I feel I am powerful and better than others as I am.
But most of all I love to suffer, to believe that the world is unfair and I have no power, I enjoy hating myself because at the end, I am deeply afraid, I am terrified to really see and love myself.”
Conclusion
It is my experience that psychedelic therapy and working with sacred plants, especially the Mother Ayahuasca can greatly support you to become aware of your shadow aspect and start to love and embrace yourself!
You are the healer and love is the medicine.
I love you, Nina Izel
Credits: This article was inspired by the book Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott
