Imagine you are an Olympic swimmer who has qualified for the Olympics in four years.
There's just one problem. You've completely let yourself go. You're twenty pounds overweight and you've got four years to train. You know what you need to do. You've got to eat better and whip yourself back into shape. You need more laps in the pool and more days at the gym.
Ugh. That sounds hard. Maybe it would be easier to just continue down the path you're on and hope everything goes ok. After all, you did qualify. But you know deep down if you even want to have a chance at succeeding, you've got to make some changes. Time to toss out the Rocky Road ice cream in your freezer. You know it will be a struggle. But you also know that if you don't overcome this weight problem, it's going to be one painful Olympics.
Nobody likes to struggle to change.
Human begins don't like to struggle, and that's what change represents. We only change when we think the long-run benefits of changing are going to outweigh the short-term benefits of staying the same. Or we wait until the consequences of not changing are so dire that we must change. For instance, think of a doctor telling a patient to change his eating habits or he will die of a heart attack. The truth is struggling is work we'd rather not do because it might bring some short-term pain or sacrifice. We'd really rather keep our habits if we can.
But if you're a child abuse survivor, you must change if you want to be happy and have good relationships.
There's no other way. Otherwise you'll continue to struggle at having good relationships. Now you're probably wondering, what do I change? To answer that, you have to be familiar with a psychological concept called shame. Shame is a feeling of inadequacy about yourself, as if there is something wrong with you as a person. You feel defective somehow. You feel empty.
When you feel empty or defective, you have a hard time relating to others. Your natural, wonderful personality cannot shine through. It's being blocked by your shameful feelings. That's why overcoming shame is so important.
Overcoming shame removes the psychological obstacles that keep you from connecting with others.
As you overcome shame, you'll become more self-confident and you'll feel better. This naturally helps you have healthier relationships. You see, when you have a strong sense of shame, you're like that overweight Olympic swimmer who's trying to perform at his best with less than stellar conditioning. You don't feel as confident as you could. You find yourself feeling sad or empty a lot of the time. These feelings will hinder your ability to perform at your best socially. You'll have a much harder time relating to happy people with high confidence.
That's why you need to start overcoming shame. When you learn how to do this, you'll start having better friendships and intimate relationships. You'll feel happier. That's a change worth struggling for.
To get some more insight on overcoming shame and relationships, see the article
Overcoming Shame.
Adam Appleson has been actively involved in using personal development techniques to promote psychological health and goal-oriented success for the past 11 years. He is the founder of
ZenTactics, a website with advice written especially for survivors of abusive and dysfunctional families.
