What’s wrong with me? I often have clients say, “I know what to do, but I can’t seem to make myself do it. What’s wrong with me?”. This dangerous territory because it is inherently shame inducing and assumes that you are a problem to be solved. With each repeated exposure to these self-defeating beliefs, you feel more defeated. With each experience of defeat, change becomes even more difficult. It becomes an ingrained cycle of self-sabotage. This cycle is on repeat so often, getting out feels hopeless. Hopelessness leads to feeling paralyzed and that paralysis leads further into that cycle of self-sabotage.
In their book, What Happened to You?, Dr. Bruce Perry, MD, PhD and Oprah Winfrey talk about the need to change the narrative around behavior and emotional difficulty from ‘What’s wrong with me’ to ‘what happened to me’. This shift is so important because it removes shame from the equation which ALWAYS makes the situation worse. Trauma hijacks the nervous system and humans, in order to survive, find ways to try to regulate the activation. Often, what works early on- like emotional eating, starts to have other consequences later in life. When we are young and have little to no control over our lives, using food becomes one of the only ways we can cope.
By looking at the underlying contributors to what led to the behavior, we can heal the experiences that created the need to use something like food to regulate the nervous system. Using powerful therapies such as EMDR, Accelerated Resolution Therapy and Comprehensive Resource Model allows a targeted approach to healing the experiences that created the need to use something to regulate. We are hurt in need of healing, not broken in need of fixing. If you are ready to explore the underlying experiences that hold you back, contact me today!
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