Month: June 2023

Self care is about the whole picture.

Of  both what you’re doing on the outside and what is driving you from the inside.

Free yourself from overthinking

Overthinking or worrying is taking one small thing and thinking about it beyond the facts that you actually know about it. When you are unsatisfied and unable to relax with or accept a situation, you think and think and think about it.

This is harmful. This is something we all do on a daily basis and it needs to stop.

Does overthinking ever help you?

Anyway we tend to use overthinking to avoid or get away from how we feel.

To use thinking in order to suppress or cover up how you really feel will ultimately do nothing but strengthen those feelings you’re trying to avoid.

Then the distress you generate through overthinking will add to the current stress you’re trying to avoid, which will lead to more overthinking and is how you get yourself stuck in an endless cycle.

I found over the years, that I was always worried, stressed or anxious for a good reason, so overthinking to avoid these feelings would be useless and do nothing but make me feel worse, so it was best just to let myself feel that way, without trying to avoid it or judge it.

Which was hard, sure, you never want to feel those feelings, but I found the longer I would avoid, and distract myself away from feeling those feelings the longer they would be drawn out. 

Coming back to just feeling them, the overthinking would fade away and the unnecessary worry that I brought into my life would decrease.

Try this out for yourself.

You can prove that you don’t have to harm yourself, just to avoid yourself.

Whenever you start to harm yourself by overthinking. Feel the disturbance behind that thinking; whether that is worry, stress or anxiety just let your overthinking go into the background where it will eventually fade away.

It won’t be easy at first but the more you do it the easier it’ll get. And persisting with this till you get it is really really worth it, believe me.

In doing so you will feel and know a true and real sense of you, away from the harm you and others cause you.

Then you will have a chance to truly care about yourself.

It is that simple.

Related article: How to stop overthinking

Breaking free from negative self-thoughts

Most of what we think about ourselves we pick up from the outside world, social media, our parents, friends, even society and assume these thoughts are our own.

So how do we discern our own thoughts from the ones that come from outside?

If a thought is coming from the outside; it will be putting you down, making you feel disturbed, angry or critical of yourself.

If a thought is coming from you, from inside; it will lift you up; it is guiding you, taking care of you, it is coming from a deeper felt sense of you.

Think about it, what is more related to you? A thought that comes from inside of you, the felt sense of you in the body.

Or a thought that comes from the outside, from someone else’s bias perception of you or how you should be.

There is no way, we as humans could think horrible things about ourselves unless we were taught to do so. We are who we are and unless we compare ourselves with something outside, there is no reason for us to hate who we are or think such thoughts.

Animals don’t hate who they are. You don’t see a dog sulking because the other dogs have prettier fur than it does.

We should be no different.

Be honest with yourself now, if you take all your comparison, criticism and nasty thoughts away and just come back to how you feel behind all those thoughts.

How does that feel?

However, it feels, is fine. Because that is how you feel, and there is no wrong way to feel.

And you know the most amazing thing! Unlike thinking, there is no way we can compare how we feel with anyone else, because we have no idea how other people feel.

Sure, they can describe it to us, but who knows what they actually mean. Their ‘happy’ could be your ‘depressed’, and visa versa…

So, if there is no way you can compare how you feel with anyone else. How do you know it’s wrong, or bad? You don’t, so let it go.

Stop thinking these nasty thoughts about yourself and come back to how it feels to be you in the body.

And if that feels gross, or disturbing or makes you want to run away from it, stay with it and feel it until that feeling fades.

Because unlike your nasty thoughts, feelings will come and go as they need to. Thoughts drag on forever if we keep repeating them.

So stop.

And finally, Allow yourself to heal the harm by feelin it

Don’t use this article as a list of rules to follow, use this as a guide to help you stop the harm you are causing yourself.  

This doesn’t mean that you have to stop eating ice cream forever. Eat the goddam ice cream, do the things that make you feel like shit. But once you’ve done them and you’re sitting there feeling like shit.

Feel how that feels. Don’t avoid it, because part of stopping the harm is feeling the harm that you’ve done to yourself.

In feeling that harm your able to see the impact it has on you, which will help you to stop it.

Stop the harm and your body will heal naturally by itself.

Here’s a great example:

We have been complaining about environmental crises and global warming for a long time now. Talking about all the things we could do to fix it, all the things we need to apply, to change, to stop.

Then about 3 billion people all around the world went into lockdown. And within 3 weeks of humans not going outside, not imposing themselves on the world, the world began to fix itself naturally.

The canals in Venice cleared up, cities in India saw the Himalayan mountains for the first time in 30 years, people in London saw the Eiffel tower from their homes.

The natural world fixed itself, simply because we stopped the harm. Because we left the planet alone.

So maybe… that’s what you need to do for yourself. Don’t you think.  And don’t forget, you too are also part of nature, and so you work the same way.

There is no fancy cure to all of this, to your pains, illnesses, distresses, it’s all up to you to stop harming yourself. And let nature – the body, do its thing. And it will if you let it.

You know when a certain situation, person or food makes you feel sick, disturbed or vulnerable. So stop putting yourself in harm’s way.

Take into consideration the self-care you’re neglecting. If you can sit on social media for an hour a day you can spend at least 30 minutes giving yourself the space and quite you need by meditating.

Don’t ignore your body when you feel disturbed around a person, you’re allowed to cut them out of your life. Nobody is worth causing yourself pain. No amount of pills are going to help you when the junk food you’re eating is making you sick.

You can just let yourself feel anxious, worried or distressed, and it will pass. But you will achieve nothing by overthinking and only cause yourself more anxiety, worry and distress.

Can you see now that any negative thoughts about yourself are coming from the outside. Therefore, they have nothing to do with you, so let them go and focus instead on how it feels, rather than what you’re thinking.

And finally feel the harm; even if you do fall into old habits, or harmful behaviours, that’s fine just feel the harm you’ve caused yourself without criticising and judging it. And move on without dwelling on it.

Only you can heal yourself, only you can stop the harm that is caused. Sure, you may have picked up certain thoughts, and behaviours from other people, but you can stop them now and only you know how.

Now that you know what the problem really is.

Leave yourself alone, which means, stop the harm.

This is the most natural and most intelligent solution. 

Just as the natural world in Venice, India and London fixed itself when we stopped harming it and left it alone, so to, when you leave yourself alone in this way, your body, which is also nature will take over the care and fix itself…every single time.

You just need you to get out of the way and stop the harm, and wherever or whenever you do, everything will just sort itself out.

Voila!

Part One.

Self-care for many is superficially indulging in luxuries or fantasies to escape the stress of everyday life. We even use it as an excuse for doing things we generally feel guilty for and in doing so trick ourselves into things we know are bad for us.

Whether that be with; self-pampering, overuse of healthy food and exercises or on the flipside eating ‘treat’ foods e.g. ice-cream, even though we know they’re bad for us.

And then complaining about it 5 minutes later.

This is not really self-care, but more like self-harm.

To self-care we need to consider the whole picture.

Doing skincare every morning, seeing a psychologist every week or going to the doctor every month doesn’t mean you’re taking care of yourself. These are often just band-aids covering up the real issues of harmful behaviours we ignore.

Then self-care becomes about trying to fix the damage you’ve done to yourself, rather than stopping doing the damage in the first place.

That’s like crawling into a doctor’s office with a bullet wound in your arm and the doctor giving you a band-aid to cover it up. You’ll have to come back tomorrow for another band-aid, because that won’t fix the problem.

Eventually, you have to dig deeper to find the bullet and remove it. Only then can you really heal. It’s the same with harmful behaviours, you have to dig deeper to the source of the behaviours and end it there.

For example;

Rather than just doing your daily skincare and assuming that’ll clear up your acne, go to the source of your problem and look at the bigger picture of your life. What food are you putting into your body? What thoughts are you thinking about yourself? Are these harming you? Or helping you?

I’m not saying don’t do your skincare or don’t go to the psychologist or the doctor. Just don’t try to cover up your harm with a so-called simple solution. Look at the full picture.

Our problems or issues, or illness cannot be changed or cured by us trying to cover them up or fix them. We need to stop the harm.

Make meditation a priority

How you feel inside affects your thinking, how you see things and how you behave that day, so this is where all the harm starts.

To meditate you are taking the time to stop everything and come back to what it is to be you. Without judgment or criticism or trying to change yourself in any way.

Because these are the basis of self harm.

This is why daily meditation is the most important thing to help you to self-care and stop the harm at its roots.

When we try to change how we feel, or how we are, this is also harming ourselves. Because we are overlooking who and how we actually are.

So to incorporate daily meditation into your life will help you return to a deeper sense of you in the body. Letting your thinking and daily stresses take a back seat for a while. Thus, letting any overreactions or thoughts about life and yourself decrease.

This allows you to purge and release the build up of daily tensions, taking you deeper and further into your meditation.

If you find yourself struggling with the motivation to meditate daily, you can use Undo’s guided meditations. These will not only help you stay focused whilst you get the hang of meditation, but will also deepen your understanding of meditation and therefore yourself.  

And using Undo’s natural meditation daily isn’t you trying to put a band-aid over a bullet wound.

Meditation isn’t about fixing a problem, applying a technique, medicine or effort to fix that problem. It isn’t about an end result or goal to strive for. It is taking all of that away and leaving you with the source of the problem itself and allowing you to feel it within you so it can dissolve naturally.

And this way, it will.

Once you allow yourself to just be you without those intentions to change yourself in any way, you will start to heal – naturally – without even knowing.

Until you notice how much better you actually feel, just being you.

And believe me, you will.

Listen to your body

Hear me out.

We spend our whole life listening to our thoughts, what we think we want, what other people tell us we want and we never really pay attention to how we feel, our so-called ‘gut feeling’, until it’s too late.

For a simple example:

We all know that ice cream is unhealthy and makes us feel sick, or that we eat it to escape what we don’t want to feel, but we still eat it because we think we want it.

And in eating it, we ignore our gut feeling which is telling us it’s not good for us, that it’ll make us feel sick.

Remember what I said above about ‘stopping the harm’. This is what I mean.

Rather than harming yourself – by eating the ice cream – and then complaining about the harm you just did, just stop listening to your thought processes and pay attention to your body, your gut feeling, and in doing so; you will stop the harm.

And if it happens too quickly and you habitually start to harm yourself, as soon as you notice it,  stop it. Take a moment to feel the harm, and then stop it at its roots, by feeling the underlying urges for doing what can harm you.

The more you do this, the easier it’ll be until you stop it altogether.

Our body never lies. We just don’t listen to it. We listen to our clever thoughts, which manipulate us and trick us into harming ourselves.

Our body is what we are and therefore knows us better than our thought processes.

Our body isn’t influenced by outside ideas, social norms or advertisements like our thinking is, our body is smarter than that.

Our thought processes cannot feel, sense or understand what we are going through, or the harm we do, or what we really need.

If we feel sick, we feel sick in the body ­– this is how we know we’re sick, and all our thought process can do is complain about it or try to ignore it.

If we feel disturbed, the body feels disturbed, all our thought process does is suppress it.

Not only does the body know more than the thought process, but in feeling, sick, disturbed, tired, etc it is warning you of something.

If you feel sick because of something you ate, this is your body telling you to avoid eating it again.

If you feel disturbed when hanging around a certain person, this is your body telling you to avoid that person.

If you feel tired, this is the body telling you, you need to sleep …

It’s as simple and straightforward as that.

I have discovered this all from my own personal experience, from my own trials, errors and because I was ignoring my body and gut feelings, falling flat on my face too many times.

My gut feeling is always correct, and why I say that is because so far it always has been.

It took me years to work it out, but it wasn’t until I went travelling solo around Europe at the age of 20 that I realised how important it was to listen to my body.

I was going into an environment and situations that I had never come across before so my thinking was completely out of its depth. It had nothing to refer back to, just thoughts and ideas based on what I had heard about travelling or my dire need to not miss out on any situation. This therefore clouded my judgment of situations and people.  

So in the end it came down to how I felt, no matter the situation, person or environment. My ‘gut feeling’ was what I had to listen to and it was because of this that I managed to travel through Europe for two years with no issue.

However as I stated above, my thoughts about situations were tainted by what I had heard from other people, and in not realising this they would influence my decisions.

So I needed – and so do you – to tell the difference between my ‘gut feeling’ and my ‘thoughts’ over exaggeration and being influenced by ideas from others.

For example:

If you know of a friend that was mugged when travelling and you start to panic and worry that that will happen to you, and those panicked thoughts turn into a panicked feeling then this is your feelings being influenced by your thinking. 

Can you see how this is then a completely fabricated, imagined and false feeling?

Whereas the feelings that you physically feel in your body, any disturbances that pop up out of nowhere, are not caused by your thinking because they are from a deeper sense in your body.

This type of purely-sensed disturbance you need to listen to, because this is your body picking up on something and setting off alarm bells.

False feelings start from thinking.

True feelings begin as a sensation in your body.

Listen to your body, it is always right.

So self-care is about the full picture. You need to look at everything you’re doing in life and address each thing that could be causing you harm. Rather than just slapping on a ‘quick fix’ and wondering why you’re still so miserable.

Meditate daily, listen to your body and start responding to what you need, rather than what some viral trend says.