by Janelle Legge | Mar 18, 2016 | Self Actualization |
Let’s face it, inner conflict is exhausting. It’s a total mojo and creativity killer. It stops you from being in the present. You can’t draw on all of you and your inner resources. Because you’re so busy having an internal tug of war. See-sawing between longings, dreams and desires and the parts of you that are heavily invested in remaining skeptical, stubborn and fixed on how things should be. Aka your inner killjoy.
Inner conflict most often boils down to a classic battle between your heart and mind.
Getting stuck in inner conflict is like driving a car with 3 flat tyres. It slows you down and everything takes more effort and energy. It impacts just about every area of your life. And the longer you stay stuck in this zone, the more it starts to drive you crazy.
When you’ve got two or more very distinct warring factions inside, you need to pull out some clever, creative moves to break the impasse. Otherwise it can just go on and on, wasting you precious time and energy, eroding your sanity! Some people literally waste years at a time paralyzed and stuck in inner conflict. If you can relate, then you know how awful and upsetting this can be. You know you’re stuck, but you just can’t see the way out and forward.
Often inner conflict comes from subconsciously, or consciously, buying into someone else’s dreams, judgments or value system. Usually parents or someone else from your tribe. Sometimes it’s peers or the people you’re spending the most time with.
This gets played out in a whole range of different areas in life. One of the most common is in career choice. So many times I’ve seen people who are miserable deep down inside because they’ve dutifully taken on degrees, jobs and career paths to ultimately gain approval and recognition from the outside. Eventually these decisions come back to bite. They eventually start to wonder why they’re not happy or personally fulfilled. It’s as if they’ve been living someone else’s life and dreams. False. Self. Syndrome.
The false self never brings lasting fulfilment. It leaves you feeling uncertain, empty and flimsy inside.
So what’s the antidote to inner conflict?
Image Art Journals
C G Jung believed that the Self has an innate drive to evolve and self-actualize. As a psychotherapist and coach, I’ve found this to be absolutely true. Your authentic, innate self wins out in the end when it comes to loosening the grip of inner conflict so you don’t become permanently stuck and pot-bound. The constant pressure and dissatisfaction you’re feeling inside eventually builds up to a point where it finally becomes unbearable. You just can’t stand the status quo stalemate anymore. You know you have to break free and take a risk and follow your passions and dreams. But not after having gone through a lot of inner conflict and emotional pain. Often your body will push things to a head. You start to have physical symptoms or an accident occurs out of the blue where you’re forced to slow down, take time out, nourish and intimately tune into your true self. Finally the noise and distractions have been turned down and you start to listen to and act on what your real self has been trying to tell you.
The best way forward is first going inwards, doing the inner journey, in order to find pathways and activities that enliven you. Creating the space to do this. Then committing to follow through. To follow your bliss.
So often the pathway or decision that’s ultimately the right one for you is NOT the one that’s coming from your rational mind. It’s tuning into what your intuition and heart have been trying to tell you.
It’s also about accessing and owning your own power. Not projecting it onto someone else, inadvertently opting for powerlessness and passive victim roles. To access your own power and the amazing resources inside of you, it’s vital that you accept your vulnerabilities. This ironically makes you stronger inside. To do this often requires visiting the underworld to find out out what fears and unmet needs are driving your choices, and which parts of you are overly attached to these.
Doing the inner journey makes you more self-aware.
But it’s more than just doing the inner journey.
What you ultimately need to do is have a round table discussion with the different selves inside of you whenever you’re feeling pulled by inner conflict. You need to develop the capacity to observe who in you wants what and why.
Then it’s about taking action because it’s only through doing and trying out different things that you get to really find out what’s going to bring you the most satisfaction and joy. It’s rarely a smooth linear process. It can be confusing and convoluted. But it’s always worth it. Being proactive and taking risks is the antidote to living a life full of regrets over what you never dared to pursue.
If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living, is the one you’re living. And when you can see it, you begin to deal with people who are in the field of your bliss. And they open doors to you. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
Joseph Campbell
Janelle Legge is a Psychotherapist, Leadership, Mindfulness and Wellbeing Consultant and Coach who specialises in Relationships, Career Success, Life-Work Integration and Wellbeing. Janelle sees clients in person in Sydney and works with clients around the world via Skype. To book a skype session with Janelle click here.
by Janelle Legge | Mar 9, 2016 | Relationships |
Are you basing your self worth on whether someone likes you? If you are, this can become a slippery slope to low self confidence and low self esteem. Not knowing how to develop self confidence leads to inconsistent behaviours, sending out mixed messages to others and not being clear on what exactly it is that you want. Because all your energy and focus is on other people. So you’re never really sure about what you really want and need in order to feel happy, successful and fulfilled. It’s a painful and uncertain way to be in the world and negatively impacts all areas of your life – your personal life, your relationships and your career.
Knowing How To Develop Self Confidence Is A Game Changer
Learning how to develop self confidence when it’s not your strong point, is a total game changer in your relationships and life. Particularly if you’re someone who is highly sensitive to whether someone else likes you or not. Being overly sensitive to other people liking you often stems from not getting enough positive, valuing experiences growing up. Regular day to day experiences of positive validation, encouragement and recognition for just who you are, regardless of what you do or achieve, are the building blocks to healthy self confidence and esteem. It’s not getting enough of these positive validating experiences growing up that can lead to feeling insubstantial as a person. When you don’t feel solid and secure in your own right, it’s hard to fully immerse yourself in the present, because a part of you almost feels like you don’t really exist in the minds of other people. You don’t have a sense of your own agency. You don’t fully believe that what you do has a positive meaningful impact in the world. You’re almost apologising for your very existence by being constantly tuned in to everyone else’s needs and feelings except your own. Because growing up you worked out that that’s what got you love, approval and validation. But it’s based on a false sense of self.
Having a high sensitivity to what other people feel or think about you also comes from being around critical, judgmental or self-absorbed people growing up. When you’re younger you don’t have the capacity or life experience to understand where adults are coming from when they’re negative, critical or emotionally unavailable. Kids tend to take on the burden of this, interpreting it as having done something wrong, or not being good enough or worthy enough to be loved unconditionally. They don’t feel they have a right to be who they naturally are.
This is not about blaming parents or people from your past.
It’s about becoming more self-aware. Learning how to rebuild your confidence and self-worth.
When Perfectionism And People Pleasing Compensate For Low Self-Confidence: Case Study
Bianca (*not her real name) had just turned 30 and was constantly getting into a confused muddle when it came to dating. She would date someone for a few months and then get frustrated when the guy she was dating wasn’t responding at the pace and speed that she wanted. Being able to just stay in the present was almost impossible for her. There was constant anxiety around needing to know whether the guy she was dating really liked her. The more she liked a guy, the more she had a deep seated fear and belief that the relationship wouldn’t last. That he would lose interest in her and look for someone else. Someone who was sexier, more attractive, more desirable, [more …]. The negative comparison list went on and on in her head and eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Guys eventually tired of Bianca’s mixed messages and vibes. One minute she appeared confident and together, only to then slip back into negative and self-defeating patterns and beliefs that sabotaged the relationship. Bianca just couldn’t relax and wait and see how things developed.
Rejection by guys would then send Bianca into a total tailspin. Her worst fears had yet again become realized. Her self esteem would plummet and it would take her months to regain her confidence and start to feel good about herself. Technically gifted in her chosen field of work, Bianca had wanted to progress to a team leader role to broaden her skills and career options. But the feedback she’d received was that the company wasn’t prepared to put her into the leadership talent pool until she sorted out the issues in her personal life which were impacting her performance and potentially derailing her career. Bianca’s manager knew she had the potential to achieve a lot more, so encouraged Bianca to sort out her personal life so that she could progress in her career.
When we looked at what was behind Bianca’s anxiety around dating and how she approached most of her life, it was around perfectionism and constantly needing approval from others. Never feeling good enough or worthy enough in her own right as a child, Bianca had become the ‘good girl’ at home and at school. Both parents were struggling with issues in their relationship whilst Bianca was growing up and were often preoccupied. So Bianca discovered that focusing on everyone else’s needs, being perfect and always doing well at school is what got her the positive attention she craved. It made her feel liked. But these feelings never lasted and were fleeting at best because they were based on Bianca developing a false sense of self, shaped mostly around perfectionism and other people’s needs and agendas.
How To Develop Self Confidence:
Self Acceptance, Self Empathy And Self Love
At first, learning to just focus on her own wants, needs and vulnerabilities seemed like a Herculean effort to Bianca. She had spent most of her life looking outwards, not inwards. Insight-oriented psychotherapy helped Bianca understand the forces that had shaped her and why deep down she felt so anxious and insecure. It was about getting to know and fully embrace who she really was and what she wanted. Bianca hadn’t felt entitled to receive love and acceptance for just being her, outside of her academic achievements and people pleasing. She’d grown up with a faulty belief that she wasn’t worthy or good enough to have someone in her life that would love her for who she was. It was realizing that she didn’t have to keep striving to be perfect. In her dating life her perfectionism and lack of self confidence was driving guys away.
Self confidence comes from quietly knowing deep down inside that you’re good enough just as you are. It’s being confident in your abilities and okay with your vulnerabilities. Realizing that being vulnerable and not perfect is a normal part of being human. It’s also about getting enough positive real time experiences where you feel valued. Knowing that what you say and do counts. That your feelings and needs matter. It’s also about being able to give other people permission to be who they really are. Accepting that they are allowed to say “No” to you, just as you’re able to say “No” to them. And that “No” doesn’t mean that you’re defective in some way or unworthy of being loved.
Bianca had to learn how to develop self confidence by not personalising someone else’s choice and right to say “No”. Accepting that it was okay to give herself and others permission to be who they are and not try and constantly control situations and outcomes. To let things move along at a pace that felt healthy and safe for both parties, which then started to free things up. Trusting that she would be okay regardless of whether it worked out or not with the guy she was dating was a huge mindset shift.
Discovering How To Build Self Confidence Made The Guys Bianca Dated Feel More Comfortable Around Her
The guys Bianca dated stopped feeling pushed around by her emotional insecurities and constant need for certainty that things would progress to the next level after only a few dates. Bianca is now into her second year of dating the same guy. A first for her. That’s because Bianca took the time to learn more about herself and how to develop self confidence that endured. She became more self-aware around her strengths, vulnerabilities and the beliefs and behaviours that kept tripping her up and impacting her present. Bianca has developed a new level of confidence that’s far more solid and real. Her self confidence is no longer precariously based on perfectionism and a constant need to be liked.
* All identifying features have been removed from this article to protect the privacy of my client.
Janelle Legge is a Psychotherapist, Leadership, Mindfulness and Wellbeing Consultant and Coach who specialises in Relationships, Career Success, Work-Life Integration and Wellbeing. Janelle sees clients in person in Sydney and works with clients around the world via Skype. To book a skype session with Janelle click here.
