If you’ve been around me for any length of time, it’s likely you have heard me talk about what I call the Gremlins.
Let me share their history and purpose.
My Journey
When I began my journey to wellness after my life crashed, I got therapy. Therapy is awesome, and I recommend it. But, it is not the full picture.
In therapy I learned about processing my feelings. Which is huge! Recognizing the roots of my rage and figuring out how to stop spraying it on other people made it much more possible for me to live well.
And, it turned out that it wasn’t all I needed to address.
I needed to figure out how to take care of all of myself. Not just my feelings.
Five Aspects of Identity
In my thinking, there are five major categories of my life that I need to reflect on.
~ Self-concept: I need to know who I want to be, how I want to show up in the world, and what my values are. And one of the ways to recognize what I’m truly portraying is by noticing other people’s reactions to me.
~Physical well-being: I needed to recognize that my daily actions are the foundation of my physical health. Ignoring my health led to weight gain, flabby muscles, and developing an auto-immune disease. Ugh.
~Attitude: To monitor my attitude, I ask myself, “Where am I placing blame for what happens in my life. Because if I’m always attributing what happens in my life to someone else, I am also giving away my power to do anything different. Blame strips away personal power.
~Relationships: I find if I’m not careful with my relationships, they become less enjoyable for me and probably for the people around me. I monitor my anger and sarcasm and seek to treat each person in my life with respect and kindness.
~Connection to love: I know that it is easy for me to slip into, “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll eat some worms”, (a perky little tune I learned and took to heart as a little girl). I have learned to connect with love in my own heart and it helps me connect to others.
The Gremlins
These different aspects I have personified and given names. I also pay attention to each of these creatures every day. I check in and ask them how they are doing.
This practice has helped me reach some goals:
~ I’ve gotten my auto-immune condition under control
~I’ve completed my doctoral work
~I’ve dropped 85#
My relationships are easier and I’m better able to have fun.
Over the next few weeks, I’m planning to go a little deeper into each of the Gremlins.
I hope it’s beneficial to you!
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