We hear all too often about how we should forgive this person for mistreating us or that person for hurting our feelings. And also that forgiving a person is for you & not them. While that may be true, we don’t give enough credence to how necessary & important it is to forgive ourselves.
I know you’ve heard the saying before that we are our own worst critic. So much happens on a subconscious level that we don’t even notice that something’s going on.
We beat ourselves up for blowing our diets, mismanaging money, choosing the wrong dude/girl —AGAIN! What many of us don’t know is that the subconscious is hella powerful. No matter how many times our conscious mind says that we want to change a thing, it (conscious mind) cannot outsmart the subconscious without proper programming.
Our subconscious mind stores every single event that has ever happened to us plus attaches, right along with it, the emotions we felt. So, like the time my ex boyfriend & I got into it for who knows what & he proceeded to call me all types of bitches & hoes & how I was not wife material & yada…yada…yada…
Granted, I don’t believe those things to be true now, but there was a time when I couldn’t agree more. Why? Not necessarily because I was called those things before, but prior relationships I was in made me FEEL that those things were true.
There were 3 relationships I was in that, shortly after they ended, each of them got married. This, along with some other traumas & issues, played a part in driving thoughts of unworthiness into my head & affirmed that I was nothing more than just a play thing, fling, or side chick.
Our subconscious mind thrives on familiarity. It just wants us to be safe. So, even though when we meet someone who is similar to the abusive person we just broke up with, our subconscious mind is like hey, this feels familiar; let’s do it. Our conscious mind is like, naw dawg. Remember the last time you were crying for months trying to recover from the pain that fool inflicted upon you? And the subconscious mind is like…
Its only concern is with fulfilling its need of comfort & the familiar. This is why we tend to experience the same or similar incidents, events, & situations in relationships, just with different people, & will continue to do so unless we make a conscious effort to reprogram the subconscious mind.
I got to a point where I could no longer tolerate the feelings of unworthiness & not being good enough. So, I had to question the stories surrounding why I believed those things to be true. Because our beliefs invoke our thoughts…our thoughts invoke our emotions…& our emotions invoke our actions.
Once I got to the core root of those stories, it became clear as to why I did the things I did, behaved the way I behaved. I got the lesson & forgive myself for everything 💜
Phette Hollins 