Self Judgement

This week has been such a productive week, seeing and listening to a few new souls who talked about their inner ‘mean voice’ coming out and really taking them down into their shadow.

Shadow meaning a little bit low and not really knowing how to come out. I sat, listened, guided and completely immersed myself in supporting these people.

I was really taken back by how many people were feeling this way this week and it was intense showing them how to guide themselves back to their pathway.

Although everyone’s inner mean voice was different there was a pattern in that everyone deep down felt they were either not worthy or just believed they would not succeed in life.

It all came down to self-judgement and how they carried this lifetime of judgement for themselves and of course then placed judgement on how people would perceive them.

This cycle can continue and we go around in circles living in self-judgement.

Don’t get me wrong, judgement can be a good thing too. It helps us get out of situations we shouldn’t be in and helps us stay safe. However, judging ourselves and how we think others see us, is not helpful at all and can lead us to very destructive behaviour.

It’s funny, even our worst criticism from a stranger rarely surpasses the judgement we put on ourselves.

It takes time, patience, love and talking to yourself a lot to become consciously aware of when you are doing it, and then practising rituals, like meditation, chanting, the Ho’oponopono and the list goes on…

It’s taken me years to recognise when my inner voice is being exceptionally critical to me, and when it happens I can usually get myself out of it, however my journey started many years ago when I was a teenager. I have done a lot of work with my inner child and shadow self, but that’s a conversation for another day…

Instead, let me share with you a personal anecdote of an experience I had with combating self-judgement:

I used to work in a corporate role as a HR manager and although I loved my job, there was something missing for me in this role, and towards the end of my career it was all about closing large sections of the organisation in order for the larger group of companies to grow (which I totally understand, but it still felt yuck to retrench 100s of people).

One day during work, I received a phone call from the wife of someone I had worked with over 6 years ago.

I had never met her before, but she rang to tell me her husband had died.

At first without even thinking I gave my condolences and we chatted about her husband, who at this point in time could not even recall, I was still a little shocked that this person called me.

So back to the story, I was a little overwhelmed as she wasn’t very pleasant to me. I was the person who handed over a redundancy to her husband. During the conversation she said many times how everything went downhill after I had made him redundant. I never apologised to her for my work, I just openly listened to her story. We all have a job to do and this was mine, being the front of the redundancies at the time.

Aside from all this, I had not worked in this corporate job for over 5 years and while I possess the skills to shut the conversation down, I did not do this. I am here to serve others and although HR may not be that way anymore, I could hear in her voice that she was lost, had nowhere to go, and didn’t even know how to start.

I found the phone numbers for her to call and also told her what she needed to know for dealing with this company.

All the time whilst helping her she was very annoyed at me and very dismissive, and unfortunately, I still could not figure out who her husband was. She continued to ask a few more questions, some I could answer and others I just didn’t know anymore. I wished her well on her journey and suggested a little investigatory work with her husband’s paperwork. When the discussion came to the end, I shared my condolences to her and told her that with all the questions she was asking she would find out all the information she needed and that she was doing the best she could for herself. “Be kind to you” I said, and then she hung up, no pleasantries, nothing.

As soon as she hung up I said to myself, “Wow, that was intense” and in that split moment, my body started to shake and I got goosebumps all over. I realised her husband was one of the people who threatened to hurt me during this time and subsequently made me so fearful for my life I developed PTSD.

He was not a very nice man, and this discussion had triggered me back to my trauma, and subsequently to my childhood trauma. The body felt the trigger. I felt it rise, I felt scared, and fearful in my body again.

As I sat at my desk watching my body experience this I felt the tears and fear reach my heart. Then I heard my inner mean voice, (shadow) started to criticise and judge me. I heard it say things like;“You’re always too nice and look what’s happened”,“You don’t deserve to be successful”, “Look at you, you’re not even able to be successful. Just give up, not sure why you’re even trying,” “You’re stupid, you don’t know what you are doing” and the list goes on…

All that in a matter of minutes, my body slumped and I felt my energy levels fall. I was going deep into my shadow and she was trying to protect me, keep me small so no one would notice me, in order to keep me safe.

I knew straight away what was happening and I decided to step away from my desk and take a shower. I knew I had to let the body feel the past trauma from my past experiences and I knew I had to be gentle and kind to myself. My body was trying to take control over my mind to keep me safe.

As I was in the shower with the water falling down my face, I started to envisage this energy washing through me, I repeated to myself out loud, “thank you for showing me this body, I am sorry you had to experience this past abuse, verbal, sexual and threatening behaviour, Please forgive me for not acknowledging you, and I honour this feeling, I am sorry we had to go through this, however I am safe, I am strong, I no longer need you to keep me safe from these experiences” I repeated this about 8 times till I felt my body being less reactive.

I then started to repeat the following statement; I am changing, I am changed, I am the change. This again I repeated over until I felt my body soften.

I then repeated; I am grateful for this learning, I am grateful for my body and how it feels. I am grateful of the energy I have just experienced.

My body started to come back to normal, my cortisol reduced and I started to come out of flight and fight mode.

I jumped out of the shower and I went into my office, turned some chanting music on, placed my smudge on the charcoal and whilst the room filled with smoke I danced (like no one is watching) I dance a real deep feminine dance. I cleansed my energy by smudging and shook, moved and wiggled the remaining trauma out of my body.

It felt good to dance and at first my body was dancing aggressive, strong hard movements and as the music went on and my chanting got louder my body fell into more feminine moves, more gentle more swaying, more connected to mumma earths ebbs and flows.

When we connect back into what we used to do with our bodies and our ancestral paths, our body understands what happening and allows our endorphins to take over and help us to reduce the cortisol and stress.

I sat and in my mind’s eye thanked my Shadow for always having my back and I told her I loved her.

Then I walked away in my mind’s eye back to me, my future higher purpose self, I looked at her and felt how she felt, I could see her and she was beaming, so I stepped into her, she felt amazing and was everything I had always wanted to be, so I kept her with me and we returned back into the room as one person. When I opened my eyes I walked over and wrote this blog.

These tools I used to get myself out of my shadow, are not anything new, some are slightly adapted to what feels right for me and my energetic flow.

What can we take away from this?

• Be consciously aware when the self-judging arises
• Take gentle action to stop the self-judging
• Use tools that work for you
• Be gentle and kind to yourself
• Do something that fills your cup and expels the energy
  • Dance/walk/swim/ride/play music
• Cleanse yourself in mother earth.
  • Burn herbs to smudge yourself, swim in a living lake or ocean or Cuddle a tree.
• Be gentle and kind to yourself
• Reset back into the future you.
• Honour yourself
  • Look in the mirror and say you love you.

In saying all of the above when i finished writing this blog, i felt his presences intuitively and I felt he was extremely grateful for me supporting and giving his wife this help. He was happy that i didn’t judge him or his wife and went above it all to support her.

This was another shiver up the spine moment, yet pleasant and I thanked him and told him i was grateful for this learning.

Much love and light to you.