Let Go and Be Free
Discover tips on self-healing, overcome a dysfunctional childhood and find happiness.
The stress and urgency of day-to-day challenges can become overwhelming if you let them. Bills, sickness, problems at work, arguments within the family, such stresses can exacerbate how you struggle with overcoming your problems.
If your early family upbringing was filled with dysfunction and abuse, the patterns that you fall into might be fraught with anxiousness and fear.
There will come a time when you will need to forgive yourself, and you might find this to be one of the hardest things to do.
To forgive yourself means that you need to accept that you’ve made a mistake, you might have hurt someone, and that’s hard to overcome.
You might feel damaged, broken, or a “screw up.”
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” And Mark Twain once commented that “Comparison is the death of joy.” There is a lot to compare yourself to. All you need to do is turn on the TV, go on Facebook, or Instagram, or pick up a magazine.
Who is thinner than you, smarter, more together, richer, happier, sexier, and an all-about better person?
Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, and this year the holiday is unlike any that I’ve seen in my lifetime. With COVID-19 cases at an all-time high (the U.S. is recording an average of 145,000 cases a day), the Center for Disease Control is recommending that families do not celebrate the holiday with anyone outside their home.
When we try to run from ourselves and ignore how we feel, we’re only doing a disservice to ourselves. Sooner or later we’re going to have to face our feelings.
If you stop and take stock of who you are, what you are feeling, and what you want in life, the answers that come to you might be overwhelming.
As a kid, all I wanted was for my father to be in my life and to love me. I wanted him to be there for my mother, brother, and me. But that wasn’t to be.
For a long time, I searched high and low and looked for approval and love in other people. I’d find a few months of joy, but then things would always fall apart.
What should you do when you feel overwhelmed? I’m not a big fan of anyone telling someone else what they “should” do. Instead, I can share a story.
After my grandfather passed away, less than two months later my grandmother passed as well. And then about two and a half months later my father-in-law passed. Then, three months later, our son was born.
A year ago today I started writing my first Let Go and Be Free book. I had promised myself that I would write for a year and then stop. Since I want to even out all four books, I’m going to continue writing until I hit day 400. I think that will be a nice way of rounding out the series. But for today how I celebrate the holidays will be different than what I’ve done in the past.
When you think about yourself, how do you feel? Are you happy? Sad? Do you put yourself down? Are you self-confident or are you angry at yourself for the problems that you’ve encountered in life due to growing up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family?
Self-esteem and self-love are often big challenges for those of us who grew up with dysfunction. Instability and a laundry list of problems ranging from abuse (sexual, physical or emotional) to neglect plague many of us who grew up in a dysfunctional family.
As I write this, we’re 9 months into the pandemic and I can share at this point that I’ve had all sorts of stress-related dreams (some into full-blown nightmares). People are stressed, cases are higher in my state than they were back in the early parts of the pandemic, and there’s a lot of fear and anger.
People are tired of dealing with the virus and some are lashing out.
