1728 || positive brainwashing || healing the shame that binds you

0:00Welcome to the Make Your Damn Bed Podcast, a daily motivation podcast designed to help you get out of bed every morning with a little company from me, Julie America. If you struggle with consistency, let's build a little momentum together, whether you make your bed or not. Good morning Sunshine, welcome to another day of the Make Your Damn Bed Podcast. John Bradshaw in the book Healing the Shame that Binds You, emphasizes the importance of challenging your negative inner voices through positive affirmations. Quote, this is literally a positive brainwashing techniques. It attempts to replace old, negative, judgmental and critical shaming tapes with new, realistic and positive affirmations. Since most of the old critical voices came from someone else's opinion of you, they represent a very subjective opinion, rather than who you really are. New affirmations will help you change your internal self-talk, so you can be the person

1:00you want to be. The technique he highlights involves writing a positive statement about yourself 15-20 times, ideally twice daily. Once the positive statement is written, he encourages you to wait for the first spontaneous response that comes up. Usually, they'll be negative, and if no response comes up, you can continue the affirmations writing exactly the same statement as before. The purpose of the response is to externalize all of the negative shaming messages in your unconscious mind. The monotony of writing over and over again catches the shamed control mechanism off guard. It's important to remember that some of the shamed parts of our self-image were told to us repeatedly growing up, so we must repeat affirmations in the same vein. And in my personal experience, I am somebody who is constantly saying, I am actually so lucky, I am so grateful, I am so blessed, I am so loved, I am so smart, I am so healthy, I am so wealthy, anytime I start crashing out, it's become this automatic thing where I

2:06go, no, actually everything is always working out for me, no, actually everything is really easy and comfortable and peaceful, and though I do genuinely look at it as a type of brainwashing and gaslighting of myself, I also recognize that I have been gaslit by worse people for worse intentions, so I may as well gaslight myself for good. And I will say it usually does calm down or regulate my nervous system in those moments of high stress, and often that's really all I needed. But if you notice a type of response that keeps popping up, a pattern of your negative voices trying to contradict these positive affirmations, take note of them, listen to them here and out, and try to understand where they're coming from, this time not from a place of judgment. That way you can really start to understand where the disconnect is. And I think Bradshaw does a good job at highlighting this, we have to choose to love and

3:07forgive ourselves. You have to make a conscious effort to let yourself be a human being, which means somebody who's fucked up in the past and will fuck up again. He quotes Joe Corday's advice from a failure who says, you do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self. Of all of the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never lose. Bradshaw then quotes Scott Pack, who defines love as the will to extend myself for this sake of nurturing my own and another's spiritual growth. As Bradshaw puts it, this definition sees love as an act of the will. This means that love is a decision. I can choose to love myself no matter what the past has been, and no matter how I feel about myself right now. In the book, Bradshaw offers some more meditations to sit with someone you love and see yourself

4:09from their eyes, or to practice accepting yourself unconditionally through things like redirection and affirmations. And though this work is difficult, especially at the beginning, choosing to love ourselves is possible, even if we have negative feelings about ourselves. He highlights a book called Values Clarification by Sidney Simon and Kirshenbaum, who suggests that a value is not a value unless it has seven factors. The seven factors are it must be freely chosen. It must be chosen from a consideration of the alternatives. It must be chosen with clear knowledge of the consequences. It must be prised and cherished. It must be publicly proclaimed. It must be acted on, and it must be acted on repeatedly. And so Bradshaw reminds us that choosing to love yourself is a free choice. It's a simple decision. The alternatives are a shamed-based life with disastrous consequences.

5:11I am encouraging you to say, I love myself, out loud, every day, ideally in the mirror, to proclaim that you love and accept yourself unconditionally. And if you act on such a belief repeatedly, you're going to grow more deeply self-loving and self-valuing, and the effects will be limitless. Give yourself some time and attention. You have to be willing to put in a little hard work, because love is work. To extend yourself, for yourself, that is work. And the work of love involves giving yourself time. Whether that time is free time to do nothing, or time for productive things, or time for exercise and movement, or time for joy and pleasure. You have to be willing to listen to yourself. To monitor your feelings not like a police officer, but like a person who loves yourself, like someone who wants to understand what you need and what you want, and how to get

6:11those things without harming yourself. That quote, the work of paying attention to yourself requires discipline. Discipline is what allows us to enhance life's pleasure. If you love yourself, you're willing to delay gratification so that something more conducive to your growth might take place. Delaying gratification is a great way to show yourself self-love. And discipline in this context demands that we tell the truth, and we become responsible for our own lives. If we love ourselves, we will live in reality. Because unfortunately, as someone who has tried very hard to disconnect from reality completely, it's not possible, okay, not long-term anyway. But as you start committing to telling yourself the truth and being responsible for that truth, as often as possible, you will increase your self-esteem, your self-trust, and your self-worth. Which also suggests, if this is difficult for you, to just fake it until you make it.

7:14Just decide to act yourselves in a right way of feeling rather than trying to wait until you feel like changing. Make a decision, say it out loud, and pretend like you love value and accept yourself unconditionally, so you can become more self-loving and accepting through time. And from what I understand about creating neural pathways, I think he's on to something. If you create those pathways and start clearing them out of all the debris, they will get easier and easier to treudge down so that eventually you won't have to treasure it all. It'll just be the natural path that's most comfortable, but this type of self-love will require us to become more self-assertive and give ourselves permission to make mistakes. Assertiveness is not aggressiveness, which is a shame-based behavior. Assertiveness is knowing what your boundaries are, what you can and can take, what you do enjoy, and advocating for yourself. And in this process, Bradshaw advocates for creating our own bill of rights.

8:17In the book, when I say no, I feel guilty, Manuel Smith offers these as his own. You have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take responsibility for their initiation and consequence. You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior. You have the right to judge if you are responsible for judging other people's problems. You have the right to change your mind. You have the right to make mistakes and be responsible for them. You have the right to say, I don't know. You have the right to be independent of the good will of others before coping with them. You have the right to be illogical in making decisions. You have the right to say, I don't understand. And you have the right to say, I don't care. Loving yourself means knowing what you care about versus what you don't and advocating for that. It means knowing what you understand and what you don't and advocating for that. But it means understanding that you really are worth it, that there has never been anyone

9:20like you. Nor will there be anyone just like you again. You are unique, unrepeatable, and of precious worth. You can't deny that just because you're filled with shame that wants to. And so if this shit has resonated with you, like it has for me, here's a reminder just not being so fucking hard on yourself. To start letting yourself be a human being, know that you're worthy of love, and care, and patience, and dignity, just because you're a living breathing entity that is worthy of all those things with or without your past mistakes. And just because you've made some mistakes doesn't mean you should keep identifying with them. Let go and let yourself be just for a fucking minute. And if relaxing your grip a little helps, practice it, practice relaxing your grip until your natural state becomes that relaxed version. As always, you can access all of the resources I referenced today in the show notes if

10:23you're interested. In the meantime, just know I love you so much. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn bed. Goodbye, cutie. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Make Your Damn Bed podcast. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. You can follow on Instagram and TikTok at NYDB podcast for occasional updates. And if you could rate and review this episode five stars wherever you're listening, it genuinely helps the podcast at its core. And if you have anyone in your life you think might be interested in hearing what I have had to say, it also makes a huge difference in the sustainability and my ability to make this something worth sharing. So if you have questions or want specific advice, you can email me at NYDB podcast at gmail.com. In the meantime, I've been your host, Julie America. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn bed.