Deep self-love and self-worth… I’m not sure Elizabeth Taylor ever came into alignment with it. Or maybe she did. I hope she did. But she definitely had a rocky time with marriages. I can relate.
I say I hope she “came into alignment” with it instead of achieved it because it’s not really something we need to achieve or get… as if it’s something we don’t already have.
Self-worth and love are part of our identity in Christ. We only need to come into alignment with it to experience it.
But how do we do that?
This is the quest I’ve been on for many months now.
I’ve been studying attachment theory and attachments styles and that itself is a game changer. Once you realize we all have an attachment style and it’s either secure or insecure, you begin to understand yourself and others so much better.
Another way of saying you have a secure or insecure attachment style would be to think of it this way: you either feel positive or negative about yourself and others.
Securely attached people feel positive about themselves and others and have an easier time navigating relationships.
Insecurely attached people carry childhood wounds and trauma and tend to have a harder time.
Anxious attachments (me) carry the wound and fear of abandonment. We feel good about others and not so good about ourselves.
Dismissive avoidants carry the wound of fear of intimacy (because they did not experience intimacy from their primary care givers growing up) and they tend to feel good about themselves but not trusting of others.
Fearful avoidants carry both core wounds, it's a double edge sword for them. But once healed, they can be the best partners because they carry all the wound therforehave to learn all the cooling strategies making them very empathetic. . They fear abandonment and rejection, crave deep connection and intimacy but yet do not feel safe being vulnerable enough to have intimacy or trust others.
But our attachment styles do not define who we are. We can heal this.
But how?
We have to re-wire our subconscious. We have to reprogram our beliefs. We have to change our vibration. (Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds. In fact, it’s easy!)
Here is what you do: you feel and visualize the opposite of your wound.
So if for instance, your core wound is not feeling good enough, you visualize and really feel the times in your life when you did feel good enough. If your core wound is abandonment, you visualize and feel the times you felt connected to others in a meaningful and deep way.
This shifts you fast!
This works! Trust me.
5 to 10 minutes when you first wake up in the morning, you do this. Within a few days you will be feeling much more confident and secure. You will begin to feel a grounded-Ness and sense of connection to yourself, and you will feel GOOD about yourself.
Some great feelings and memories have begun to come back to me:
Like the time I won state championship for newswriting and got a journalism scholarship to TCU. And the head of the journalism department at my junior college really did fight for me, he believed in me.
Or the time after my divorce, I believed in myself enough to start writing and putting my energy out there and ended up with not one, but TWO articles published in Nashville Lifestyles Magazine.
Or the time I sang Elizabeth Taylor at 3rd and Lindsley for the cancer benefit of my friend’s sister. Not only was I showing up in an important way for someone who had been there for me through the death of my parents, but I pulled it off! I even had people coming up to me afterwards telling me how much the song had touched them and thanked me for writing it! (This is all in spite of the fact that I’m not that great of a singer. But I WAS GOOD ENOUGH!:)
I realized it was easier for me to feel good enough in working situations abut a little harder in my personal relationships. So I began working on that. And there were times…
Like the specific moment at the end of my first trip to Disney with my ex-husband. We’d had the most amazing time and he’d bought me a Winnie the Pooh bear. As I sat on the bed in our hotel room holding that stuffed animal, I don’t remember ever feeling that safe or loved or content in my entire life. I was good enough. And I did not feel the least bit abandoned.
So visualize and feel your way back to love, back to good enough, back to your authentic and true identity in Christ because to HIM we are each the most precious and priceless person on Earth.
That’s what Liz would do. And I will leave you with the Chorus of that song, Elizabeth Taylor, which always seems to pop back up in my life when I need to be reminded of the way home…
Don’t worry, it’ll get better.
Here’s hoping you don’t lose hope!
You’ve been through some stormy weather
but up ahead there’s a rainbow.
And I’ve had my hard times, too.
Some days I barely got through.
But the truth is LOVE IS NEVER REALLY GONE.
Oh I’m just here to remind you… how to carry on!
And if you're interested in learning more about healing an insecure attachment style, becoming securely attached... here ya go!
Comments