BEING TRUE TO MYSELF

                                                 


      
                                 
     In my childhood environment, conformity to the governing rules of my family was the only way to win acceptance and a “good girl” pat on the head.  But, I did not agree with everything in their culture and lifestyle, so I resentfully and rebelliously took a stand against accepting it as my own.  Because of that, my parents, grandparents and other relatives spent a lot of time scolding and shaming me to bring me into conformity to their way of thinking and acting.

      My only sibling, an older brother, had conformed to those rules, so he also tried to tear me down from my superior-acting rebellious perch by showing his contempt for me. He did so by simply sticking out his tongue and making an ugly face at me, or pinching me when no one was looking.  I stood my ground with him by making a more ugly face back at him, jabbing my sharp little elbows into his ribs or kicking him in the shins. That usually sent him crying to our mother, who, not realizing that he had provoked me into defending myself, would comfort him and paddle me.
 

      Because of my rebellious attitude I also attracted a lot of hassling from my classmates at school, and with my tendency to physically fight back, I endured a lot of degrading punishment from my teachers.  (In those days the unruly kids were spanked in front of the whole class or made to sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap.)
 

      As I grew older the humiliation and degradation I received began to erode my self-esteem, so that by my mid-teens I had lost so much confidence in myself that I began to see myself as others saw me—I was a bad kid.  Once I accepted that negative self-image to be my own, my pride was hurt and I started to mentally beat up on myself with self-condemnation and degradation.
 

      It was as though my parents, grandparents, teachers and any authority that had ever humiliated me had somehow gained entrance to my consciousness and were then doing it to me from the inside. (I later learned that their degrading actions towards me carried the covert suggestion that I was bad, and because I had resented it, the negative emotion allowed the suggestion to remain in my mind and hypnotically influence me to see myself as being bad.)
 

      Because of seeing myself in that negative light, I no longer had the confidence to keep on rebelling.  So, I conformed and began to cater to my mother, teachers and other authorities in my life for the feedback of being praised and accepted by them.  But, I did so as a defeated warrior and not out of true love or respect for them.  They sensed the hypocrisy in me and then withheld the praise I was seeking from them; justifying their action by finding further fault with me.
 

      Regardless of whether I rebelled or conformed, I seemed to always end up as the loser in my relationships, and so I continued to feel rejected for the greater part of my life.  The emotional pain I felt from being so rejected finally moved me to seek a better understanding of what was basically wrong with me that was preventing me from being loved and accepted by others. By digging deeply into my consciousness and sincerely wanting to know the truth, I began to “see” myself from an objective viewpoint; and in doing so I gained the understanding of what had gone wrong in my life.
 

     Because I had been so degraded and humiliated as a child, my self-image had been altered so that I saw myself as being a bad person.  To upgrade my image I had conformed to the dictates of my parents, relatives and teachers—the very ones that undermined it in the first place. In order to conform though, I had to sacrifice my self-hood and individuality, which created a lot of guilt in me.
 

       Once I understood what I had done wrong and was truly sorry for it I stopped the mental degradation that was undermining my self-esteem, and in doing so I regained my confidence and self-respect.  So now I can relate to those who try to downgrade me without resenting them, or myself, if I fail to deal with them perfectly. In that regard,  I CAN THEN REMAIN TRUE TO MYSELF.

     As Shakespeare put it: “To thine own self be true, and it follows as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”