Never Helpless

I know a student who is a really beautiful person. She’s kind, loving, lovable, generous, and pretty, but she has very little self worth. If one thing that’s not in her control comes into her life it seems insurmountable and becomes so big emotionally that she doesn’t know what to do with it. She feels helpless. She completely shuts down. Then everything becomes black and white, right or wrong, all or nothing.

This one thing that she didn’t invite, that she didn’t plan, that she had no control over is now something she has to deal with. She cannot cope, cannot deal, and that balloons until she gets to the point where she cannot deal with anything and nothing is right in the world. To cope with these feelings she takes it a step further, (this is an extreme case) and she binges and purges, she drinks too much, she takes pills, and she shuts herself off from the world. Then when she realizes that she can’t be in that behavior for very long, she comes back to the world again. And this cycle happens over and over and over again. (She is starting to be aware of it now and to work on it.)

This is self sabotage. While this is an extreme example, we all do it in our own ways. Usually it’s because something we’ve planned doesn’t go exactly so, something we didn’t expect comes into our lives, or we make one small mistake and we regret it. We think that’s it, I’m done, I’m on a diet. Then I had a piece of cheesecake, oh my G-d, there’s so many calories. I’ve already messed up, so I might as well have another.

These negative, self-defeating thoughts have no place in our life. Yet, we do it all the time.
The key is to not allow ourselves to feel helpless and hopeless in any situation. There is ALWAYS something that can be done.

Journal:
Write how you self sabotage and how does it affect your actions throughout that day and the days after that?

What can you do, what action can you take, to dispel your feelings of helplessness?