Can you mentally abuse yourself

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Do you get to be the victim? While it was not all right for the adults in your life to treat you like crap as a child, you can choose to move forward from the abuse. You can choose to end your 'old story' and write a new one. You can choose to be kind and gentle with yourself.

Want to feel about yourself? Give to and help others. For example, if you love nature, you may consider volunteering with an environment and conservation organization. Perhaps you could help to pick up trash from local parks. Or if you have technical skills, you could offer to redesign a nonprofit's outdated website. Giving back is a great way to give to others and you at the same time. Counseling and life coaching sessions can help you to stop emotionally abusing yourself.

Keep in mind that an expert counselor and life coach will help you to move forward in your life. You never want to wallow in your reasons for self-abuse because it will only keep you struck - you'll continue to repeat destructive patterns.

Do you tend to live in your head where you're always thinking and thinking? Thinking too much can lead you down the rabbit hole of emotional abuse. For example, you may think that your thighs are too big and before you know, you've picked a part your entire body. Get out of your head and live in the present moment because it will be gone before you know it.

Check out the personal development classes at your local community center or college. For example, you may want to learn about how to be more assertive in your life. If you tend to be a people pleaser, you'll learn how to be comfortable with saying "No. You'll also learn how to boost your self-confidence and self-esteem. When's the last time you bought new clothes?

What about getting your haircut by a professional hair stylist? How about getting a massage? It's okay to treat yourself to something special. Because you deserve it and are worth it! If you wait for others to do something nice for you, you may be waiting a long time. You must first show yourself some love before it comes back to you.

The trick for affirmations to work is that you have to believe and feel them. First off, it can help to remember that your inner critic is actually there to protect you. Our inner critic was formed as a way of guiding us away from having to experience disapproval or shame from the people around us. By creating our own internal voice — a dialogue of those we needed to please — we were, to some degree, able to guard ourselves from experiencing further pain.

Increasing self-awareness and becoming better at recognising your inner critic is the next important step. Learning when to call it out, and replace its criticisms with words of encouragement instead. Working with a therapist can be especially helpful in uncovering our inner critic, working with it and developing a more positive inner dialogue. Do you find yourself choosing the same non-committal partner in every new relationship?

Or constantly attracting negative or abusive people into your life? Or maybe — despite your best efforts — do you find yourself in a constant state of flux, upping sticks at the first sign of difficulty? We can also cause ourselves emotional self-harm by remaining trapped in the same destructive recurring patterns. Of course, becoming aware of these patterns is an important first step. It takes understanding, patience and a good amount of practice to break patterns. Patterns are perhaps best explored through the lens of a type of therapy called Schema Therapy.

In Schema Therapy, schemas are essentially the coping strategies we develop in order to respond to what life throws at us. Our schemas can be traced all the way back to our experiences in childhood, and develop according to to how our emotional needs were met — or rather, not met.

When we grow up in a secure, boundaried, loving and supportive household, we naturally create healthy patterns in later life. These maladaptive schemas are best understood as self-sabotaging patterns of relating to others and also to the world that we carry with us into adulthood.

Understanding the above should make it obvious how maladaptive schemas can ultimately lead us into a negative cycle.