Reconnect with oneself

Have you ever found yourself feeling lonely, resentful, constantly angry, sad and unhappy or, even worse, depressed for no apparent reason? Then this is your sign, right there that you’re officially disconnected from yourself. You’ve essentially lost your own sense of self and direction. You’re at a phase in your life where you need to re-evaluate your values and the way you’re (consciously or not) choosing to live your life. 

‘And now what?’, you may ask. Well, I’ll tell you. Now it’s time to pause, remove your attention from the outer world and look within. Is this easy? Easier said than done, for sure.  

First, it requires that you’re so uncomfortable within this situation that you’re willing to take this trip within. Because I can tell you this, this is not a journey for the lighthearted! But it’s worth it! It’s the greatest gift you can offer yourself and to the people around you.  

For me this journey started 3 years back, in 2021. As for many other people over the world, the isolation during the covid pandemic escalated things for me quite quickly. I reached a point where I’ve felt constantly agitated, lonely, tired, misunderstood, resentful and deeply unfulfilled with my life. Yet when I was sharing what I was experiencing with my closest people they were criticizing (always with the best of intentions) how ungrateful I am for feeling and thinking this way. Because, after all, I had everything! A lovely family with my partner and 2 children, I was healthy, and so were all my loved ones, I had a prestigious job in engineering at a well-known company and I was living in a beautiful city in Europe. So, why was I so ungrateful? I bought into this guilty feeling for quite some time before I could finally allow myself to validate what I was feeling. It was only then that I started wondering, why this may be.  

In my attempt to solve the mystery, I immersed myself in books, YouTube videos and podcasts from self-help and psychology all the way to spirituality. At the same time, I withdrew from my loved ones even more and I kept most of my thoughts and feelings to myself. That made me feel even more lonely and misunderstood. At a certain point I knew I needed to talk to someone in order to voice my thoughts and make sense of the situation. So, I asked for professional help through psychotherapy and coaching. Those strangers became the people I felt safe enough and comfortable to talk to. They could view my situation more objectively and would validate what I was experiencing rather than dismissing it. The main help I got from these people was the ability to recognize the different voices in my head and discern which one(s) was truly mine (i.e. in alignment with my intuition, soul, inner child) and which ones were programmed in me and/or adopted by me throughout my life from caregivers, teachers and society.  

The most stubborn voice -that I am still “fighting” with quite often- is my inner critic. We all have one! For this voice nothing I do is good enough, this voice constantly fills me up with guilt, fear and doubt. No choice or decision is good enough for this voice. I still find it quite challenging to not believe in what this voice says to me. Most of the time the emotion takes over my body and mind before I can even realize it. It’s an automatic response. When this happens, I find it harder to shift my train of thoughts and my emotional state. Other times, I can immediately catch this voice in my head and then I command it to stop and leave me alone.  

Lately, I am learning to respond to it more compassionately and try to understand it and just replace it with more positive thoughts instead of completely dismissing it. I’ve noticed that this approach brings me back in alignment faster than just responding with anger and resentment (i.e. invalidating this voice’s perspective-), after all it’s there for a reason. What is this reason? Believe it or not, I learned that it acts as my protector! Yes, it thinks that by putting me down and making me feel small and scared it protects me. It protects me from being (physically) hurt, feeling disappointed, embarrassed or rejected. But the reality is, I am still feeling all those “negative” emotions. This is my proof that this kind of protection, although it has served me well in the past, does not work in my favor anymore.  

I am learning to be thankful for its good intentions, while not accepting or validating its methodology as appropriate. I am learning to teach this voice how it can protect me in a way that serves my current needs and desires instead of keeping me in a “fake” safety through fear. I am also learning to create win-win scenarios by choosing calculated risks instead of huge uncertain leaps. I am learning to move forward in small steps that I am comfortable with. I learn to make choices that neutralize the inner tag of war between the part in me that desires change and expansion and my inner protector. This is also the way to build self-trust, I think. I choose my actions with the intention to reconnect with my core self and bridge this inner gap. It’s an ongoing process and it’s definitely not an easy one. But the feeling of wholeness, peace and serenity you get by doing this “work” (even momentarily sometimes) is certainly worth it. 

Most of us have lost connection with our core self- the values, desires, gifts, we brought with us when we were born into this world-. My hope is that we can all reconnect with that self and find our own unique way of bringing it back to the surface of our consciousness. To me “reconnecting with one self”  translates into bridging an inner gap. The gap between the parts in us that want expand through new experiences by moving us towards what we truly want and desire (i.e. our core self, soul), and the parts that try to protect us by choosing to conform to what others want or expect from us in order to keep us “safe” in this society (i.e. our learned mechanisms and protectors we consciously or unconsciously developed based on our so far life experiences).

I wish this feeling of wholeness and inner peace to all of us. The most effective way to achieve this, that I’ve discovered so far through my personal experience, is by creating win-win scenarios when you make choices or you’re called to make decisions (no matter how big or small). Of course, certain (extreme or abusive) situations require drastic changes, yet for most of us this is not the case.  I know, it’s not easy, but it’s certainly possible.