Love Your Self For No Reason

Psychologist - Fresnaye Cape Town

Self Esteem

“Everything Happens For A Reason.” – Are You Sure?

I cannot tell you how many times my clients have said to me, after some stressful or traumatic event, “Well, everything happens for a reason.”

Do you know what I see in them when they say this?

A desperate attempt to rationalise away the pain of something they just cannot deal with.

Mostly, it doesn’t work, because deep down inside they really don’t believe that it’s true.

I don’t believe it either.

I sometimes ask them if saying this makes them feel better.

Invariably they say no. [Read more…] about “Everything Happens For A Reason.” – Are You Sure?

A Closed Heart Cannot Live!

I was reading a post from a Facebook friend, Francis Bennett, a couple of weeks ago. She was a Franciscan monk – previously being a ‘he’ who transgendered.

She is spiritually Awakened. She wrote about the suicide of a spiritually Awakened friend of hers Wayne Wirs.

The comments about his death were really fascinating, many and varied. I just loved one written by Birelle Eden. She says, “In my understanding we are born with our hearts wide open…This open, whole state is inherently joyful…But when our authentic selves are met with rejection, betrayal and abandonment, our hearts freeze to stop the overwhelming pain…this is the ONLY thing that can disrupt our basic faith in the goodness of ourselves and life.”

Over the years I have watched this closing, this freezing in myself and in my clients. [Read more…] about A Closed Heart Cannot Live!

Guilt Creates Anger!

It’s a really fascinating thing about Self-Esteem. If you get it from approval and success, you will never feel complete.

In other words there may be areas in which it is high, but there will also be areas in which it is low.

Extremely successful people have areas of very low Self-Esteem. Over the years I’ve watched this in high profile business people, sports people and the Hollywood brigade.

They look powerful and confident as long as they’re talking about their success and then if you push a button which evokes a sense of their inadequacy in an area where they are struggling in their lives, the Self-Esteem disappears, like mist in the sun. [Read more…] about Guilt Creates Anger!

Doing Without A Doer

I have asked the following question of hundreds of clients over the years:

“Have you ever given a presentation or speech to a group of people and you started out anxious and stressed, self-conscious and hypervigilant about your ability to perform? You are filled with self-doubt and anxiety.

Then suddenly, for no conscious reason, you switch into a flow state and all of the anxiety disappears and you’re not thinking about how you are doing, how people might criticise you or what you are going to say next?”

Without exception, every single one of them says yes! [Read more…] about Doing Without A Doer

Nobody is Perfect!

Some Like It Hot is a movie that has one of the best endings ever.

Jack Lemmon spends the entire film pretending to be a woman. There’s this rich guy that falls in love with her/him. At the end they ride off on a boat into the sunset and finally Lemmon pulls off his wig and tells the guy that he’s really a man. And the guy says, “Nobody’s perfect.”

Don’t we all want perfection?

So many parents were devastated by the Tiger Woods scandal. Why? Because they had participated in the somewhat crazy practice that suggests that our children should have idols to look up to who are perfect. [Read more…] about Nobody is Perfect!