{image credit :: adrienne leonard}

Dear Self-Doubt,

You and I are so over. I know that you’ve known we’ve been on the rocks for a while, but it’s finally time to pony up and get off the pot (do you like the mixed metaphor?).

I think I’ve known you’ve been holding me back for a while. In the beginning, I was so hooked into you. Co-dependent really. I’d try to venture out on my own, assert my independence, and you would just show up! I never invited you. You just took it upon yourself to bring your sorry butt along.

Well, I’m tired of uninvited guests. Sometimes, I just want to be by myself. Or I want to be able to hang out with my friends without you distracting me. You’ve always been too possessive.

For a long time, I thought I could keep you around and just see you on occasion. But I’m realizing that our relationship just doesn’t work like that. When we’re together, you seem to have all of me and I can’t even think straight. I get so caught into what you are telling me that my own voice is drowned out.

I just can’t go on like this. There’s too much that I want to do. I want to learn to sing (no, like really sing). You always told me my voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Well, that’s crap. I want to write a book. You always told me that there’s no way to get published in this day and age. I call your bluff. I want to walk confidently into any room. You told me that I should look at the floor and avoid eye contact. How could I have listened to you!

I know it sounds cliché, but I’m sure that you’ll find someone much better suited for you. Someone who doesn’t realize what an amazing woman she is. Someone who needs you more than I do and can be as attached to you as you are to me.

Me? I’ll be okay. I’m ready for this change. I might grieve a little – I mean, you’ve been a pretty big part of my life for a while – but I’ll be just fine in the end. In fact, I have no doubt.

Love,

Me

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This was super fun to write! Feel free to adapt, or write your own! 

What would you say to self-doubt? 

{image source :: iheartgifs.com}

For inspiration for this post, I have Kelly Clarkson’s anthem blaring in the background. I have to admit, it’s both catchy and empowering – a lethal combination in my musical book.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn’t mean I’m lonely when I’m alone

Rock on, sister…

What doesn’t kill you makes a fighter
Footsteps even lighter
Doesn’t mean I’m over cause you’re gone

What makes this song so powerful, in my estimation, is that it utilizes a pretty pervasive cultural ideal and makes it pop. It’s adds a bit more life to the idea since it was originally stated by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

My own experience has been that people will use this phrase as a means of consolation. As a society, we’re fairly uncomfortable with other people’s pain, or our own for that matter (see here and here for elaboration). So, we say things like “it’ll all be okay in the end” or “everything happens for a reason,” or “what doesn’t kill you…” to try to both ease the heartache of another person and obscure the idea that pain could exist just because it exists.

Sometimes it’s something that we tell ourselves. We want to believe that our pain serves a greater function, that some good can arise from the ashes of our suffering. I’ll admit that I’ve reminded myself of this idea many times after a tragedy or hardship rocked me. And to be honest, it’s helped to bolster my sense of potency and self-esteem. In fact, I often look back on the difficult moments on my life collectively and think that these junctures shaped me as a strong and independent person.

Could it be, though, that I would be strong and independent without enduring these struggles? That’s a chicken and egg question that I’ll never be able to answer definitively for myself. However, there are researchers looking at what happens when people suffer trauma and hardship.

What the researchers have found is that difficult situations do enhance individuals’ ability to cope with future life stressors, at least to a point. In classic Goldilocks fashion, researchers note that those with the best ability to cope are individuals who have experienced some turmoil, while those who have experienced none or a lot are at a disadvantage.

So it looks like adversity is beneficial in the right amounts. If you skate through most of life with minimal obstacles, you never learn how navigate around or through the ones that inevitably crop up. This might explain why we see so many children who completely melt down when asked to share a toy. They’ve never learned how to regulate and manage difficult emotions that arise with things like frustration and disappointment. On the other hand, a person who’s dealt a heavy hand of tragedy might have their resources completely tapped. Their system is literally overwhelmed by the stress of what they endure and stops functioning properly. They might become immobilized when more stress emerges.

So what we know is that this issue is complex. We have not really defined the “optimal” amount of stress, and I think that varies greatly depending on individual factors, like personality, temperament, and resilience. It also depends heavily on the amount of social support a person has when in the grip of something difficult.

What we do know is that trying to make meaning out of suffering helps us to create coherent narratives of our lives, and this leads to us feeling more fulfilled, content, and healthy. So if you want to say that whatever kills you makes you stronger, be my guest. You could even sing it!

{on bloglovin, via pinterest}

I’m beyond honored to get to share this guest post by Mara Glatzel, as she is the queen of self-love in my eyes. Without further ado…

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We’ve all seen the movies or TV shows – there she sits, all alone, without a date for Valentine’s Day, wallowing in a nest of chocolates and chick flicks, while her mascara runs all over her face as she cries.

Because she’s sad, right? Of course.

Because it’s Valentine’s Day and it is crucial to have a super romantic lovefest on Valentine’s Day.

Now, I love Valentine’s Day. I love an opportunity to skip around and hand out love letters. I love the permission to wear both pink and red, at the same time. However, the dark underbelly of such a holiday is the correlation between romantic love and happiness, as if you are only whole if you’ve got someone to love you. This is not going to be that kind of Valentine’s Day post.

This is the kind of post where we talk about you crazy awesome you are and all of the wonderful things that you can do today to celebrate your awesomeness. This is a call to action kind of blog post, designed to make you feel like jumping up out of your chair and running to do something that makes YOU feel loved and cared for.

Activities to Improve Feelings of Self-Love

1. Random act of kindness: Make a valentine, cover it in glitter, and magazine clippings. Collage to your hearts content. Make ten valentines if you are so inclined, and spend the rest of the day handing them out to strangers, putting them under windshields, and giving them them to the person bagging your groceries.

2. Treat yourself to a deluxe spa day, or whip up a DIY face mask out of stuff in your cabinets. Take a bath, luxuriate in the shower for an extra ten minutes, give yourself a mani/pedi, or buy yourself the brand new moisturizer that you’ve been pining after that smells like roses. The crucial aspect of this activity is carving out time in your day to treat yourself to something special, and to focus on not feeling remotely guilty about putting your phone on silent and spending time on YOU.

3. Move your body. I know that it’s February, and that for many of us that means it’s too cold to run around outside all afternoon. However, making an effort to get your blood pumping and endorphins circulating can make you feel all sparkly and new, despite the cold weather. Take it as an opportunity to go to that new yoga class, or try out something new, like Nia, which can be a great way to sweat a little and get comfortable in your skin.

4. Tell someone that you love them, without expecting anything in return. Give a present, without wanting to get one back. Do something kind for someone else, just for the sake of how it feels in YOUR heart to do it. Pay the toll for the car behind you. Call up your best friend and leave them a this is why you’re amazing and thank you so much for everything voicemail.  Write your favorite blogger/writer/artist a fan email. Thank your teacher profusely for how much they’ve taught you. Do it because of how it makes you feel.

The important element in all of these activities is the the emphasis on self-care and putting yourself first. Now, you might say, it makes me feel awesome to sit on my couch and eat chocolate while watching Bridget Jones Diary, which, well, is hard to argue with. However, I challenge you to think about how you feel during the activities that you do today – do you feel energized? excited? enthusiastic? Do you feel like you can accomplish anything that you put your mind to? Does it make you feel like you are worth loving? Does it make you feel happy to be in the skin that you’re in?

Because that’s the feeling that we’re shooting for today, and you are oh so worth it.

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Mara Glatzel is the highly caffeinated maven behind the body image + authentic living blog, Medicinal Marzipan. If you enjoyed this post, catch up with her (almost) daily body-loving antics and general rabble-rousing on facebook, twitter, or shoot her an email at medicinalmarzipan {at} gmail {dot} com.

{image credit :: notsogoodphotography}

When the time had finally come for the exam, I suddenly understood fully the idea of one’s stomach doing summersaults. I had always thought this was an expression, and now I was quite certain that this organ was competing with Shawn Johnson for best all-around gymnastics performance.

As my body started signaling fight or flight – and I soon recognized that fleeing or throwing punches at my professors was not an option – my mind raced with all the ways in which I was about to royally screw this up. I was facing my clinical competency exam, a multi-part test that assesses one’s knowledge and acumen in the field of psychology – and a requirement of graduating. The scariest part involved sitting in front of two of the professors I had revered for years and stammering, I mean discussing, my rationale for huge reports I had written.

My mind told me that this was it. The moment that it would be all over. There was no more hiding. They’d soon know the truth.

I. Am. A. Fraud. Period.

But you got into graduate school! Don’t you remember? [That’s my rational, not so informed mind speaking.]

Yes, but that must have been a mistake! The numbers of applicants were low. Or they mixed me up with someone else and then didn’t have the heart to kick me out. Or, worse yet, they felt sorry for me.

But you’ve thrived here so far! You get good grades. Professors and supervisors like you. C’mon…

You c’mon! Sure I can schmooze. But when it comes time to buckle down and show ‘em what I’m made of… well, the proof is in the pudding. And my pudding ain’t crap.

Oh sure it is. You’re smart. You’re insightful. You’re responsible. You’re even a good therapist.

Where the heck do you get your information, missy?

… So you can see where this is going. More bantering until I was finally called in to show my stuff. You can figure out the ending (I passed – Yippee!), but the sad irony was that my fraud mind could justify even this. (“Oh, well, just wait until you try to defend your dissertation. You think you know research? Who are you fooling? No one soon…”)

Sad, huh?

Sadder still is just how many of us suffer from this conviction that we are actually a fraudulent version of ourselves. Psychologists actually have a name for this (this is actually how we spend our time – coming up with clever names for interesting phenomena!). We call it the imposter syndrome.

This happens when we can’t seem to internalize our accomplishments – when we’re convinced that no matter what fantastic things we achieve, it reflects a deception we have created rather than just how freaking talented we actually are.

This phenomenon runs rampant among women, particularly successful women (that’s not just my anecdotal evidence there – there’s data to support this).

For many high-achieving women, acknowledging that their success might actually reflect internal skills, knowledge, and talents is incredibly difficult. It’s kind of like what I was discussing when I told you about hiding my academic prowess in fifth grade.

This is sometimes considered a remnant of (or evidence of ongoing) sex stereotypes, in which, due to years of gendered socialization, it’s hard to wrap our minds around woman as powerhouse. For the sake of our not rocking the proverbial boat (which hasn’t even stopped to ask for directions), our sex roles stay firmly, albeit subtly, in place.

Another potential reason for the imposter phenomenon was explored back in the day by Clance and Imez. They suggested that women’s roles in their families contributed to this version of self as an imposter. Some of these women, they argued, were told that their sibling was the truly gifted one, and they never felt that any of their accomplishments really stood for anything. The other subset is full of women whom were told that they were so awesome (and smart and wonderful), that they felt they could never live up to the expectations established for them. They were always working so hard to live up this superhero version of themselves that others created, they came to believe it was just that – fictional.

Lending support to this idea, psychologist Carol Dweck found that when faced with novel and challenging tasks, the girls with the highest IQs were the quickest to give up. Bright boys, on the other hand, doubled their efforts when faced with the challenge. Could it be that it’s these stories, these perceived expectations of perfection and achievement, that rob girls and women of their sense of being capable?

However it’s defined and explained, the imposter syndrome is alive and well in classrooms, boardrooms, and even the blogosphere. Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’m not a real runner,”? Or, “If they really new me, they’d realize that I’m a total fake. I always use a calculator.” Or, “One of these days the world will figure out I can’t really write. I’ve just been getting by on people’s kindness.”

If these thoughts plague you, know that you’re not alone. You are also not really a fraud. It’s just your mind’s way of trying to hide you from your greatness – that sneaky little devil trying to slyly sabotage you. Lucky for you, you have a choice to make — buy into that thought or let it pass by you like a leaf on a stream. I choose the latter. And that’s 100% the real deal.