My New Year’s Resolution: Put myself first

In order to help others, first you may have to say:

I love and approve of myself, and trust in the process of life

This photo was taken of me by a professional studio in 2008. It was a hoot because I won a competition where the prize was having my portrait photographs taken at a studio. I actually had to lie on my side on a white sheet on the floor, in front of a white wall. First I had my glasses taken of and then my hair was curled. I have a photo of me in a more casual pose too, hugging my knees (while sitting on the floor) with my glasses on. That photography studio has seen 2 sides of me: the glamorous side and the normal side.

There are many “sides” or aspects of us, and these parts can become fragmented when they are supposed to fit together. Parts may become suppressed when you purposely hide them, or they may get repressed, meaning your subconscious, in working for your survival, hides things from you. Things like “I can freely express myself and be safe doing so.”

For a major portion of my life, I had disregarded myself as a person who needed the same care and attention and respect as anyone else, though I was happy to lavish the aforementioned upon others. If you are a natural empath, i.e. you can “connect the dots”, relying upon your intuition and experiences, the world’s experiences, and upon your knowledge, both innate and learned, and thus you can feel what someone else feels, you may tend to put others first.

I know that I have. My mission or intention in life is always to support others. In 2003 I designed and uploaded my own website, “Peace in Practice” which kick-started my trying to reach out to the world at large, to inform and to motivate. I love to help others, the best I can, and I had to learn not to be taken advantage of, some of which was achieved through my experiences during my twenties. From helping people and organisations set up WordPress blogs to being a literacy tutor and giving school-children breakfast before school, I have embarked upon a wide range of volunteer work.

Helping others makes me feel connected. I don’t do it primarily so that I can feel good about myself. Sometimes people think that I am interfering rather than helping, but I truly am trying to help in small ways, and I learn from my experiences. I never foist my influences on others but invest a lot of energy into holding spaces for others (being there as a genuine listener) and sharing my thoughts from experience and learning.

Especially in my workplace I have tried my darnedest to support or help others. Work for me was very stressful over 2016 and 2017, because of down-sizing and a failure by some to engage with the team I was part of and thus there was misunderstanding of our objectives and work. One person always wanted approval and although I would say to her “good job” for something she did for me, she demanded a lot more. In return I would grimace and reiterate, quietly “I said thank you, that was excellent work” when in hindsight I should have been a lot more assertive with her.

My boundaries were weak then. I am in records management and although I love this sort of work, I felt that it was soul-destroying when I was supposed to be the driver of a major change, but suddenly without notice, somebody else took over. My thoughts, skills and experiences were totally ignored. I worked with one other person who also had a tough time. For health reasons, I started to work part-time and the other person managed to ask and get herself put onto higher duties allowance for the fraction of time that I was away.

This person had suddenly, unceremoniously, been dropped a level of pay, back to her substantive level. This was more than unfortunate: it set into motion an unstoppable tidal wave of denial by this person of what was happening and a total fixation by her on how hard done she was, and how unfair Life was for her. Believe me, I did all that was in my power to help this person. This included my writing to Human Resources asking her to be reclassified to the higher level, and organizing a meeting among her, myself and our new manager. I had prepped her for this meeting, saying in response to her complaint to me that it wasn’t fair for her to do a certain task on the days she wasn’t paid HDA that she should say at the meeting that she wouldn’t do it.

What you resist, grows

To my utter astonishment, when I nicely said to our new manager that she shouldn’t have to do that work if she didn’t have time to or if it was complex work, this person screwed up her face and said angrily “But I WANT to do higher level work.” Calm as ever, I said “but it’s your choice, if you do it and don’t get paid, then don’t complain about it.” She would not accept her situation, either do higher work and not get paid or don’t do it and don’t get paid. She resisted her choices and the destructive energy of this took root and grew.

Guess what? She still complained (and complains) about it to me. Mind you, it is few and far between now, because one morning tea I challenged her about the meeting. She said she did that because she felt she had to prove herself. I replied “for God’s sake, you’ve been with us for 5 years now, if you think about it, you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone.” Message was received.

But am I trying to prove myself to me? That was the last time that I went out of my way to help her, and in return I am receiving support from other team members. It is in the form of advice, not to feel pressured by this person, and in the form of empathy, with them saying they know how I feel, but that I have to look after myself. I learned to focus on what I can control, not on what I cannot control.

I have friends around the world and one of them is very un-well, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She makes jewelry when she can, and much of the time she has so much pain that she can’t even write an email to me. This disturbs me a lot, especially because I know other people here with CFS and it is a cruel, zapping and debilitating disorder.

I pray as much as I can for people with CFS and other illnesses, and I even have thought to myself “If I could give up everything in exchange for taking this affliction away from these people, I would do so”.

In a heart-beat.

Well, enter the Christmas feast and the opportunity for self-sabotage. I was worried over my friend in the United Kingdom. In hindsight I am aware that I turned my worry over and over, trying to bake it into something I could digest, but I couldn’t. Out came worry stones and I used these stones as hot coals to attack myself.

The inner voice came on, an undercurrent, but it had mastery. “It’s alright for you, you can do better, do you really care, you are stupid, I don’t like you.” Recently an allergy to prawns that I had as a child, has returned now that I am an adult. Despite having had Thai food last year probably with crab in it, on the 25 December, I decided it was perfectly okay for me to eat a sea-food salad without prawns it it.

Too late, she cried.

Well, on Boxing Day we knew something was up. This caused a full-blown ugly rash all over my upper chest or front, which spread up under my chin. We are in our summer now, and on Thursday 27th I went to the Chemist and got anti-histamine, a cooling pad and hydro-cortisone cream. It hurt. Basically my body over-reacted and sent an “army” (via increased blood supply) to an area of my body, which began burning. Thankfully I can now say that after 4 days of this, it has receded now. It still looks like a bad case of sunburn, but it is not hurting so much now, and I even have a selfie that I took of me, smiling away still, with this rash.

There were things that I learned from this incident. The real motivation for why it happened, snuck up on me, even if un-invited. I didn’t want to eat the crab but for 2 reasons I did. Number 1, I thought that I could eat crab, but not prawn. Number 2, at some level I knew that I should not eat the crab, but at that level I also wanted to punish myself.

If anyone reading this has an inkling about what I am talking about, I ask you to stop sabotaging yourself. Stop punishing yourself. Remember 7 points:

I also realized that I did not have the belief in my self to say that I wouldn’t eat the seafood salad at all. I minimized my own wants and created a false logic (that it would be okay) when I wanted to say “it’s probably best if I don’t eat any of it at all.” The critic of me had the final say.

The more I thought about it, the more I found that it is no good at all me being unwell, if I want to help others. Over the years, I have been chipping away the layers, and learning how to care for myself, such as stopping being afraid at shadows, which has freed me up to live more naturally or in tune or flow with the process of life. I have a card and an angel figurine which I’ll post to my friend, and I will step up my prayer requests for her.

No more. No more feeling obliged to go along with others. No more attacking myself because I think that I should be doing more. No more thinking that I should be doing more. No more displaced anger, no more anger at not being able to control things. No more feeling guilty over things I haven’t or have done. No more feeling humiliated by people’s ignorant choices.

I am me. I am more than enough. Putting myself first does not mean being selfish. Putting myself first means knowing who I am, having clear boundaries, loving and respecting myself, and understanding that I am doing my best. That way I will be able to help others while maintaining integrity of my own body and soul, through prayer, self-care and informed action.

I am putting myself first in 2019 and beyond