The 17 Ways You Have to Stop Abusing Your Body and Soul
End the trauma and allow healing.
When thinking about trauma and abuse, we generally refer back to our caregivers, our painful past or damaging relationships. We are so deeply disturbed by being treated unkindly, being neglected as a child, or living with deep trauma as an adult.
But sometimes, the abuse is closer than you think. It spends time with you every day. It breathes your air and lives your life.
So many times, your abuser is you.
In ways that you are not even aware of, or sometimes following more obvious patterns, you are abusing yourself, disrespecting yourself, treating yourself poorly, re-traumatizing yourself.
1. Addiction of any kind.
Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, food, sex, gambling, etc. You know what they are. And you know you’re hurting yourself every time you light up or walk into a casino. This is a no-brainer. Addicts know it and so does everyone else.
2. Eating too much, not enough, or eating bad quality food.
While too much or not enough is a judgment call, you can use the Body Mass Index as a tool to determine the weight range that is healthy for your body. Feeding yourself right results in feeling good, energetic, and alive. Bad quality food (over-processed meals made up of cheap ingredients and containing a lot of chemicals) will harm you in the long run. If eating interferes with your well-being, you are self-harming.
3. Not exercising.
Your body needs exercise. Of any kind. Move, walk, dance, stretch. Sitting on an office chair all day or lying on a couch, with your brain connected to a buzzing rectangle for hours on end will make you ill and unhappy, therefore it’s a form of self-abuse.
4. Not taking care of your medical problems.
You feel a little ache and pain that’s been with you for months. You ignore it hoping it would go away. And sometimes it does, but it comes back until one day it comes back to stay. Ignoring your body like that can only result in serious illness and it is self-neglect.
5. Poor hygiene.
You don’t take a shower or don’t brush your teeth. Your T-shirt is full of holes. Soon, your clothes will disintegrate off you like spores from a dandelion. You never buy new clothes because you’re either uninterested or can’t be bothered. Wearing new, fitting, clean clothes has nothing to do with caring about fashion, but everything to do with caring about yourself.
6. Over/ under-sexualizing your appearance and behavior.
Through clothes, attitude, or even body modifications (like breast enhancement surgery). Whether you do it for attention, love, partners, or to desperately avoid contact, it’s an unhealthy rapport with your sexuality that causes you more harm than good.
7. Getting involved with toxic people.
Trauma attracts trauma. If you’ve had a traumatic past, invariably you will be attracted to other traumatized people. Unfortunately, a lot of the people with a difficult past who haven’t worked on themselves are toxic. They will feel familiar and comfortable, but their energy will also be preventing you from a fulfilling life. Whether they are friends or lovers, that toxicity will also bleed into your life.
8. Excessive use of social media.
Watching TV, social media, video games and the like will keep you trapped in an unreal world that you have nothing to gain from. While some activities may be necessary for your job or to keep in touch with people, excessive use almost always ensues and sucks you into a very unproductive and useless world. Not working for yourself is equal to working against yourself and that’s abusive.
9. Lying, manipulating, cheating, illegal activities.
You might think you’re doing it to help yourself, but when you cheat on your wife, you also cheat on the relationship, which includes you as well. You manipulate because you don’t trust yourself enough to get it any other way. Stealing, embezzling, and fraud keep you in a state of deprivation that harms others as well as yourself. We are an interconnected system and none of us are well unless all of us are well. There is no abusing others without abusing yourself.
10. Ignoring what you truly want.
Just like anyone else, you have your own wants and needs but completely ignore them in favor of anybody else’s. Until one day you don’t know what they are anymore. You just feel unsatisfied and keep asking others to change for your own benefit. That’s self-harm. Mental health begins with being in touch with yourself.
11. Staying in an unsatisfying job.
Whether it’s unsatisfying financially or emotionally, if it doesn’t give you what you need, what are you doing there? Taking crap from your boss, hardly making a living from your wage, not fitting in with your colleagues, doing work that you don’t enjoy will make you unhappy and depressed. While sometimes it’s necessary to pull through a difficult situation, staying there more than it’s strictly necessary is abusive.
12. Constantly finding yourself amid drama and conflict.
Wherever there’s you, there’s drama. And the other way around. Drama is highly unhealthy. If you’re exposed to it enough, you will feel it as a high against the boredom of an unfulfilling life. It has addicting potential and it keeps you trapped in these highs and lows of the psyche that you should avoid if you want a healthy life.
13. Constantly getting into financial trouble, especially debt.
You’re either gambling your money, not making enough to sustain a decent living, or you’re making a lot but wasting it on useless items, living above your means, or constantly getting into debt are all forms of self-abuse. Money is a big part of feeling safe in an ever-changing world and treating it right means treating yourself right.
14. Blaming all your problems on someone else.
It’s the government, it’s covid, it’s the injustice of life, it’s your parents, it’s your spouse, it’s your boss. The list can go on and on, you’ll always find someone to blame for your constant state of misery. And maybe you’re right. Maybe one of them has a big part of the blame for your crappy life, but it’s just as true that the biggest power to change whatever harm was done belongs to you. When you own your life, you own your happiness.
15. Gossip, negativity, manipulation, irritability.
You waste your time with these unproductive activities and states. How much weight your friend gained or how awful it is that the price of potatoes went up. Manipulating your husband into buying you that expensive dress. Always angry about that damn idiot in front of you who can’t drive. Who gave him a driver’s license anyway? Does it matter? Life is what it is and unless you accept it as such, you’re just doing everything possible to keep yourself traumatized.
16. Living in a fantasy world.
No matter how great it is, being out of touch with reality will have serious consequences on your mental health. Escapism is ok for a while, but you are still part of life on earth. Being completely immersed in your parallel reality will make it impossible for you to find fulfillment and belong to this life.
17. An unsatisfying romantic life.
Whether you are staying in a frustrating relationship, keep drifting from one affair to the next, or avoiding romantic liaisons altogether, you are neglecting yourself and the needs of your soul. We are social creatures and we thrive on having someone besides us. Someone to rely on, someone to hold, someone to feel close to. No matter what you’ve been through, you don’t have to keep trauma close for the rest of your life.
Let it go and choose love. Positivity. Kindness. Health.
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