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Small acts of self-compassion and reflection make a big difference when it comes to caring what others think.
Are you hounded by a nagging concern for what others think of you? Same.
As much as I like to spout self-love and growth and all the rest of it, I’m still plagued by self-doubt and a near-constant worry about how I come across to the world around me. Granted, the crippling social anxiety I suffered with as a teenager has abated – but I wish I could move through the world with a bit more of a ‘f– you’ attitude.
I know this is a lifelong journey. But that isn’t exactly reassuring when you’re trying to become more ‘rock and roll’ and less ‘please love me’. Whilst watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s the other night, I found myself staring dreamy eyed at Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly and wishing I could be as chic and lassaiz–faire as a woman who used a bath for a sofa.
But I have found, in all my self-help searching, a few things that help with the chronic people pleasing gene I was seemingly born with.
Journaling has become a part of my daily routine. It began as a habit I reluctantly forced myself to stick with, finding the whole thing rather gouache and self-indulgent. But now I’ve come to recognise how transformative a process it can be.
This practice of sitting and writing by hand is often associated with our professional careers – at least when it’s discussed in the media. Perhaps that’s what put me off at first. You were either journaling to manifest your first million, or writing affirmations that I found far too cringe-worthy and insincere.
But journaling doesn’t have to fit into either of these boxes. In fact, it can take any form you want it to. All you’re ultimately doing is sitting and writing to yourself for a few minutes each morning. My notes aren’t even legible most of the time.
I use the paper as a space to dump all of my thoughts the moment I wake up. Not only does it keep me off of social media for the first hour of my day (which has drastically improved my mood and energy overall), but it allows me to process a tumultuous inner-monologue and sift the useless thoughts (negative and self-hating) from the useful.
You don’t have to take my word for it. There’s real science behind the whole thing apparently.
Writing about her own experience of journaling, Magda Tabac writes that the act of putting our thoughts to paper is a powerful way of unpacking emotions that we may otherwise find difficult to process.
‘Writing by hand, because it’s a lot slower that our capacity to think, forces us to be present in the moment, to stay with our thoughts. In a way, it stops the ‘monkey mind’ and helps us to be mindful.’
According to research, the amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions) is ‘calmed down’ when we start to write by hand. Thus we stop perceiving our imagined threats as real.
