The Journey to Self Respect

Self respect is treating yourself as well as you treat others, sounds like a reverse to the second law of love? Well that's because we never really hear of treating ourselves well as we hear of treating others well.

As a person, am still learning this. I have come a long way to understand what respect is, and now how to respect myself.

As a teenager I struggled with the concept of respect. I could not really figure out what exactly this meant. No expanation made sense, my experience of normal was very different

As a child I lived in an African home set-up where most of the extended family lived together. This set up allowed for so much disrespect across the matrix as there was a lot of power conflicts. Those married in the compounds were regarded lower in power than those born there, regardless of age. They were supposed to serve and bow to those born there. The children were to do the bidding of everyone, their parents, grandparents, uncles, Aunties and every other person that lived in the compound. Name calling, verbal fights and even physical fights were common.

In this space, many learnt survival response at a very young age. This is where I developed hyper-independence, which has served me well and also disadvantaged me in other ways. 

In this survival state, self respect is not a normal, the normal becomes who you believe you are. Who you believe you are is influenced by what you have been told over and over, what has been rewarded/punished and what you have been limited to do. 

At most, the following scenarios play out;

 

• You are criticized and insulted
• You are body shamed constantly, even nicknamed Biggy, small, dark, light etc
• you are humiliated, blamed and threatened
• Your thought, feelings and opinions are dismissed or minimized.
• People highlight things you are uncomfortable or embarrassed of, often.

 

And of such have developed a self perspective that does not allow you to trust yourself, trust your decisions, actions and your judgements of a context.

I said it a lot in cheering teams I was part of when I played active sports "trust yourself" but inwardly, this has always been my greatest struggles. 

Self respect involves trusting that you are good enough, you can trust yourself, your decisions are good enough and you can rely on your own discernment. 

As a person, am still learning how to develop self respect. I have come a long way to understand what respect is, and now how to respect myself. I am grateful for the journey I have embarked on, and are trusting that its just a matter of time to getting to full self respect. 

To develop this will require commitment, love and using the cortex brain over the limbic on times when the two are in conflict over self respect. 

Join me as I take this journey, as I learn how to improve my self respect, heal and be whole humans as intended.