You Are Not Your Own Enemy

Do you feel like your own worst enemy? Are you constantly avoiding yourself? Are you uncomfortable being in your own presence?

In this episode, I discuss the following:

1. What is self-avoidance
2. Why we avoid ourselves
3. What happens when we avoid ourselves
4. How we can stop avoiding ourselves
5. What happens when we return to ourselves
6. Why you are not your own worst enemy.
7. How solitude can help with self-connection
8. The benefits of meditation in healing self-avoidance
9. Living a mindful and self-connected life

This episode can really be a great tool in learning how to stop avoiding yourself and learn how to connect with your healer: YOU.

You are worthy of loving yourself,
Jerry

I am grateful you are here,
Jerry

1:1 Transformational Coaching:
Learn More Here!

Pick up your copy of my book:
Returning: Meditations and Reflections on Self-Love and Healing

Want to Change Your Drinking Habits?
Reframe App

How is your relationship with yourself going?
Get your free-self assessment guide

Watch On Youtube

Website:
www.jerryhenderson.org

Support the Show:
My Patreon

Get Your Free Weekly Healing Tips!

Free Guided Self-Love Meditation:
Get it Here!

Instagram: @jerryahenderson

Disclaimer

Transcript

Jerry Henderson: 0:00

I've got a question for you Are you a self-avoider? Do you have a tendency to avoid yourself? Do you have a tendency to distract yourself or to medicate yourself? Well, we're gonna talk about that today. We're gonna talk about what self-avoidance is, because your first question might have been well, I'm not sure what that is, or you might be thinking well, we all do right, so what's the problem? Well, we're also gonna be talking about what the problem is with that and why it's important that we don't avoid ourselves if we're serious about healing. And then, finally, we're gonna talk about how to stop self-avoidance and the benefits of what happens when you stop avoiding yourself.

Jerry Henderson: 0:42

Hello everybody, I'm Jerry and I'm the host of the Permission to Love podcast, and I'm grateful that you're here today. Now, before we get any further, I've got a couple of things that I wanna share with you. Number one I've recently partnered with a fantastic group called Sleep Reset. Now, I don't know about you, but I have struggled with sleeping, getting a really good night's sleep, for decades, and that's often a struggle for people who have experienced trauma or other painful life experiences. Our sleep systems really get very disrupted, and so resetting that and getting back to a place where we're sleeping in a way that's healthy and good for us is really important, because our sleep affects our healing process and if we're not getting a good night's sleep, we're a lot more likely to get triggered, we're a lot more likely to express those toxic behaviors and to have all of those things show up in our life that we don't want to. Now, sleep Reset is a unique way of getting a good night's sleep. It's not medication-based. It's actually an app-based coaching program that'll really help you. Sleep Reset has been featured in USA Today for Stanford studies, I mean all kinds of things really validating the effectiveness of it. So if you struggle with sleep, I want to encourage you to go down. Take a look at the link in my bio, follow that through, get more information, because I really believe it can not only help you get a better night's sleep, but it can help you in your healing journey.

Jerry Henderson: 2:13

Now the second thing I want to share with you is I recently started a Patreon page in response to your requests about how you could support this show, how you could support the work of self-love and healing and support the permission to love podcasts, so that more people will hear about it and understand how they can heal their relationship with themselves. And so, for more information about how you can support the show and not only support the show, but get exclusive content and, depending on the membership level that you sign up for, you'll get everything from free, signed copies of my book, digital downloads, as well as a 90-minute Zoom call once a month where we discuss certain topics. And so go ahead and take a look at the link and that'll give you more information about how to sign up. And I want to say thank you. Thank you for reaching out and requesting ways to be able to support this show. Now. If you haven't had a chance yet to follow or subscribe, please take a quick moment to do that. That would be much appreciated because we're trying to grow this community and help normalize self-love. So let's go ahead and jump in to today's topic about self-avoidance.

Jerry Henderson: 3:17

Now, we all have a tendency to avoid things right. We avoid uncomfortable things, we procrastinate, we put things off. We avoid difficult conversations, difficult tasks, because there's pain involved, there's discomfort, and so we push it away. Or we might be avoiding it because we really are self-sabotaging. We know that there's something beautiful in it, but we're pushing it off because we have a story in our head, subconsciously, as to why we're not worthy of that. So self-avoidance actually falls into those buckets of why we avoid things. It can be painful, it can be difficult, and you know what? There's also gold and goodness inside of there that we're somewhat afraid of at a subconscious level. We're afraid of the greatness that's in us, and I always love and resonate with the thinking that we often believe that we're afraid of our darkness. What we're actually afraid of is our light. We're afraid of our power, we're afraid of the greatness that exists in us, and tapping into that greatness goes against our core belief that there's something wrong with us and unworthy about us, and so we avoid connecting with that part of us. So I hope in this episode you'll see why it's so important and how it can be so transformational for you to connect with yourself and to stop avoiding yourself.

Jerry Henderson: 4:39

Well, what is self-avoidance? And it might be really obvious just in the words self-avoidance, but for many people it's not. Self-avoidance is about avoiding our own presence, not connecting with ourselves, not connecting with that voice inside of us, not connecting with the authentic self. We avoid ourselves because there's pain there, and if you ever wanted to create a world where self-avoidance could happen 24, seven. Guess what? We live in it and we're also living in the painful consequences of self-avoidance, because when we avoid ourselves and I'll talk about this in a little bit we're avoiding the source of our own healing, which is us.

Jerry Henderson: 5:30

So self-avoidance is when we avoid connecting with ourselves emotionally, mentally, spiritually and even physically. We can be dealing with so much pain, trauma, a hurt that we don't even know what's going on in our body. We're developing disease, aches and pains and all kinds of things, and we just don't even understand why they're there. But they're a direct result of the pain that we're carrying, the trauma that we're carrying, and we are avoiding ourselves and not connecting to understand that that's what's happening with us. So why do we avoid ourselves so much? Well, we've talked about it just a little bit, but let's get into it some more.

Jerry Henderson: 6:10

One is there's a lot of pain that's in there and if we can avoid ourselves, we think that we'll avoid the pain. Challenge is we're compounding the pain, we're making it worse. It's no different than an infection or a broken leg. The more you avoid it, the more you ignore it, the worse that it gets. So the thought that in avoiding ourselves, we're avoiding the pain. There is, yeah, some sense of we're avoiding the pain right now, but we're compounding the pain for the future.

Jerry Henderson: 6:42

And that current pain that we're avoiding can be those regrets, those past memories, those past experiences, those decisions, or just the way that we feel about ourselves, how we feel in our own presence. It's the inner critic, it's the inner torment that we give to ourselves. It can also just be the discomfort, nerve-wise, body-wise just being in our own skin is uncomfortable. So we're trying to find ways to distract ourselves from that. All of that stuff, I want to tell you, is normal as a trauma survivor, normal as a person who's probably come out of a painful relationship, normal for a person who deals with shame and the inner critic. So don't beat yourself up about that. If you're in that boat, it's okay. You can find a way out, and the way out is in and through, and we're going to talk about that today.

Jerry Henderson: 7:32

So what does self-avoidance look like? Well, it can take on a lot of different forms depending on who you are. It can be workaholism, it can be relationships, it can be addictions, it can be social media distractions, television binge watching, over-exercising I mean, it can be so many things, depending on what you're dealing with. Mine took on a lot of different forms. It was workaholism, it was relationships, it was addictions to alcohol and other things that kept me from addressing myself and dealing with and being with myself. As a matter of fact, I didn't even know that there was a self to be with. I didn't understand that me having a relationship with myself was important and I needed to be able to be with myself. I had no concept of that. That's a lot of what I deal with with people and working with them and coaching is they just don't have that concept to be able to land on the fact that they have a relationship with themselves and that they need to go inside and begin to heal and repair that relationship. Now, we can't heal that as long as we're avoiding ourselves.

Jerry Henderson: 8:39

Now let's go ahead and move on to talking about what happens when we avoid ourselves. What are the outcomes of that? Well, bottom line, we don't heal, we don't grow, we don't mature, we don't move past certain things because we are avoiding the healer. You are avoiding the self. If you've listened to my podcast, you understand that I really love the work of internal family systems.

Jerry Henderson: 9:05

One of the things that it talks about is the self and the ability to connect with self. Some will call it soul, some will call it higher consciousness, spirit. Whatever that language is, for you, there is that self and that self that's trying to speak to you. As long as you're avoiding yourself, you're avoiding the self. The self knows exactly what you need to heal. The self has an intelligence, a divine connection to wisdom to help you understand what you need.

Jerry Henderson: 9:40

All of the things that are coming up, that you're avoiding, that you're running away from, are the exact things that we need to begin to pay attention to. Those are the things that the self is bringing to the surface in order for us to heal. Is it painful? Yes, it gets stored in pain and it often gets released in pain. Are there things that we're going to have to walk through? Yes, but I want to encourage you again Dealing with this pain, the pain that we're avoiding. As difficult as it is, as hard as it is, it's better than carrying it, living with it for the next 10, 20, 30, how many ever years. So, ultimately, what's happening?

Jerry Henderson: 10:25

The consequences of avoiding yourself, is that you're not healing. In order for you to heal, you have to be able to listen to yourself, to hear yourself as to what needs to heal and I understand that that can often get blocked, and we need people to help us hear that. We need people to help us have insight into that, and so that's important as well to be able to get those resources. But if you're not hearing yourself and you're not listening to yourself, how will you know what to heal? You can't heal yourself if you're not with yourself. In order to heal yourself, you have to be with yourself.

Jerry Henderson: 11:04

So how do we stop avoiding ourselves? Well, the first point, and the most important point, is that you're way out is in and through. I mentioned it earlier. Your way out is not running. Your way out is not avoidance. Your way out is going into the very things that you're avoiding, beginning to see them, beginning to see them as a messenger to you. And that leads me to the second point of how we stop avoiding ourselves is we stop seeing ourselves as our own enemy.

Jerry Henderson: 11:41

You're always more likely to avoid an enemy than a friend, and we have to change the energy towards ourselves. We have to see ourselves as our own friend. We have to see the parts of us that are causing us pain, that are causing us discomfort. As a part of us, it's simply trying to get our attention and learn to love it, because as long as you see it as an enemy, you're not going to want to sit with it, you're not going to want to be with it and, of course, you're going to escape it.

Jerry Henderson: 12:11

When you're with you 24-7, and you're beating yourself up and you think beating yourself up is something that's bad towards you or is harsh towards you, I want to let you in on the secret. Your inner critic and the parts of you that are beating you up are not your enemy. They are your friend. They are trying to show you that you need to heal something. So we have to change that energy. We have to befriend ourselves and view ourselves as someone who we can be with, and we do that simply by becoming aware of the fact that all of the stuff that you've identified and judged about yourself as I always share is simply a part of you trying to love you, get your attention and invite you to heal. You are not your own enemy, even though you feel like it.

Jerry Henderson: 13:03

Now let's get real practical. Now. What do we do? How do we stop avoiding ourselves?

Jerry Henderson: 13:09

Well, here are some things that really worked well for me. They were game changers, and the first one was solitude. I had to practice solitude. I had to get away from things, I had to get away from what I knew and I had to get away from all the people that were surrounding me and spend time in solitude in order to hear my own voice. Now you might be in a situation where you can't do that. You can't just take off and live a nomadic life. You can't just drop everything. You've got children, young children, you've got people in the home or whatever your situation is. That can be really hard to try to find solitude, but there are ways to do it. There are ways to get creative about it, to just even find a five-minute moment of solitude. You can have solitude in the car, you can have solitude in the bathroom, you can have solitude for a walk. But whatever it is, find that place where you can be alone and hear your own thoughts. So for me, when I talk to people about solitude, it's not just being alone, but having a bunch of distractions while you're in solitude. It's about being alone and removing those distractions, and I know that's hard, but it's a part of the process that we have to find a way to begin to enter into solitude.

Jerry Henderson: 14:31

Now. I want to point out the difference between solitude and isolation. I'm not talking about isolating ourselves, pulling ourselves away from everybody and everything in a way that's harmful, because isolation has an energy of being alone, being separate, being cut off in a way that's more shame-based that you're not worthy to be in a relationship or that people can't be trusted, or whatever that narrative is. It's more of a heavy energy and solitude is more of a mindful energy where I'm actually pulling myself away with some real intentionality to do some work and to listen to myself. So solitude is going to be a very important process in learning to stop that self-avoidant behavior and it's going to actually train you that you're okay to be with, that you're safe to be with, because I know it can feel scary to be with yourself and to be alone with yourself. But you are a safe place, even though you don't feel like it, and maybe your behavior has shown you in the past that you're not a safe place or made you feel like you're not a safe place. I'm telling you, underneath all of that, underneath all those stories, there is a safe place inside of you for you to be with yourself, and solitude is going to help you do that. Solitude is going to teach you that it's going to feel really uncomfortable, and that uncomfortable part is a part of the healing process in and of itself. So don't give up, don't run away from yourself just because it's so uncomfortable at times. Now, another thing that's going to have to happen in order for us to stop self-avoiding is to stop the avoidant behavior. You might think, yeah right, that's easy said genius. But there really is a layer of truth here that I want you to try to get. You're going to have to stop that behavior that you're using in order to avoid yourself. Let me give you an example.

Jerry Henderson: 16:27

For me, it was getting sober. I had to get sober so that I could be with myself, because drinking allowed me to disconnect from me. It kept me away from myself. I drank to avoid myself, to tolerate my own presence. I remember the first few days that I was in rehab. I mean, I was hardcore detoxing. I was having hallucinations, both audible and visual. It was really tough detox.

Jerry Henderson: 16:57

On the fourth day, I was super bent out of shape because I hadn't seen my therapist yet who had been assigned to me. I'd seen the medical doctor a number of times and I'd seen some of the workers, the staff, but I hadn't seen my therapist. I was in a desperate situation because I was thinking in my head this doesn't work for me, I'm, there's no hope for me, I don't know what's going to happen. So I had to make this time in rehab work. I remember getting so annoyed that I kept complaining to the staff that I wanted to see my therapist.

Jerry Henderson: 17:27

Well, she eventually came over to me, connected with me and she shared something with me that really shifted my mindset and changed the way I was looking at my detox period. She said you know I could come work with you and we could try to have some sessions, but you're in the middle of detoxing, your brain's not working right at this point. You've got all these chemicals that are trying to reset and you've been so self-avoidant, you've been so dependent on these chemicals to keep you avoidant from yourself. We need to get that out of your system and let some of that fog lift just a little bit so that we can actually make progress in working together. Well, that was a huge aha moment for me because it really helped me see that in order for me to heal and make progress, I'm going to have to stop doing the avoidant behavior.

Jerry Henderson: 18:17

So one of the things that's going to be important to practice in this process is looking at what is that primary avoidant behavior for you. Is it some type of medication? Is it alcohol? Is it relationships? Is it overworking? Is it binge watching? I mean, what is it for you that is that primary distractor of you from yourself, and you're going to have to take a season and detox from it. You're going to take a season and put it aside. It's going to be tough, right, because you're going to come to the surface and all of that. You're going to have withdrawals from whatever it is.

Jerry Henderson: 18:51

Now I do want to acknowledge and point out that there are some of those coping mechanisms that we've developed or those avoidant behaviors that we've developed, that we can't fully get away from right. So, for example, a food for you has been a way for you to self-avoid and to disconnect from your emotions, the challenges that you still have to eat right, and so, in many ways, there are some of the self-avoidant behaviors that are a little trickier and tougher to tackle. Now, for me, I just simply had to stop drinking and I can live without drinking, but there are some self-avoidant behaviors that are a little trickier, a little tougher to handle, and so I want to encourage you Go easy on yourself, be graceful with yourself. There are strategies, there are resources that are out there that help with those type of things that we can't totally eliminate from our lives, but we're going to have to learn to shift our energy and our relationship with them. But whatever it is, that thing that you're using to avoid yourself is going to have to be put to the side as much as humanly possible in order for you to begin to hear your own self and to begin to connect with yourself and, in doing so, connect with your healer.

Jerry Henderson: 20:05

Now let's talk about meditation. Meditation or mindful prayer, whatever your practice is that allows you to get alone, sit by yourself, remove those distractions and begin to go inside. This is the space right. This is the place where we start to actually go into ourselves and listen to ourselves. Now I'm going to tell you meditation for me, as I've shared before, very difficult practice in the beginning took me a long time. I mean, I literally signed up for these pretty drastic things where I went like 10 days to Mexico to go into a retreat center and we'd meditate for eight hours a day, and so I was getting pretty heavy into it to try to break through some of that self-avoidant behavior. So it was really important for me to begin to connect with myself, and the way I was going to connect with myself was being with myself, and the best modality that I knew of to do that was meditation.

Jerry Henderson: 21:07

Now you might be asking yourself well, you're a former pastor. Why wasn't prayer that mechanism for you or that practice for you? Well, because of the way that I prayed before was always talking. There was always something going on either in my head or me saying something out loud, and prayer for me was often a big source of shame, and so I needed to figure out how to totally disconnect from all of my previous ways of doing things and just be so once again.

Jerry Henderson: 21:37

Whatever you choose to call it meditation or mindful praying or whatever that looks like for you, the key is to allow yourself the space to let the mind quiet, to let the body be steel and to see what comes up from inside of you, because those things that begin to come up from inside of you become your whispers, the things that you want to pay attention to Now. You might say well, when I sit there, what happens is I think about all the tasks I need to be doing and the time that I'm wasting by sitting here, or all of my regrets, and I feel even more uncomfortable and it's really just too painful to sit there. I understand that. I truly, truly understand that. I understand it more than I can communicate to you, but you have to be able to press through that You're safe, you're going to be okay, and letting those emotions come and letting them pass and pay an attention to what they're trying to say to you.

Jerry Henderson: 22:38

You see, the first few things that start coming up, yeah, usually are all of the distractions, all of the things that we should be doing or all those uncomfortable thoughts. But as the mind begins to settle, as you begin to get that as a practice and you ease into it, then these other things begin to come up, and they're often pretty consistent. Each time you sit, that thing will keep coming back up, and that's a signal for you, that's something for you to pay attention to, that's something that your system is asking you to address. Now, it doesn't always come up, maybe in the way that you think it should, it doesn't come up in the way of well, you need to make this relationship right or you need to stop doing this thing over here.

Jerry Henderson: 23:22

I mean, it might be emotions that come up, it might be thoughts that seem totally disconnected, but as you sit with it and you just continue to be still and allow yourself to speak, you'll find yourself going, layer upon layer, down further and further, or up further and further and further, whatever direction you believe in terms of you going inward or going higher, higher self and inner self. But there is this place where you start to connect with these beautiful aha, healing moments that allow you to see parts of yourself with compassion and love, that you are never able to see about yourself before. And it is in those moments. You see, this is why not avoiding yourself is so important, because you're going to begin to heal your relationship with yourself. You're going to begin to see those parts of yourself with love, with compassion. You're going to see the little self that developed all these coping mechanisms. You're going to see the self now who you judge so harshly, or the things you regret about yourself. You're going to see how all of that starts to make sense or doesn't need to make sense anymore, because love overwhelms it. Love begins to meet it and to begin to transform it and do a work of alchemy. You see, that's the beauty, that's what I'm talking about. And stop avoiding yourself and to see yourself as the healer is, as you meet yourself with love and compassion, all of that energy, all of that self-hatred, all that inner critic stuff, it just starts melting away. Does it happen overnight? No, is it a journey? Yes, does that stuff still come back up later? Absolutely, but it's met with a whole different energy now. It's met with a whole different mindset and a whole different way of looking at it.

Jerry Henderson: 25:14

Now let's go on to this last point about how do we stop avoiding ourselves, the practice of mindfulness? You might say, well, didn't we just talk about that meditation? Well, for me, there's a distinction between the two. Meditation, yes, can be anything and everything we do with an energy and a mindfulness and an inward way of looking at things. So you can be in a meditative state, out and about doing your stuff. But for me, right now, at this point in my journey, meditation is that place of me getting solid to sitting, really going inward, listening, following my breath, monitor work, all those practices.

Jerry Henderson: 25:52

But then mindfulness for me is that way of walking around and living and doing life and paying attention to what's going on in my body. It's about not being checked out all the time. It's deciding that when I go for a walk, I'm not going to spend the whole time on my phone. I'm not going to spend the whole time on a phone call. I'm not going to spend the whole time replaying things in my head or stressing myself out. It's about being present. It's about being in the present moment and connecting with ourselves.

Jerry Henderson: 26:24

If you think about it, how much time do you actually spend being present? I mean, ask yourself that question and then ask yourself why do you avoid the present so much? And it'll often be because you're there, and that's what we're after is to heal that space, to where you can be there with you and be okay, and you find your presence to be the most healing presence that you can be in. And so mindfulness is about being present, paying attention to what's going on inside of you, what you're feeling, what's your body doing, how your body's feeling, what's going on in your surroundings, looking at a tree and just enjoying it, and allowing yourself to come to this present moment. So whatever allows you to do that, connect with that.

Jerry Henderson: 27:17

It might be a walk, it might be some type of practice of journaling, or whatever it is that brings you present, allows you to be mindful, and then what'll begin to happen is it'll become more of a habit and a way of living life, and then you'll find that you are no longer somebody that you're avoiding. You're finding that you're someone you're really curious about. You want to understand what this person's trying to tell you. You want to understand what's going on inside of this person, and so the whole energy becomes one of curiosity and of being with. And I promise you there is that place for you. You can find it. It exists, and you're not the only one who's never going to be able to find it.

Jerry Henderson: 28:05

You're not the only one who thinks to themselves that I did so many horrible things in the past or so many horrible things happened to me in the past that there's no way I can be able to be with myself. I don't deserve to be with myself. I can't stand being with myself. I had all that in my head. I had all of those feelings. I don't know what yours are. I'm not going to compare mine to yours. I'm going to tell you I had all of that and it's healed.

Jerry Henderson: 28:29

I'm here, sharing on this podcast, enjoying my presence, loving who I am and in a healthy relationship with myself. That allows me to be in a healthy relationship with other people. So, please, don't tell yourself the story that you can't heal your relationship with yourself, and the way you're going to heal your relationship with yourself is to be with yourself. Well, thank you.

Jerry Henderson: 28:58

Thank you once again for being a part of another episode of the Permission to Love podcast, and if this podcast episode has had an impact on you, I want to encourage you to share it with somebody else who could benefit from it. It's the way that we get this work out into the world is by sharing it with one another. So, thank you, thank you for sharing it with others and, before I close, just want to remind you if you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet, take a moment to do that, because that's going to keep you informed about all the things that are happening. It's going to inform you when my book gets released. It's going to inform you on new programs and products and courses that are coming out. So get signed up. Love to have you as a part of that community, a growing community where we are learning to give ourselves the permission to love ourselves, and I want to remind you that you are worthy of your own love and you are worthy of having a healthy and whole relationship with yourself and with others.