Tiny Buddha's Guide to Loving Yourself: 40 Ways to Transform Your Inner Critic and Your Life (2 page)

And last but certainly not least, thank you to Ehren for letting me read and re-read the same thing twenty times even after I only changed a few words; for always being willing to give me advice, knowing I sometimes may seek but not follow it; and for being such a huge part of Tiny Buddha's heart—and an even bigger part of mine.

W
E ARE NOT ALONE WITH WHAT WE
'
RE GOING THROUGH
. T
HAT
's the core message behind
tinybuddha.com
, a community blog that features stories and lessons from people of all ages from all over the world. It's a place where we can come together to share our struggles and successes, knowing that despite our unique life circumstances, we're really not all that different. No matter what we do, what we believe, where we've been, or where we're going, we all want to be happy, we all want to move beyond our pain, and we all have infinite potential, if only we're willing to believe it.

In the past three years, more than five hundred and fifty people have contributed stories to the site, many exploring their experiences in forgiving, accepting, and even celebrating who they are right now. What always strikes me about the posts people share is how brave they are in acknowledging the feelings and experiences many of us might be tempted to hide. Once one person has put it out there it's so much easier to admit that we've been there too. It's a tremendous relief to realize that whatever we're feeling, it's okay. We're okay. We don't have to fight it. We just have to acknowledge
it, try to understand it instead of judging it, and then use that understanding to grow through and beyond it.

I decided to create this book as a collaborative effort, including forty blog posts from
tinybuddha.com
, for that reason. So much of our resistance to loving ourselves has to do with shame—the thought that there's something wrong with us for what we're going through. These posts have reminded me, and more than a million monthly readers, that we are never alone, and we
can
change our thoughts and our lives. They touch upon ideas that will help you:

• Release shame about your past and the limiting beliefs that keep you stuck
  
• See yourself as beautiful and valuable, with all your flaws and weaknesses
  
• Accept yourself more and judge yourself less
  
• Forgive yourself for your mistakes and stop being hard on yourself
  
• Minimize the need for approval to feel more confident
  
• Let go of the comparisons that keep you feeling inferior
  
• Feel complete so that you no longer look to others to fill a void within yourself
  
• Find the courage to share your authentic self for deeper connections with others
  
• Learn to take care of yourself instead of putting everyone else's needs first
  
• Believe that you're valuable so you can start creating a life you love
  

I've categorized the posts into ten chapters, connected to each of these themes, and then written an introduction for each one. Though I ordered the stories in a way that made sense to me, you don't need to read each chapter sequentially if you'd rather skip to sections that feel most relevant for you. I tried to choose a balanced selection of posts that pertain to our environment, relationships, and even work—all the different facets of our lives that stand to improve when we begin to love ourselves in action.

You'll notice that, unlike in my first book, I don't share any of my own stories in the chapter introductions. Beyond what I share in the early pages regarding who I am and how this book came to be, I wanted to keep the focus on the contributors' stories and lessons.

Some of the posts share vulnerable stories; others are more instructive than personally revealing; but all contain such strong insights that I felt compelled to include them. Many of the stories come from people who have experienced some type of mistreatment that they then learned to emulate through patterns of addiction. Others come from people who came from healthier backgrounds but still adopted self-diminishing habits that they've recognized and confronted. Even if you don't relate to all the stories, some will sound
familiar to you, and I hope there will be lessons from each one that you can apply to your own experience.

At the end of each chapter you'll find four tips—one from each of the four posts in that section. I advise you to look at the forty tips not as things you need to do as you read, but as ideas you can turn to whenever you need help changing your thoughts, and consequently, your feelings and experience of the world. That's the point of this book. It's not about forty simple action steps to change you life; it's about forty simple ways you can change your mindset right now. That, I've learned, is what changes our lives: doing our best
right now
, and as best we can in the nows to come.

I'
VE OFTEN SAID THAT
I
PRACTICALLY POPPED OUT OF THE WOMB
crying, “Look at me!” followed immediately by, “What are you looking at?” For most of my life, I felt a desperate need to receive pure attention underscored by insecurity about what people would see. It was the deep, all-consuming need for validation punctuated by the fear that I wasn't worthy of it. I felt lacking, less than, lost, lonely, and completely powerless to change.

On the long, winding road to a mind less cruel, I've learned that a lot of us desperately want to know what love and happiness feel like, but we don't really believe we deserve either. And we also have no idea how to give them to ourselves. We're so used to beating ourselves up over mistakes, blaming ourselves for everything we've failed to do, and doubting what we can do in the future that we believe we need our punishing inner voice. If only it pushes us hard enough, maybe we'll become better. And then maybe we'll
feel
better. Maybe we'll find a place somewhere on the other side of self-judgment where we can finally accept ourselves and enjoy our lives.

But it doesn't actually work that way. We can't hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love. Before we can feel good
about who we are, we have to choose to be good to ourselves, just as we are. You may have learned to do the exact opposite in your childhood or beyond. And as a result, you may have spent the majority of your life trying to fix yourself, win approval from everyone around you, and escape the shame of your worst decisions. I collected these stories and wrote this book because I know the pain of that reality all too well—and I know there is another way.

In hindsight, I see that I lived most of my early life mired in a deep sense of self-loathing. I thought I felt so empty and lonely because the world was against me. I had lots of evidence to prove the world is a harsh, uncaring place—that people would hurt me if I let my guard down. But I hurt myself more by keeping it up, because the space in which I isolated myself was far more cruel and toxic. No other person could be as mean to me as I was; no one else's opinion of me could be more judgmental than my own; and nothing in the unknown could be more painful than the familiarity of my self-induced suffering.

I was twenty-one when a therapist asked me to draw a self-portrait. I'd spent the ten years prior writing my feelings in journals, though I rarely felt anything for long. I had a vast collection of worn, faded diaries, all venting my anger at the ways others had hurt me and chronicling the many ways I'd hurt myself in response. What started as an adolescent escape from cruelty turned into a log for everything related to self-torture.

Five hundred. That's the number of calories I felt comfortable digesting each day in an attempt to control my body—one of
the only things I felt I could control. Thirteen. That's the highest number of times I threw up on a given day to rid myself of anything in excess of that. Thirty. That's the minimum number of times I weighed myself each day to ensure my weight hadn't exceeded ninety-nine pounds. Ten. That's the approximate number of times I passed out on my college campus, causing my peers and teachers to worry for my well-being. Six. That's how many times I ended up in the ER, dehydrated, with chest pains that I feared might be a heart attack. Seven. That's how many inpatient hospitals kicked me out, with doctors convinced I was beyond help. Three. That's how many months I spent at a residential treatment center in Wisconsin, where I sat in art therapy, pencil in hand, tasked with drawing myself as I saw me.

I started by drawing a circle that was puckered at the top, as if cinched. Inside I drew gray matter—something colorless and almost fluid. It was a crude drawing without much detail; other people likely wouldn't know what it was. That seemed to be an accurate representation of myself; I didn't know what I was made of, either. But everyone in that room knew I saw myself as the contents of that bag. It was a visual depiction of my most shameful memory to date.

At twelve years old, I'd felt ugly and inferior. It wasn't just that I was chubbier, less popular, and less talented than my older sister, who attracted boys like I never did. It wasn't the scoliosis back brace that consistently failed to make me straight. It wasn't that many of my peers seemed to confirm my lack of intrinsic value. It was my
belief that I was unworthy of love. Still, I always fought to get it, and I thought one surefire way was to pretend I had an eating disorder.

I'd seen an after school special about two girls—one anorexic and one bulimic—and it seemed that everyone in their lives paid attention to them. I didn't focus on the fact that the bulimic died in the end, though that was a fate that didn't scare me, since I was convinced my life was worthless. I just wanted people to notice me. I wanted to do something so dangerous and terrifying that people had to stop and focus solely on me. It was a selfish, ignorant desire, but I remember the first time I threw up thinking that I was only acting. I wasn't
actually
bulimic. I was just doing a really good job of playing this role for attention.

I wanted to look like someone who was helpless, and eventually, I was. By college, my whole life revolved around my secret bulimic ritual. It would start with feeling—anything. Guilt. Anger. Regret. Mostly shame. But sometimes even happiness, since I felt I didn't deserve it, or feared I couldn't hold on to it. From there came the eating—mindless self-stuffing, devoid of pleasure or satisfaction. It was carnal, frenzied, violent even, an attempt to anesthetize myself. And for a moment, nothing hurt. There were no thoughts, just the hunt for food and the mission to consume it as quickly as possible without anyone else finding out. I was there, but not—in my body, but out of my head. It was half of a process that had to be completed, and that caused me a great deal of anxiety, the fear I may not be able to empty the hole I'd temporarily filled.

After years of hiding my binging and purging cycle, and years of others trying to interrupt it, I knew there was always the possibility I wouldn't be able to finish. I knew I might not be able to regain control and feel the release that was my drug. The popped blood vessels in my eyes, the bloody scrapes on my knuckles, the decay in my teeth—these signs betrayed that I was still doing it, but I'd gotten creative at hiding it, as I did in my final inpatient hospitalization.

Since I'd already been thrown out of the only eating disorder ward in Massachusetts, I found myself in several psychiatric units, each incapable of effectively treating me. No one on staff possessed the knowledge or ability to provide me with the help I needed—but really, I wasn't open to receiving it, not from my family and not from them. In that last hospital, they left me unsupervised at meals and then locked me in my room. I'd have free reign over a fully stocked kitchen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner before a staffer escorted me to torturous solitude where I inevitably felt unhinged.

There came a time when I couldn't breathe. I'd spent thirty minutes sitting barefoot in a sweat suit, with other patients in the kitchen. Since my neighbor had tried to hang herself with a shoelace, none of us were allowed to keep ours. I could hear her screaming from down the hall, but it was nothing compared to the noise in my head. I couldn't believe this was where my life had gone. I couldn't believe I was here and not well on my way to graduating from college. Mostly, I couldn't believe that I'd soon be locked in a room where I wouldn't be able to rid myself of the toxicity inside me.

I panicked. I decided I had to do it. Every second that went by was one second closer to digestion—one heartbeat closer to losing control. I had to be empty again. If I allowed myself to feel that sense of powerlessness, all the pain from all the other times I'd felt the same would wash over me like a tidal wave. That bag I drew in art therapy—it was the hollowed out pillow inside a case that I'd convinced a young girl to smuggle out of my room after I'd purged into it.

I'd knocked on the locked door, telling a nearby mental health counselor that I needed my friend to get my laundry. I knew the pillow hadn't made it to the trash when I sat before one of the counselors in his office. He told me I should be ashamed of myself, and that it was time for me to leave. With those words echoing in my head, I considered that perhaps I should just give up. I
deserved
to feel ashamed. I did horrible, reprehensible things. I was selfish and weak. These were the beliefs I'd spent the decade prior trying to numb—that the times when others bullied, intimidated, and berated me, I'd brought it on myself. And yet, somewhere inside me, I held on to hope that I was so much more than the worst things I had done; that's the part of me that located the residential treatment center and begged them to accept me.

I left Wisconsin after three months of intensive treatment not completely healed, but with my most life-threatening behaviors either eliminated or dramatically reduced. I had started ascending from the depths of my self-loathing, but the reality was I had a
long way to go. No longer was I slowly dying, but I had no idea what it meant to really live. I only knew I wanted to get far away from everything that reminded me of who I'd been. So I left—moved as far away as I could without leaving the country, from the East to the West Coast. After a decade of therapy and medications, I now lived in a world without either. That was the beginning of a new kind of healing, and it brought me all around the United States as I moved and traveled for work, trying to discover who I could be.