Hiya everyone, Hope your all well!!!!! I have written this and I have to tell you, this whole writing thing has really made me realise just how far my life and thinking has changed. Its almost as if I was never that person who I use to be, hope that makes sense. This article is very close to my heart as it relates to me coming out of an abusive relationship and the thinking process of how it affected my relationships with others. see what you think.
SELF AWARENESS AND ANXIETY
Self awareness has a twofold meaning. The way you see yourself and the way others see you. The internal and external perceptions.
If other people had to describe you to someone else, what would they say about you? There is always the positive and negative feedback. Accepting both can open our hearts to a deeper awareness and understanding of our healing recovery. It could be argued that other people recognise attitudes in our self that we are not aware of!!! This is certainly true for me on many occasions during my own healing.
We are all made up of many characteristic in our personality, and the list is endless, but which aspect of your personality do you identify with more than the others? We can maintain what is good in our lives and we can equally maintain what is no longer working for us, but working against us. What negative thought patterns are we maintaining to stop us from moving forward?
We all want to hear positive things about our self; after all building confidence is about sharing the good qualities and recognising the efforts, which we like about those around us. So, what about negative feedback?
Negative feedback is never about putting someone down; it’s more about how our attitude affects others around us and encouraging us to be aware not only of our feelings but the feeling of others, that we may not be aware of in a non judgmental way.
Have you heard this saying, ‘it’s not you that I don’t like, it’s the attitude and behaviour that concerns me’.
Or how about this one, ‘Please change the record. I’ve heard it all before’.
RECOGNISING THE THINKING PATTERN, ‘IT’S ALL ABOUT ME’
My personal experience.
I have to admit there was a period in my life when I pushed others away from me. I had no idea at the time, I had become so self absorbed and self obsessed. The harsh reality of my own severe anxiety. It was a bitter pill to swallow when gradually people use to ignore me and worst of all avoid me. When I look back during that period in my life, the conversations I had were all about me and my feelings, of how others had treated me and I am not ashamed to admit, this went on for a good few years. Emotionally my problems seemed bigger than everybody else around me.
The lesson I learned was that people had the love and understanding to care and to listen, but what they didn’t want to hear all of the time, was me complaining and off loading on them, my issues and problems. In fact in hindsight, when I tried to remember what they had shared in the conversations, I couldn’t remember because I was so consumed in myself and did very little listening, but could talk for ages just about me.
Selfishly I never enquired about them, never really took a real interest in them, but expected them to listen to me, which they did. It’s amazing they stuck around the way they did. I am not just talking about anxiety here, but how for some of us , we can get caught in the trap of becoming so absorbed in our negative thinking we can easily portray the message of being the victim which was the case for me!!!
My negative thinking had dominated most of my conversations in friendships and although I had other good qualities, this was less recognised and the least shown. During that period I was someone who others were losing patients with not because they didn’t care, but because no matter how much support they gave me, and how much good advice they gave me, it was up to me to take responsibility and do something about my problems. I realised that I had spent so much wasted energy on just talking about the problems instead of finding ways to solve them and also recognising painfully that I had become an emotional leech to those who cared about me and I could fully understand their reasons of avoidance and backing off from me.
Realistically for me, during those days, I couldn’t see the concerns and feelings of others, because emotionally I was closed off to their needs. My issues and my anxieties became the whole of my world. Nothing was happening to anyone, it was all about me!!!! Selfishly, but true!!! I had identified with being the Victim.
Love Sky
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Originally Posted by skylight2007
and a very true post. 
so much Sky,
