DO YOU 

Two words. Five letters. One consonant and four vowels. It doesn’t sound like much. And yet it’s almost everything.

I have yet to meet a single client who had a good relationship with themselves when we started therapy. Many had no relationship with themselves at all and would ask, puzzled, what I meant by, ‘How good is your relationship with yourself?’. The rest replied “bad”, “I hate myself”, “I’m so unhappy with myself” and similar responses. And so the therapeutic work began. For what could be more important than developing a good relationship with oneself?

Imagine instead that I began our first session by asking, ‘How good is your relationship with your partner?’ It stands to reason that you wouldn’t be happy if you replied ‘bad’ or ‘I hate my partner’. Or if you looked at me in bewilderment and said, ‘I don’t have a relationship with my partner’. No one would be in any doubt that this was something we needed to work on, and something that wasn’t doing you any good.

But in our culture, many of us forget that we also need to have a relationship – and a good one at that – with ourselves. YOU are the only person you’re with 24/7, from the moment you’re born to the moment you die. When you’re home on your own, you’re actually with yourself. When your inner critic shouts that you’re fat, stupid or have a backbone like an earthworm, you’re bullying yourself. You’re your own Siamese twin.

The journal *Science* carried out a thought-provoking experiment: participants were asked to choose between either sitting and thinking for between 6 and 15 minutes in a room containing nothing but a chair – no windows, no pictures, no television and no telephone – or administering an electric shock to themselves. 25 per cent of all women and 67 per cent of all men found being alone with their own thoughts so unpleasant that they chose to give themselves an electric shock. T.D. Wilson et al. “Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind”, Science, 345 (2014), pp. 75–77

DO YOU – but how?

DO YOU! It sounds simple. And yet it’s so difficult. Most of us have learnt that we must put our own needs aside and put others’ needs first. That’s how the vast majority of our generation were brought up. And as children, we did exactly what gave us the most love and attention: not being selfish and not prioritising ourselves. But the less we live in accordance with our own needs, the more we neglect ourselves or avoid engaging with ourselves, the lower our self-esteem becomes, the greater the risk of anxiety, and the more we struggle with guilt and loneliness.

So how do you get started with ‘DO YOU’? Here are three things that have worked for me and for my clients.

1/ Sweet little you: You can start by finding a photo of yourself from when you were a child – one where you really look cute. Hang the photo on the fridge, on the wall, or use it as your phone’s wallpaper. Whenever you don’t think you deserve a break, a bath or a cup of tea, or whenever it’s hard to say no to something you don’t feel like doing, or you start talking harshly to yourself, look at the photo and think: “Does little me deserve that? Would I talk to or treat little me like that?”

2/ Speak kindly to yourself: Start writing down what your inner critic says. And listen to it right to the end; don’t try to shut it down, as we often do. Write everything down, and eventually it’ll have nothing more to say. Try to work out what it wants from you. Why is it shouting at you and shaming you like that? Often, our inner critic is actually trying to help us with something, but it just speaks in a primitive and unconstructive way. Then try reading out everything it has said to the image of your younger self. Most people can’t do that. Instead, you need to work out how it can speak kindly, whilst still holding on to what it wants to help you with.

Let me give an example: My inner critic was shouting and screaming harsh things about how I was fat, gross and disgusting. Once I’d listened to it through to the end, I realised it was trying to make sure I didn’t become overweight like other members of my family who’d died of type 2 diabetes. Then I was able to ask it to say it in a nice way, just as I would say to a friend who was worried about getting diabetes. So now it says things like: “Oh Marie, you’ve eaten a bit too much cake – good for you – but just remember to keep up with the veg next week.” And now I actually listen to it.

3/ A ‘DO YOU’ thing every day: Decide to do one self-care activity for yourself every day. It might be tricky at first, and perhaps you’ll find a ‘DO YOU’ buddy to share ideas with and get inspiration from. Self-care can mean foot soaks, a bath, a lovely cup of tea, blueberries with skyr, a face mask whilst watching Netflix, or fetching some morning snacks when your toes are freezing – really, it’s the care you’d give to someone else that you simply need to give to yourself. But it’s much more than just foot soaks. “DO YOU every day” also means listening to a good audiobook whilst mopping the floor; being mindful whilst in the shower; taking in the scent of your son when you hug him; letting your partner hold you close; and going for a run with some great music in your ears.

But we still need to talk about praise.

Because when we “do everyone else”, we get praise. And we like that – many of us are actually dependent on it. So for “DO YOU” to be a lasting change in your life and your mindset, it’s essential that you learn to praise yourself. But that’s impossible at first, when you don’t have a relationship – or a good one – with yourself. Here, you need to make sure you ask for praise from your friends, your partner or your parents, and keep asking for it until you can do it yourself: “Hi Mum, I’m just writing to say that I left the washing-up and jumped into a bath – wasn’t that brilliant? I’m practising and I need some praise. Hugs from me”

Kh Marie Brixtofte, registered psychologist