YOU'VE GOT TO GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOURSELF TO BE HEALTHY

If you don't give a damn about yourself, you won't be healthy. You'll make choices that don't support you. It's important to do a deep dive into your psyche and soul to really see if you're accepting all of yourself. Because only then will you truly be able to support yourself.

For most of my life, I have wanted to be a different person than I am. As a child, I had been criticized for being too sensitive, and it caused my parents a lot of anxiety and frustration.

It caused me tons of anxiety in many areas of my life. I often couldn't sleep well if I had certain foods - like caffeine, chocolate, and sugar - or had experienced intense emotional situations. When my parents argued, I would sit at the top of the stairway in our childhood home stairway listen carefully, praying that they would both be okay. I could feel the emotions of others, like when my dad drank, and I would lay awake listening to his every move downstairs as I worried about him.

These intense experiences as a highly sensitive child left me wishing that I wasn't who I was. I hated that part of myself. It just caused me sleepless nights and over-stimulated my sensitive system. 

I spent many years feeling this way. All of the therapy, anxiety management, coaching, meditations, exercise, lifestyle adjustments, and affirmations helped tremendously, but didn't heal this core issue deep inside my psyche and soul. I wasn't taking a positive approach. I would get so frustrated and discouraged at the constant challenges that I would sabotage myself by eating poorly, drinking too much, not getting enough rest, being down on myself, and taking a very negative approach.

In the last several years, I have begun to learn to take a positive approach to these highly sensitive qualities. I see that my sensitivity provides me with lots of information that others don't see. It has given me the ability to study and do personal and space energy clearing work for myself and others that has kept me balanced and enabled me to walk through my life feeling grounded and whole. 

In short, these are the key things I do to show that I value myself at my core:

• Get plenty of rest
• Mineralize my water so that I stay hydrated effectively
• Practice specific affirmations to promote self-love
• Look in the mirror when I pass one (thanks Louise Hay!) to say "I love you. I completely love you"
• Eat Paleo so I am getting plenty of vegetables, fruits and wholesome proteins, avoiding sugar, flours, and toxic oils which overstimulate my body
• Supplement myself with nutrients that my daily food doesn't adequately provide for me
• Live Primally so I'm supporting my physical body optimally through exercise, nature, sun, play, lots of daily movement, and all things Primal
• Talk to myself in positive ways by turning the limiting beliefs around
• Visit my tribes often - one set of friends who are Primal Paleo, another set of friends that practice energy work

In short, I truly give a damn about my health now on a deeper level than I ever have before. I am willing to keep learning from my own sensitivities and intuition when I make choices, and I am willing to say no to foods that don't work for my body, even if those around me are chomping away and making comments. 

I'm a Highly Sensitive person with a lot of value to offer the world, and I have the courage to support myself no matter what anyone else thinks.

​How about you? Do you give a damn about your health enough to go against the standard?

---