December 3, 2023 - Shared Lotus

The Neuroscience of Self Love

Follow on TikTok

The Neuroscience of Self Love

When learning to love yourself it can be helpful to understand what is happening in your brain while you are changing it from an insecure and self-harming brain, to a brain that floods you with self love.

Your brain is the organic part of your physical body that is wiring up based on your mind and your emotions.

Not many people like to geek out with me on something like this, but my whole philosophy behind my self love educational programming is based on the neuroscience of self love. So what is really happening to your brain when you move towards self love and how can you make it happen faster?

How Your Brain Copes

We tend to use unhealthy distractions to help us cope, so it is important for us to recognize these and begin to move them into healthy or joyful distractions.

Zaretta Hammond, the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain points out that there are things that you may use to cope if you were born in poverty, or traumatized by the conditions of modern society. That some of the survival skills that helped people grow up in poverty or under stress, are actually coping mechanisms that helped you get through tough times.

Really think about how you cope with a stressful situation. Do you talk to others? Do you talk trash? Do you retreat and go it alone? Do you lose trust in people and get angry?

Maybe you take a bath, journal, sing, anything that gets you through the stress.

Start to understand your brain by writing the ways you cope that you are aware of.

Noticing Your Automatic Thoughts

When you hit stressful moments or are being hard on yourself, negative thoughts come up that are automatic. These are also called thinking traps or cognitive distortions. Click here for some examples of these traps.

How to do you battle these? You can first distract yourself and then move into coping thoughts.

Your goal is to get your brain online so you can access your self love skills.

Here are some coping thoughts you can practice and use when your brain feels overwhelmed. Pick some and practice them with the smaller non-stressful moments in life.

I sometimes keep a small notebook with me in order to write them a few times in moments when I feel dysregulated. Journaling helps with a self love practice.

If you practice all of these habits, while your mind is calm, it is A LOT easier to use these tools when your mind is not.

Label Your Emotions

An advanced skill that you can use either after coping thoughts, or right from the beginning, is to label your emotions as they come up.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, describes how powerful labeling our emotions can be for regulating our entire body.

The more words you have for one emotion can support you in gaining access to your prefrontal cortex and help you make rational decisions that are best for you. Dr. Feldman Barrett calls a large vocabulary for emotional word, emotional granularity.

She states, “You’ve probably never thought about learning words as a path to greater emotional health, but it follows directly from the neuroscience of construction. Words seed your concepts, concepts drive your predictions, predictions regulate your body budget, and your body budget determines how your feel.”

Mindfulness

Again, your brain is the organic part of your body that wires up your automatic an unconscious processing. It is the YOU part of your brain that makes up your “mind.” This can be confusing, but it is why mindfulness can help support the neuroscience of self love in your life.

Mindfulness separates the organic brain, that can be changed with time, and the deep part of you that might be considered a soul. When you are practicing mindfulness you become an observer of your mind and can begin to direct the changes you want for yourself.

All learning happens this way. You make a decision to learn something new, you set your mind to it and you start to actually create neurons through repetition and practice.

Mindfulness is the same. You decide to learn to love yourself, you begin to be conscious of your thinking when it comes to how you view yourself, then you build new neural networks in your mind while you practice self love.

Overall, it is a complicate process. You can become an expert with me on this, or your can just use the programming and content I put out trusting that I am helping you re-wire your brain.

You can also take on your re-wiring in other ways with this next article.

Dr. Autumn Thomas

Does an anger management program sound like the next step for you? Purchase our program here.

This blog may contain affiliate links.

Get 30 Days of Gratitude sent to your inbox

Get a Free Boundary Workbook to Download

Explore our Programs Page and find one to further your self love journey.

The Neuroscience of Self Love Read More »

Improve Relationships Over the Holidays

Uncategorized / Lotus Contributor

5 Ways to Improve Relationships Over the Holidays

Holidays can be divisive, and if you celebrate winter holidays that many people in the US celebrate, this can be a tough time on our egos, confidence, and relationships.

Just last week, a friend of mine told me that her teenaged son decided to bring up a political and military conflict in another country while everyone was having a Thanksgiving meal (the US holiday). He brought it up with a grandparent that had very clear difference of opinion.

It is this scenario that does the opposite to improve relationships over the holidays, but there are ways you can forge better connections with others during the holidays while families are near.

Accept Others As They Are

This blog, in particular, is all about self love, confidence, and happiness. When you look at others, it is best for you if you assume positive and see them as people who are also looking for happiness. They just might not be doing it the same way you do.

When you are with others, understand that they have a right to be in all the spaces you are in. Nothing will calm another person down as quickly as letting them know: “Hey, we might not think or see things the same, but I respect your right to be who you are.”

Imagine if others said that to you, wouldn’t it feel so accepting? I do this by recognizing the inner child in everyone looking for approval and love. It helps me answer challenges that other put to me in a way that honors the humanity in others.

Approach Situations With Curiosity

Sometimes, the people we love only really get a chance to be around each other during the holidays. What can then happen is that they try to put as much of themselves out there as possible in a short amount of time. They do this so others can see the things that are important to them, but egos can really start to clash.

Slow this down with curiosity. When someone you love, who you might not see a lot, seems to be acting over the top or “doing the most,” ask them questions. Say things like:

Can you help me understand _(someone’s action or an event)_____?
Tell me more about what you mean with that.
Can you give me some background about why you feel that way?
Here’s how I am seeing _(the situation)__ what do you think?

We have a download here where you can also learn to paraphrase while being curious.

Remember, the conversation is not about winning, it is about connecting and understanding.

Come to Agreements

While listening to others around the holidays, you might find that things need to move forward. If you have taken time to listen to someone else and feel that they have listened to you, make some agreements so that you both can understand each other better.

Relationships can sometimes need negotiating. In the example of my friend’s son bringing up politics with grandpa, you can ask for an agreement from your son. You can say something like, I know you are passionate about the political climate right now, but could you hold off on these conversations during the holiday meal? If your son agrees, you can kindly hold him to that agreement later.

Or how about you want help cleaning up after the meal. Gather the family together ahead of time and let them know you’d like them to help you clean up after. Ask them to agree and they will usually be willing to stick to the agreement.

Agreements have a way of shifting our behaviors so we align to what we promise.

Maintain Loving Boundaries

All of the above strategies to improve your relationships over the holidays give you the opportunity to hold true to your loving boundaries. If you are unsure of your boundaries, we have a Boundary Booklet you can download just to the left of this article.

Overall, your boundaries communicate a trust for others. They are more than just a psychological wall you build to keep yourself safe. You use your boundaries to let others know that they can run their own lives. It is okay for you to stand beside them, but you will not live their lives for them.

During the holidays, boundaries are more necessary than ever. They will help you have curios conversations without taking on something that is not yours. These boundaries will also help you hold others to the agreements they have made while also allowing you to accept when people might not be able to live up to those agreements.

Notice the Best

Overall, take time to notice the best in all of the people around you.

It is easy to get overwhelmed during the holidays and see where people are falling short. Instead, do a quick mindset shift and notice where people are trying and how others bring good energy to a space. Then comment on it. Let others know that you are noticing what is positive about them.

Comment on their strength and the effort you see them putting in. When they meet an agreement, it doesn’t take anything away from you to let them know you appreciate it. Spread that gratitude and see the light in others.

Dr. Autumn Thomas

Does an anger management program sound like the next step for you? Purchase our program here.

This blog may contain affiliate links.

Get 30 Days of Gratitude sent to your inbox

Get a Free Boundary Workbook to Download

Explore our Programs Page and find one to further your self love journey.

Improve Relationships Over the Holidays Read More »

Self Love and Accountability

Uncategorized / Lotus Contributor

Follow on TikTok

Self Love and Accountability

The path to happiness and self love sometimes begins with a period of isolation. This happens because you realize that you have been abandoning yourself. You find yourself alone for a while in order to start nurturing a relationship with yourself.

After a while, you might start to wonder if your self love is becoming selfish. This thought will come up for many reasons, but also because some of the more toxic friends in your life will point out that your self love is you being selfish.

So, as with anything, there is a balance. Moving into a phase of cultivating a love for yourself, can cause some selfishness at first, but not for the reason that others point out. You will have to focus on things like what you want, and what you think, or how you feel etc. for a while.

But as you move through different phases of self love, you will find that your self love actually begins to increase your accountability. Here are a few reasons why:

Your Friends Will Change and So Will Your Impact

To start, your self love journey will lead you away from people who might be crossing your lines, or doing you harm. You do not need to declare some type of relationship battle, but you will start to see those who are not aligned with your highest self, act out or take space from you.

Given that you are building internal resources to support yourself, you will be able to cope with this shift.

Furthermore, you will start to have a different expectation of how you are treated, but also how you treat and impact others. Your current friendships that are already solid, will start to change and have more depth because there will be a high level of expectations and accountability for all of you.

Also, you will start to attract people who are also more confident in their self love. New people entering your life will be on a different level and will begin to feel they can have psychological trust with you.

Your Boundaries Will Reflect Your Care

While the authentic people who were already around you, and the new friends who vibe on your level support these positive changes in you, you will also develop very loving boundaries.

Boundaries develop in a few stages, but in the end they are not only a communication of what you will and will not tolerate for yourself, they also communicate something profound for those around you. What your boundaries tell others is that you trust them to run their lives. This is an advanced way of loving yourself AND others.

Your loving boundaries become not just a wall between you and others, they communicate how much faith you have in others to be kind, respectful, understanding, and flexible. Boundaries can shift based on this trust. They hold you and others accountable to each other.

Your Emotional Reactions will be Under Control

Part of self love is learning to manage emotions and cope with difficulty. Self love moves from, “I want to learn to love myself more” to, “I want to become and love the best version of myself.”

This happens because you begin to love yourself, but also start to see that there are layers of yourself from the past that need this love. You do inner child work as see how your negative emotions impact your current self love and happiness. This means that you need to start to cope with negative emotions and thoughts.

If you take on this challenge with a mindset of self love, you will learn how to label your emotions, meditate to understand your own mind, set affirmations, stay present during difficult times, etc.

All of this work leads to you holding yourself accountable for your own emotions. As this happens, you start to connect with your emotions and learn to manage your reactions.

It All Adds Up to a Profound Life Change

The beginning of your self love journey will be completely imperfect and beautiful at the same time. There will be struggles that you will look back on and shake your head.

Yet, you will start to develop an expectation of yourself and others. This type of accountability will lead to profound change in your life. Your relationship with yourself will be deep and rich because you will be accountable to a vision of the best version of yourself. Through this, you will see a vision for those around you. People will notice that you hold them to this and it will make them feel capable and loved.

Consequently, your connections with others will move to a phase of appreciation that will hold all of you accountable to love, forgiveness, communication, and repair.

Dr. Autumn Thomas

Does an anger management program sound like the next step for you? Purchase our program here.