Dooley Noted: 7/28/2016
I have never been the victim of domestic abuse.
I consider myself lucky.
But in turn, I spent most of my life hitting myself.
I never had a hand of discipline restricting me, so I learned to use my own psychology to keep myself in my place.
Unfortunately, any blame I could have dispersed to the outside world was internalized.
The beatdowns started at a young age.
If anything went wrong, I blamed my thoughts and actions.
I started learning from my mistakes, but I didn’t learn how to educate myself without punishment.
I never learned to nourish myself.
In Chinese medicine, we refer to a lack of nourishment as yin deficiency.
Consider it a beatdown that chips away at your substance.
You get fascinating, correlating symptomatology, like tendencies towards dryness and internal fire. These usually accompany the trouble in nourishing oneself with food and water.
This is fueled with a need to nourish and protect others – as you chip away at yourself.
This starts a cycle of giving out more than you are restoring in yourself, leading to more and more personal deficiency.
It led me down a road to an eating disorder, where I was repulsed by anything that nourished me.
The more I ate, the more I wanted to get rid of it, perpetuating the yin deficiency cycle.
When you are a self-punishing person, you can pack a very hard punch to yourself.
If you are beating yourself down, you are the victim of violence.
But you can make it stop.
I’ve spent the bulk of my 30s attempting to make changes in tendencies of self-punishment.
The eating disorder is 13 years gone, and I married a nourishing, beautiful soul.
I surrounded myself with work and personal partnerships to diminish my tendencies to self-blame while promoting load-sharing.
You start learning to accept the nourishment from others.
At first, you accept their help to block your own punches.
Before you know it, you start raising your fist to yourself less and less.
This stunts the violent cycle and allows you to get some nourishment.
Your symptoms of yin deficiency start to lessen.
You can build yourself up, and then have more substance to nourish everyone around you.
Or, you can perpetuate the self-punishment, ultimately resulting in your continuous depletion.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley
