Confession: I was that person who thought self-care was for weak people.

Can I confess something to you?

I used to think all this was rubbish too. I fell into a trap of my own doing.

Therapy was for weak people

Thats what I thought.

I didn’t need help, I helped others

Critical of the sitting ‘doing colouring’ phenomenon of a few years back

Id rather stay busy

I dont need that kind of help

Im ok

Ill survive

I always do

And dont get me started on Enneagram or Myers Briggs, didnt want anything to do with them, id criticised their validity, and took out of them any helpfulness they could be.

Though I wanted to help others, actually I also invalidated the help that they may have got

I was the right one, and strong one, I could cope

I was that person.

I dont think I was ‘that’ person that thought ‘God could solve anything’ in that kind of evangelical way.

But I was the person who invalidated ‘weird’ mindfulness or therapy or personality tests… or any of this

Do blame the trauma creating counter dependency?

Blame, no, because I can see how I got into that trap, but also I know I could have done or seen better

Maybe id fallen into a trap somewhere of invalidating therapeutic help, self-care and emotions – so that I could stay trapped

But I was that person.

I also wanted to avoid the big stuff. So I was at the same time trying to invalidate the very thing I needed.

No wonder that onion layer skin was a hard outer one.

I wonder whether this is the same for many of us?

Especially, but not exclusively men?

We have to be strong and be seen to be – and strong means criticising the very things that seem weak and vulnerable?

I didnt want to know about myself, I didnt think I was that important, I also didnt want to face up to what I might find….

I helped other people in a job in which I supported others, young people, youth workers, even would be the kind of person who would take the ‘support’ role in conversations with clergy…who if I let them could ask me them…I had to be the strong one, I had to look like it, strong.. and in many ways, some of those strong things, maybe even emotionally strong at times (for others) were also weaknesses.

We as men, and women, might fill our lives with the distractions of sport or work, and dive deeply into the intellectual pursuit of these things… as a way of hiding ourselves in them, or again, was that just me?

But I was that person, I confess, I was that person who thought they didnt need help?

But at the same time my inside was being knawed away as week by week and year by year my woundedness was what I was living, and masking this in helping others.

So I get it , I really do.

Stereotypically it took that life changing, breakdown moment, to start from, to rebuild.

But before then I avoided and was critical of the very things I needed, the things that , especially therapy, and the many self care/help resources that I began to read and discover – were soul, heart and life changing.

I thought I was strong, but had to become weak to realise that strength from being open to myself was the strongest strength of all.