Sound Mind Therapy

Rules are meant to be broken. That has been my motto for as long as I can remember. Certainly this line of thinking gave my parents their fair share of grey hairs while I was growing up. If a rule didn’t make sense to me, such as only drive a car when you are of legal age with a valid driver’s license, I would make up my own rule at age 13, such as only practice driving skills when parent’s won’t find out. Even today this mindset shows up in my decision making, although I must say that I don’t make it a practice of breaking the law any longer. What I mean is that I still don’t necessarily follow a rule, structure or conventional way of thinking just because everyone else is or I’ve been told to.

So many of us react and behave in certain ways while adhering to unstated “rules” without questioning the reasoning behind it. I was speaking to someone recently who told me he feels the need to be perfect at work in his role as employee and in essence, be super human. He says he fears if he doesn’t show himself to be excellent at all times, he fears he will either not advance or even worse be fired from his job. He admitted that the only time he can relax and be “himself” is at home. Yet even then he says he still feels the need to be productive or else he feels the angst of stress, worry and anxiety.

I wondered, who told him he had to live up to this unrealistic set of expectations? Is he alone in feeling the pressure to be someone he is not? How often do you find yourself doing the same thing? The answer is no, he is not alone. In fact, we live in a society with a raging epidemic of people who suffer with low self-esteem and little to no self-worth.

Why? Because we unwittingly and unknowingly acquiesce to believe what our culture has conditioned us to believe and that is that we are not enough. We are not rich enough, smart enough, good-looking enough, creative enough or promoted enough. This mindset leads us to constantly chase the ever-changing and moving target of being enough. We give our power away by allowing these said external forces to be the determinant of our worth. The problem is we will never attain the goal we are seeking because all these external factors are things that can be given yet taken away.

I was once speaking with someone who proudly announced he had received a 4.0 from his last semester of classes and stated how proud he was because he worked so hard. I congratulated him and asked how he would have felt if he had received a 3.0. He said he would have been devastated. I replied, “But you still put the same amount of effort.” My point was that he is allowing something outside of himself (the professor and his grade) to determine his worth.

Self-esteem and self-worth are attached to what you think of yourself, and self-identity is what you think others think about you. I don’t need to tell you that we spend way too much time worried about what we think others are thinking about us which does nothing but waste precious energy that could be used much more productively. We try to mold ourselves into being something we are not and in the process create self-doubt, anxiety, sadness and fear.

One way to discontinue this unhelpful habit is to begin to recognize the innate gifts you offer. When I started to try to figure out what made me valuable, I found I would get stuck wondering what was so special about me. Yes, I love people and love to learn about what makes them tick but so do a lot of people. What I realized is that it is not about trying to compare myself to others, rather finding my gifts that entail identifying those things in which I am interested or want to learn more about. It has nothing to do with comparing myself to others. In fact, there are no true comparisons between you and other people because no one has had your exact DNA makeup, thought processes, perceptions or culmination of experiences. This helped me become less connected to caring so much about what others think and shifted my attention into caring more about what mattered to me.

Using these practices will help you tap into your passions which can direct you towards your ultimate purpose in life. It’s time to start questioning what and why you are behaving in certain ways and start breaking the rules that don’t resonate with your immeasurable worth that is authentically yours.

Who’s up for breaking some “rules”?

From the heart,

Susie Berg LPC

Susie Berg is co-founder of Sound Mind Café and a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC).  She works with children, adolescents, adults, couples and families. She received her M.Ed in Counseling from the University of Missouri-St Louis and worked at St Anthony’s Hospital (Hyland Behavioral Health) as a clinical inpatient and intensive outpatient therapist. Susie works with individuals dealing with all types of issues such as stress, anxiety, depression, self-esteem, relationships, transitions, marriage, anger, fear, etc. She has trained in DBT, CBT, Domestic Violence, Spirituality, Eating Disorders, Bereavement, Women’s Issues, Marriage and Family, Career Counseling and Individual and Group Counseling and is a member of the American Counseling Association and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.