Beliefs about ourselves often come from communicated feedback, whether it was physical or verbal, from important figures in our life. For the child who gets punished for her anger, she may likely grow up to believe that her angry feelings are abhorrent and shouldn’t be expressed. The downside? She takes the anger that she feels towards those who harm her and turns it back on herself. 

What happens when anger is turned back on the self? Depression, low self-worth, and often a deep sense of feeling unlovable. 

When we take a feeling that is meant for someone else and turn it on ourselves, we lose our sense of emotional freedom. In addition, we run the risk of believing that only some parts of ourselves are worth sharing, while the other parts get punished and locked away. How very sad. 

Our feelings and parts of self want to be known. They want our attention and long to be felt and expressed. If we’ve spent much of our lives trying to squelch their very existence, it would be no surprise to find that we feel confused by their presence and do our best to not feel them. 

The greatest gift we can bestow upon ourselves is to work with a therapist who understands the value of bringing emotions into the light. You cannot expect to move toward a goal of greater self-awareness without inviting all parts and all emotions into the fore.