Why You Treat Yourself Like Shit (And How To Stop) | PTSD & Trauma Recovery

Hey everybody, Brad Schipke here, and today I'm going to be talking to you about why you treat yourself like shit. But most importantly, how to stop it, how to actually turn it around, and why it's so important to actually care about yourself, give a crap about yourself on recovery. And it's not just something nice to do, it's actually something very practical to do and something very important. So if you are really hard on yourself, if you're having a really hard time, if you hate yourself, hate your life, uh, hate everything, then this video is for you. It's really going to help you gain a lot of peace, internal peace, a lot of calm, a lot of steadiness, and really help propel you forward in life and in recovery. So I can say that because I had all those things. I hated myself at one point. I hated my life. Pretty much hated everything in my life. And I can tell you from personal experience that that is a recipe to just make your life a whirlwind of pain. And when you're in that state of just really self-loathing, self-loathing and hating yourself and really just crapping on yourself 24/7, it just adds on all this additional pain that you don't need to be feeling. So when you go through trauma, when you have PTSD or anything else, you already have this massive amount of pain in your life, right? And you saying all these negative things about yourself just adds to that pile of crap. So this video is going to remove a huge load of pain off of that pile that you're already going through, it'll make things so much easier moving forward. So I have a few things— I have 7 things I want to talk to you about in this video, and let's just dive right on in. So one of the biggest things I see in recovery and the people that we coach, and one of the biggest things I saw in myself in my own recovery, is that we want others to treat us well. We want others to love us, and that's what we crave, and we blame other people. when other people don't treat us well. But that's not the problem. The problem isn't that other people treat us poorly. Yes, that's not a good thing, but the real problem, the real root of the problem, if you trace it back, is the way that we treat ourselves. So we allow all these other people in our lives to treat us poorly because we treat ourselves poorly, because we believe that we are someone who deserves all of these bad things in life. Because if you, if you think about it, if you cared about yourself, If you loved yourself, like if you truly love yourself, would you put yourself, a person that you love, in a situation that would hurt that person? No, absolutely not. You absolutely would not put yourself into that situation in the first place. So, and on top of that, on top of that, like you are, you are the only person that you can control ultimately. So whenever you are trying to change somebody else, or whenever you're blaming somebody else, you're basically It's basically a pointless exercise because you're putting all your energy into something that you cannot control. You cannot control other people. Like, you cannot change them. That is up to them individually. So that's all wasted energy. And if you ask yourself, how much time are you spending blaming other people, judging other people, or, you know, hey, I don't love myself, my life is so bad because of you. How much of your time do you spend doing that, right? If you're like me or like I was. I would spend pretty much all my time doing that. It was either I would crap on somebody else or I crap on myself, right? It was just— that's all it was. And whenever you're pointing the finger at somebody else, it's wasted energy. You're wasting your time, you're wasting your energy because you're putting your energy and your focus on something that will— like, you have no control over, right? You can't control what somebody else does. You can only control what you do. So on the something else to consider is that when you start focusing on you and you start focusing about how you view yourself, how you how much you love yourself or hate yourself, that's when things really start to change. So that's what I really want to do is I want you to take your focus off other people, what other people are doing to you, and start just paying attention to how do you treat yourself. Let's at least start there, right? Let's start where you have control. So that's what I want to talk about, and I've been through all of those things, so I know how it feels. And just learning this process will make everything so much easier for you. So that's what I wanted to say, is when you treat others like, like crap, you allow others to treat yourself like crap. So— oh, sorry. When you treat yourself like crap, you allow others to treat yourself like crap, right? So you get— what you get is a reflection of how you treat yourself, is what I'm trying to say. And when you love yourself, you don't put yourself in harmful situations. So The next thing I want to say is actually, how do you go about making this transformation from a state of, let's say the beginning state is, I completely hate myself, hate my life and everything in it, to a state of, hey, I love myself even at my worst, even at my lowest point, I love myself. So how do we do that? Well, the very, very first step is we have to get, get you out of your head and help you see a new perspective on yourself. So what I want you to imagine is Just you like this. And this is actually a visualization exercise that you can do. Um, but oftentimes, for some strange reason, we view ourselves— if this is you— we view ourselves as like subhuman. Like, we, we treat ourselves in ways that we would never treat other people, or people in our lives, or, um, people that we love, let alone strangers. We wouldn't treat the treat ourselves or treat them the way that we treat ourselves. So imagine that this is, you know, you. What you want to do is you want to get a new perspective on yourself. You want to like basically take yourself out of your body if you can, almost see yourself from a third perspective, almost like you are another person up here, almost floating above yourself. And this is just a visualization to help you kind of visualize the process, you know. Obviously, you're not actually a person floating above yourself. I will assume that you get that. But you want to imagine yourself kind of looking, looking from a different perspective so you can actually see yourself as a human being that you love. So you want to be looking down on this person, which is you. And then what you want to do is you want to view yourself again from this third person view. From the third person and see yourself as if you were somebody that you loved, right? So view this person as somebody that you love, whether that's, you know, your mother, your father, brother, sister, best friend, whether that's your pet, your dog, anybody that you care about or anything that you care about or love. I want you to view yourself as that, and then I want you to start thinking about what would you say to that person. What would you say to that person that you love? And oftentimes this is where a big shift happens in the way that people view themselves, because a lot of times we just go get so stuck in our thoughts that we never take that step out and really view ourselves as humans, right? Like, I think like the best way to describe it is like we treat ourselves like we're subhuman, like we're not— like we have no value. And for some reason You know, that's something that's perpetuating. It's something that a lot of people have a hard time breaking out of. But this is really the first step, is just being able to get perspective on yourself, on your life, being able to see yourself as somebody who has value, right? And the best way to do that is to start by literally removing yourself— not literally, but like figuratively removing yourself, viewing yourself from the third person, and gaining that perspective and that awareness of what you're going through. And then from here, this is where you have power. This is where you have power to influence you, the way that you think about yourself. So this is the stance, or this is the mental, mental, um, kind of place you want to be, the mental model you want to use to then start changing the way you think of yourself. So everything starts here. You always want to remove yourself and get a different perspective on yourself. And then from here, you can start talking to yourself differently, and you can go through different exercises that will help you change that belief you have about yourself and ultimately get to a point where you love yourself even at— even if you are at your worst. And that's the ultimate goal. So we want to get to— get you to a place where you care about yourself even, even when you are at your worst, even when you are at the rock— even when you're at rock bottom. Um, and because that's, that's really where it all starts. We want you to be able to see that you have value no matter what. You have— you are worthy no matter what you go through, no matter what you do. You have value. You have this innate value that can never be taken away. And that's what we're going for here. That's the end goal that we're going for. But it is going to be a progression for you, um, to get to that point. So now I want to walk you through 2 different kind of exercises, very simple exercises. One is one that you can do kind of constantly, and another one is kind of more— you, you can just Do when you want to. So I'm going to walk you through 2 exercises, 2 tools. I'm going to call them tools, but they're more kind of like exercises. So I'll write these in blue if I can. The marker is kind of dented, so I'll see. Yeah, it comes up. Tools. So the first one that I want to go through here, um, is very simple. So I don't really have a name for this, a fancy cool name for you to help you remember this or anything, but I just wrote down what you want to say is you want to remove yourself from this third person. Again, everything starts from you viewing yourself from this new perspective, and then say, I love you. And that's really it, just keeping it really simple, saying, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. And again, down here I wrote with reference, with references, right? So the idea is that, my idea is like, I wanna keep it really simple because the simplest, the more simple I can make it, the more likely you are actually going to take action on it. And that's the most important thing. So remove yourself from this perspective and literally just tell yourself, you know, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. And then as you're saying that, references will come up to support that new belief, right? So you might not believe it in the beginning. It might feel so wrong and so awkward to say that to yourself and be like— you're gonna be like, I love you, I love you. And then like another part might say like, no, no, I don't deserve this. Or like, you know, I don't deserve it because this ex, uh, this X, Y, and Z, whatever. But I want you to set those, those, uh, things to the side. Just be like, hey, that's okay, but I'm gonna set that aside for now. And just keep repeating that in your mind. And then just keep an eye open for references, right? So you, like, as you say, I love you, something might pop up and it might be like, you know, I love myself because, you know, I'm genuinely a good person at my core. And like, you might be surprised, like, where did that come from, right? But when you start saying this belief that I love you again in your head, again and again and again, references to support that new belief will bubble up, but you have to be aware to catch them and then strengthen them. So when those references come up, Strengthen them even more by going into them and repeating them. And so going with this example, move yourself to the third person, start saying, I love you, I love you, I love you, to myself, to yourself. And then maybe it's what pops up is like, you know, I love myself because I am genuinely a good person at my core. And at that point, you might actually start feeling some emotions because like when generally when you start building a new belief, and you start adding references to that, emotions start to come up and emotions start to get released because you're switching from this point of view where you are an awful person to a point of view that like, hey, you're a good person at your core. So then when that reference comes up, repeat that reference. So say, you know, I am a good person at my core, I'm a good person at my core. And then from there, more references underneath that will pop up, right? So if you imagine, it starts building into this massive tree that supports this top belief. So If you start up here and say, you know, I love you, right? That's I love yo. I love you, right? So what will happen is you repeat this over and over and then a reference will pop up, right? So the reference, the first reference might be, you know, I'm a good person. Person at my core. And then you'll repeat this for a while, right? And then underneath that, something else might pop up, and it might be like, because I, you know, because I genuinely care about others' well-being. That just might be something. Because I care about others. I care about others. And then you can start repeating that, like, I care about others. I'm a good person because I care about others. And then you'll find that you get all these other references that start supporting it. So no longer are you just stuck with one thought at the top. It starts with one thought, but it goes so much deeper than that. And that's what makes this exercise powerful, because it's not only simple, um, but it's— it goes deep, right? If you allow— if you kind of know the process and you follow the process. But you start really simple. And then once you become aware of a reference that pops up, you can transition that to be like, I love you. And you can even say that way, like, I love you, I love you, I love you, talking to yourself. Because I'm a good person, or because you're a good person. So I love you because you're a good person, or I love myself because I'm a good person. And then you just go deeper and deeper and deeper. So, and that's really how you build a belief, is you have this top-level belief And then you have all these underlying references to support that. So it's not just one thing that's just very surface level. It's like you have this deep reasoning behind this belief, and it really makes this super, super, super powerful. So that's the first and most powerful tool to do, and it's so freaking simple. You just have to do it. You have to spend the time to do it. And, you know, I kept it simple for a reason because I want you guys to actually do it. I want you to spend the time today to sit down Get in a comfortable— lay down on, on a couch, you know, sit in an easy chair, lay in your bed, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, remove yourself so you're viewing yourself from this third-person view, and then just start saying this to yourself as if you're speaking to somebody else, right? So you're in this third-person view, you're viewing yourself as a different person, and you're speaking to that person and telling them that they have value, that they are worthy, that they deserve love, all of those things. Um, and again, with the end goal that you see that love, you see that worth regardless of anything, even if you're at rock bottom. So that's that first exercise. That first tool is, you know, just getting quiet, getting into a relaxed position, and just saying— removing yourself to the third person and saying, I love you. And then keeping an eye out for the references and strengthening those references by repeating them. And this is something you can do anytime, right? Whenever you become aware that you are getting hard on yourself or down on yourself or going through any sort of hard time, you want to use this exercise, right? Keep it simple, just do it, and it will be so powerful. And it doesn't have to get more complicated than this. Just keep it super, super, super simple. And in time, you can change this top-level thought from I love you to like, you know, you are worthy, or you have value, or something else that resonates with you that you want to work on and a belief that you want to build with yourself. But this is a really great one to start off with. So the second exercise that I have here is number 2. I'll just call it the mirror. Again, the mirror. So this one is, it's kind of an emotional one, and it might sound a little weird to you, and it is kind of weird. It's like a weird experience, but it's a very powerful one, and I wouldn't write it down if it wasn't powerful. And this isn't something you have to do all the time, but it is powerful if you at least do it once or a few times, because it really, it really helps you get that kind of perspective on yourself of being like, wow, you are a human with value. So the mirror exercise is when you look at yourself in the mirror, right? And you look yourself in the eye, right? And you see yourself and you become present in the moment and you just look at yourself. And it's like a weird, weird thing. It can be a little uncomfortable, but you look at yourself and then you can— you start doing this exercise, but in the mirror looking at yourself. So you start again saying like, I love you, like you have value. And like you're just present and you see yourself and you're removing yourself to see yourself from like— see yourself as a new, a different person, seeing yourself from that new perspective. But it's so much more up close and personal because you can like— a mirror, you see yourself, right? And you can view yours. It's, it's a, it's a good exercise to view yourself from that different perspective, to see yourself from that different perspective. And really, it's, it's an emotional thing for you to do. Um, just try it. Just try it once. And if you don't like it, then you can stop. But give it a chance. Try it. And I promise you, you will start getting some shifts and you will start viewing yourself differently if you just take that time, that quiet time to, you know, look at yourself and appreciate yourself. And it's a powerful, powerful thing. So I was just looking at myself in my phone right here, be like, I was doing the same thing as I was speaking. So those are the 2 tools, right? And they're kind of a little bit of a combination there. But the first one again is the I love you With references that you want to say, and then the second one is kind of doing that in front of a mirror. So, um, now I want to talk about how loving yourself, caring about yourself, giving a crap about yourself, um, uh, why, why it's so important for recovery, for just life. It makes life so much easier, so much better. Um, and that's because— I'll see if I can make a little room here. In recovery, you are going to go through a lot of different things. I'll keep this, this image up here. You're going to go through a lot of stuff, right? And if we can think of this kind of recovery as like a timeline, and then we can think of this as like positive emotions and this down here as like negative emotions. It's going to be a wild kind of ride, and I'll straighten this out for us if I can. It's going to be a wild ride. It's going to be a bumpy ride. It's going to be a roller coaster. And that's just the reality of recovery and just the reality of life. You're going to have good days, you're going to have bad days. Some days are going to be better than others. But what happens here? Let me see what I can do. Um, so generally you'll have like these kind of like flows. You'll have some good days, then you'll have some bad days, and then good and bad. And you'll kind of go through this, these peaks and valleys of recovery of good days, bad days. I feel good, maybe I get triggered, and that makes me feel bad or whatever. So let's just say at this point right here At this inflection point right here on the timeline, let's say what happened here was a trigger, right? And that's what started you down and what got you down to that low point. If you are the type of person who hates themselves, which I think is a lot of people— I was in that position— this trigger that naturally would only take you down this far Could take you down much, much, much farther, right? So instead of bouncing back up at this point, you would just go straight down. That's because maybe at this point you're like, you have the trigger and you feel the pain, and then at this point, instead of just like feeling the pain and letting it go and then moving on and starting to recover from that trigger or that, that bad moment or whatever, you start feeding the bad moment with your negative thoughts. So maybe you get triggered and instead of doing something productive, you run away from that productive thing because you were triggered, right? And then maybe you're— because of that, you start to beat yourself up. You start to be like, wow, you are worthless, you suck, you can't do anything right. So with every, every one of those bad words, you're just driving it down deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. You're just making things worse and worse and worse and worse. Um, so if you can remove that, right, if you can remove all of this negative these negative beliefs about yourself, all this negative self-talk, you can remove all of this downside, all of this pain you can remove from your recovery. And instead of going down this far and having to bounce back up, all you have to do is feel the pain, the natural pain of the trigger, and not add to it, and then move up from here. So you can save yourself from feeling all of this pain down here. Just by not beating yourself up. So that's something— that's why this process is so easy, because it really levels out your entire life, but recovery, and you won't have such massive lows, right? So a lot of times our massive lows, our rock bottoms, our, um, our worst days aren't because of the circumstances in life, but it's how we think about the circumstances in life. And It's how we think of ourselves in those circumstances, right? So if we can fix that on how we view ourselves and our thoughts and our beliefs about that, we can remove, in my opinion, the majority of the pain that we experience. There is still going to be pain, and that's gonna be my last point here, but we can remove the majority of the pain if you can just learn this lesson of removing yourself, viewing yourself from the third person, and— Giving a crap about yourself. So that's why this is so, so important, because you remove all of this downside. So just imagine, like, you, you just feel the pain of the trigger instead of turning it into this massive thing. So the trigger could just be like 30 minutes long. It doesn't have to be a week. It doesn't have to be 2 weeks. It doesn't have to be a month. And that's what it would be for me in the past, was like one trigger would not just be one trigger. It wouldn't just be one moment. It wouldn't just be 30 minutes. that 30 minutes would turn into a day, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, a few weeks, a few months literally of me spiraling out of control inside of here, which then I spiraled out of control outwardly too with addictions. And that's, that's another aspect I'm not going to get into in this video, but that is, that is also tied. Addiction is very much tied to how you view yourself and how you treat yourself. So this is such a foundational thing for you to do and for you to learn. So I hope you take those 2 exercises I taught you seriously, the one just talking to yourself saying I love you and the one in the mirror. Please, please, please take the time. Take 15 minutes. 15 minutes. That's all I'm asking you. And do that today. Because at the end of the day, recovery is 100% action-based. You have to take action. It's great watching a video like this. This can help transform your beliefs, help transform the way you think of yourself, and therefore transform your actions. But we want to have a more I want you to have a more engaged role in your recovery. And the only way that you are going to heal— no one can do it for you. You have to take your own action. You have to take the steps yourself. I can't do it for you. No one else can do it for you. Just like you can't change somebody else, I can't change you. You can only change you. So I'm slightly begging you to please take action on those, on those 2 tools. Take 15 minutes, 15 minutes, and just do that. Ideally right at the end of this video. So the last thing, I have one last thing I want to talk to you about, and it's, it's a really, really cool kind of mental model that I actually learned from the Buddha. It's something that the Buddha says, but it is so applicable, applicable to this, and I think you guys will really, really enjoy it. It's going to really shift the way that you kind of think about the way that you treat yourself, and it's all going to tie everything in, I think, beautifully. So let me erase this right here. So what I want to talk about is something called first and second darts. I'll draw these in— draw these in 2 colors. So what the Buddha says is like, life will throw darts at you, right? They will— life will always throw the first dart at you. But what usually happens is that there are more darts that are thrown at you, and every other dart that is thrown after the first dart is thrown by you, right? So let's say there's— you, for example, in, in, in your life, when you go through trauma, you get triggered, right? That could be the first, first start. Life throws pain at you, right, that you cannot avoid. There is some— there's some pain in life that you cannot avoid, right? Whoops. So there's going to be A dart. And this is the first dart, right, that's thrown at you that you cannot avoid. You cannot avoid this first dart. But what usually happens is, like, like going again with the trigger example, is that you get triggered, but then you're like, oh man, I really, you know, and then you maybe you skip out on something productive and you're like, wow, I'm, I'm, I am such a failure because I didn't do this productive thing, right? Boom, second dart, right? More and more pain. And then, you know, you might be like, wow, you know, not only did I let myself down in this situation, but maybe you start going through all the other scenarios where you let yourself down and you start throwing more, more darts, right? More and more and more at yourself. And all these darts, after the first dart, Are 100% preventable, and we throw them all ourselves. So that's the last thing I want to— I want you to take away is like, how many darts are you throwing at yourself? How much pain do you need to go through versus the pain that you actually are going through? How much pain are you putting yourself through, right, that is self-inflicted? Because that is the pain that I'm talking about today, and that's the pain that you can prevent 100%. There are some things in life you will not be able to avoid. That's reality. That's the truth. That's just something that we need to accept and come to peace with, right? There are some things— there's always going to be that first dart, but there doesn't have to be the second, third, fourth, fifth dart. And that is up to us to change. That is up to you on what you want to change. So hope that helps. Please take— again, take that 15 minutes to do those 2 tools to help prevent throwing these— the rest of these darts at yourself. Because it will make a massive change in your life. You will have this inner peace and calm and this foundation of love and acceptance for yourself that will make everything so much easier. You will stop having those massive lows like I, like I showed you on the graph. Everything will get better. So please stop treating yourself like crap. You deserve so much. There's so much worth inside of you. You are worthy even in your worst moments. You deserve that love, but you need to find that for yourself. I, I can say it all day. You could— maybe you have people in your life that you wish loved you. Even if those people said it to you, you probably wouldn't believe it, right? Because at the end of the day, it's not what other people think, it's what we think about ourselves. So I hope this video has really helped you today. If it did, make sure to hit that subscribe button, hit that little bell if you want to get notified for more in the future. I make videos like this every week, so click that button if you want to get some, uh, notified when I release them. Also, make sure to hit that like button if you like this and comment below this video with how you like this, if you, if you like this, if you implement the tools and if it went well. Also, if you have any ideas or suggestions for me for videos to make in the future, that's another great thing that I appreciate to comment on because your feedback gives me, or has a direct impact on what videos I make in the future. So again, I hope this helped you. I hope you have a fantastic, fantastic day today. Thank you. And I really enjoyed this. Hope you did too. And I hope you have a great day.