Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes walks through five ways to build a secure relationship with yourself: mindfulness check-ins, validating your own thoughts and needs, replacing self-criticism with encouragement, separating your worth from what you do, and daily loving-kindness meditation for your inner child.
Hey there everybody, and welcome to this video on 5 tips for creating a Secure Relationship with Yourself. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. A secure relationship with ourselves helps us feel safe. It helps us identify our thoughts, needs and feelings in the moment and respond appropriately. When we are securely attached with ourselves, we know that we are going to consistently be mindful of our thoughts, wants and needs. We're going to respond appropriately to those thoughts, wants and needs. We will validate our thoughts, wants and needs and encourage ourselves to do things that are in our best interest. We will provide a safe, loving environment so when we make mistakes, when we have failures, we are still accepting of ourselves as lovable, albeit fallible, and we pay attention to ourselves. We learn what we like and we actually enjoy spending time with ourselves, figuring out kind of what makes us tick. So what are some tips to develop this secure attachment? Sounds easier than it may be. Mindfulness is the first one and I know I talk about mindfulness a lot, but in order to create a secure attachment you have to pay attention. You have to be aware of your thoughts, wants and needs. So setting a push notification in your phone to do mindfulness check ins 3 times a day can be really helpful. And just check in with yourself. Think how am I feeling physically? How am I feeling emotionally? What are my thoughts right now and what do I need in order to improve the next moment? That's all very simple, straight to the point, but that'll help you become more aware of your thoughts, wants and needs in the moment. Validate and respond to your thoughts, wants and needs. If you are in a meeting and you're thinking, oh my gosh, this is dreadfully boring, all right, you feel bored right now. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how you feel. Now respond by identifying what can I do to improve the next moment? Probably not appropriate to get up and walk out of the room, but you can respond, for example, by doodling on a piece of paper or reminding yourself that the meeting will be over in 20 more min. But you're validating how you're feeling. You're not telling yourself that you should feel this way or you shouldn't feel this way. You're just acknowledging, okay, it is what it is. Now what do I do about it? Replace critical self talk with words of encouragement. Instead of listening to that voice in the back of your head that says you can't do that or why would you want to try? The person who is securely attached to themselves provides themselves with a cur encouragement. They say, okay, I've never done this before, but heck, let's give it a try. What's the worst that can happen? Or they give themselves encouragement after a failure, reminding themselves that hey, at least you tried. Or what can we learn from this? You're still lovable. It doesn't mean that you're a failure. It means that you're not so good at whatever you just failed at. Regularly remind yourself and your inner child that you are not your actions or thoughts. You can fail at something. It doesn't mean you're a failure. You can make a bad choice or you can behave badly. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means you acted badly and you can make amends for that. You can learn and move on from it, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person. So separating the difference is really important. And finally, practice the Loving Kindness Meditation with your inner child. There's a part of all of us that is formed of with all of those memories from childhood. For some people it's a very happy inner child. For for other people it is a very sad or scared inner child. Whatever your inner child is, practice the Loving Kindness Meditation every single day, thinking to yourself, I wish for you to have health, safety and contentment. And send those thoughts, send those energies to that child like a bubble that will envelop them and help them feel safe and comforted. If the videos on this channel have been helpful for you, please support us in our mission to make high quality practical content available to everybody. You can donate@docsnipes.com donate join the channel@docsnipes.com join or purchase a thanks on particular videos that you like. Secure attachment helps us develop self esteem, emotion regulation and relationship skills. Secure attachment with self is where it all starts. Knowing who you are as a person is essential to knowing what you like, what you want, what's going to make you happy. Being aware of your thoughts, wants and needs in the moment is essential to helping you feel safe. If you ignore your thoughts, wants and needs, then there's a part of you that's going to be going we're not getting our needs met. It's not safe. So it's essential that you are aware of them and you feel capable of managing those thoughts, wants and needs in the moment. You're not afraid of your feelings. You're not afraid of your thoughts. You feel capable and confident. Other videos on the Doc Snipes Channel that might be of use Attachment A lot of people who don't have secure attachment with self also have abandonment issues, so you can find information about that@docsnipes.com attach a self esteem video doc snipes.com selftalk and a video on mindfulness if you're not sure how to start practicing. Docsnipes.com Awareness if you're a therapist, a CEU course on this topic can be found@docsnipes.com attachment CEU.
