My neck and back have been hurting for days and I have been working on my past. The backs of our bodies: this is where we carry our past so it can be useful, if there is pain there, to look at the memories or weight from that past that you are carrying. It can be heavy and I like to use EFT tapping to release it. This time I realize I am still carrying, among other things, an old story of childhood pain which has resulted in a very basic feeling of not liking myself. I purge it again. I know this is a very common human feeling so I wanted to address it here. I wonder how we learn it.

How Did We Get Here?

From the point of view of a river or a plant, it is completely ridiculous to not like yourself. For animals, it also makes no sense; it is counter-intuitive to survival. How could a deer not like itself? It's in the moment, being a deer. A dog could perhaps appear to not like itself, but I think they just learn it from us. We are animals: how did we lose touch with our survival instinct and come to hate ourselves? There are probably many books on this, and I've probably read and forgotten some of them, but I would like to know, how did we make a world in which we are so sick with dislike for ourselves that we are destroying the very planet we live on? How did we get here?

Self-Hate As A Coping Mechanism

A coping mechanism. A kind of protection. When you are small, you cannot control your surroundings and many of our surroundings are not conducive to supporting the life of something small. When I was born, I had three siblings and two parents, all of whom were more or less going about their life. I was an element within, an object of this family scenario. I was not born ready to step off and lean into my life once I had learned safely how to walk. I was picked up, put down, and since our rhythms as a society are off, often the rhythms we impose on children are off. I remember it feeling awful. So we are born but some of us, upon arrival, don't want to be here, which turns into not wanting to be alive which of course then we have to repress because you are not supposed to be alive and not want to be alive, so maybe the self-hate is a kind of coping mechanism, a form of self-protection in this world that we only half want to be in. Maybe we can't bear this feeling of not really wanting to be alive unless we justify it by hating ourselves. I wish we acted more like our animal selves.

It Is Time To Dig Down Into It

I think my back pain might actually be an infection in an old root canal I need to see to. The story of that tooth: once almost twenty years ago I got a cavity and I consulted a dentist I didn't know very well who filled it with a composite filling. A few years later, when I was in a diner, I bit into a piece of plastic in my coleslaw and the composite filling fell out and I had to get a root canal. I guess these things happen, but I think the cavity was probably too big to have been filled with composite. Anyways, bad dentist or not, the root canal itself was a terrible experience. I asked for a gold crown to be placed on top of it, to make it a little less terrible and have some gold in my mouth. This tooth has been bothering me for a while but I haven't paid attention to it and so the alive-dead tooth may be harboring an infection. I think this may be causing my neck to be stiff, which is a lot like how my alive-dead being in the world doesn't allow me to move about in my life easily. So it is time to dig down into it, or perhaps remove the tooth. My bad tooth is a good symbol for the parts of my past that are heavy and I need to let go of. Or it's like my self-loathing. I thought I needed a gold crown to be worth something.

I Go Back To The Stars And Think

How can one remove the tooth of ones' dislike for oneself? I'm not sure the metaphor works. I go back to the stars and think, this is just a time of falling away. This new moon in Pisces introduced us to the end of times as we float along in a haze. Well, it made me disoriented anyways, but maybe because I'm a Pisces and a Neptunian-Uranian, a Lemurian and a Pleiadian (look those last two up for some very strange youtube transmissions that always resonate with me). I'm actually not sure where I'm from but you can probably be glad you are not as confused about it as I am. It's not even the new moon anymore and I'm a week late with my new moon blog. Well, I've been dealing with this back pain, and other things. For one, Mercury just went retrograde in Pisces and Mercury is really confused in Pisces. He wanders around and just wants to lie down, a bit like I've been doing, staring at the stars and talking to plants.

Don’t Reject Yourself

Self-rejection. I once had a dance teacher who would say, as we danced, don't reject yourself. I couldn't even tell you how she knew I was doing it. It must have been in my movements. I always felt like she was reading some secret part of me that not even I could see. But as soon as she said it, I knew it was true, I was rejecting myself. Sometimes now I catch myself and tell myself not to do it.

Self-Care For People Who Don’t Really Like Themselves

So here are my 8 suggested self-care practices, especially good for the current astrological climate, from the heart of a true piscean, for people who, half the time, don't really like themselves:

Feel the comfort and support which is continually offered to your body by gravity. Feel how your back rests on the bed. Feel how your feet are held by the ground.
Take a bath. Take baths. Bless the water as it blesses you. If you feel bad about using too much water, think of the water you are blessing going back out into the world to bring transformation and healing. When you let the water out, stay in the bath and imagine you are letting go of whatever you want to let go of. Feel how nice and heavy with gravity you are afterwards.
Go slow. Walk slow. Eat slow. Move as little as you want to.
Go see your counselors, healers, therapists, doctors and dentists. You may need some help learning how to like yourself. With any luck, the person you go see may like him or herself a bit more than you like you. This will help you learn how to do it.
Don't send that message. You know the one. There have been two of them for me in the last 24 hours. Block the person or just sit tight with your opinions until you feel less reactive about the offenses that have been done to you, now and in the past. Other people often don't help you like yourself (unless they are one of the helpers listed in #4, but even then), especially when you lash out at them.
Actually, spend as little amount of time in front of screens as possible. This will also allow you to avoid having to deal with #5.
Make a list of your desires. Make a list of your fears. Notice how, most of the time, they cancel each other out. Contemplate that for a while. Take the time to write it all out.
Talk a walk, preferably near water. This will help you feel peaceful and composed even though you would rather be a fish swimming in the depths, waiting for spring. Content yourself with imagining that you are a fish.

Also Waiting For Spring

I think we are all a bit like fish at this time anyways, so the last one shouldn't be so hard. This means I'll have extra company as I go about my pre and post birthday days, in various moods, also waiting for spring.

I'm taking Hibiscus flower essence, for Faith (everything is going just as it should) and Sandalwood, for Grounded Spirituality, and Self-Heal, for my stiff neck and for Mercury retrograde. I'm also taking lots of vitamins and using these amazing new plant message oracle cards that I love. Remember, the plants only know how to love themselves, because doing anything else is just insanity.

Take care my fellow fish! I hope you find your joy in this sometimes disorienting sea.

Much love,

Amy

(Originally posted March 11, 2019