Heal from Character Problems
Character problems are a polite way to describe people with personality disorders, particularly cluster B. Here are nine things that help heal from character problems.
Dig up your buried heart and soul
Dig up the good and bad. Show talents, dreams, and desires, or throw them away and grieve and heal. Then, take action. Pay attention to little signals and take your time. Healing means that you need to re-discover who you are. What you like and who you are. Dig up old wounds and explore old passions. This is the road to self-acceptance.
Pull the tooth
Get rid of the negative energy in your life. Both emotional and physical clutter deadweight your energy. What is draining your resources that you can use better in other areas of life? This is where hope begins. Not a grasping hope or attachment but rather a spiritual awakening. Pulling teeth is hard but necessary. Suffering is optional, but you must remove what is actively hurting you. Physically decluttering is cleansing and a good source of mindfulness. What stuff weighs you down rather than brings you delight? Same thing emotionally. There is a lot of clutter in the soul after you detach from those with character problems. Lots of stories that aren’t yours, conclusions that don’t make sense, and realities that aren’t quite right. Once you let go of the story, you can hope for healing.
Cause and effect
How you show up everyday matters. Habits matter. This is sowing what you reap; the long-term vision of what you do daily determines the quality of your tomorrows. How will your present affect your future? Show up. Do the hard things. Instead of popping a pill and making yourself better, do what matters. There are four legs to this table. Sleep. Physical activity. Nutrition. Mindfulness.
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- Sleep hygiene is simple. Get 7-9 hours of sleep at the same time every night in a comfortable, cool, dark space away from all screens. Some things are more important for each individual.
- You have a physical body that can delight or disgust you. You live in that physical body, and how you feel depends on how you feel in your body. For most, exercise is important to release dopamine and let you live in your body gratefully.
- Everyone eats food, and what they eat determines their quality of life. Look at what happens when non-Western cultures start eating a Western diet. You can’t be prescriptive when discussing food; it doesn’t work. Eat a little better and eat mostly at home from real ingredients.
- Mindfulness determines the quality of your tomorrow. Finding flow, bliss, rejuvenation, or just the space to breathe consciously is vital. Right now. You breathe 30,000 times a day. How many are you conscious of?
Do something
Act. Cognitive dissonance is common, and you will often make the wrong decision. With time, space, and healing, you can find a bit of distance, and decision-making improves. Not making a decision is a decision. Do something seven times before you quit it.
One step at a time
Healing is exhausting and all-encompassing. Change happens, so get better at it every day. Build momentum and resilience, for bad days (and bad moods) are coming. Life happens; half the time, you are in a worse mood than the other half. Keep adding things that scare you because those are often where you most need to look in the mirror. Mindfulness causes a left shift in your thinking, meaning you have an approach (rather than avoid) mentality. You understand that what upsets you is the growth you need outside your comfort zone. What scares you is the path one step at a time. This is the path to a growth mindset.
Hate well
Move away from what you don’t want and protect what you do. Differentiate what is good and bad in your life, and destroy bad things. Perform cleansing rituals and visualizations that purify. Do symbolic things. Create traditions. Celebrate the good! We all grieve differently and sometimes suffer from post-betrayal trauma. After hate must come forgiveness and removal of the additional trauma. Hate well means that you don’t hate indiscriminately. You don’t hate yourself. You forgive yourself, forgive the character defects, and learn to be kind to yourself and others.
Don’t play fair
Now is the time for help. Get all you can. Therapy, life coaches, group therapy, art, dance, play, acupuncture, yoga, old friends, everything. All at once. Lay it on thick. Don’t play fair, and use every resource you possibly can. This is being vulnerable and not being a victim. The focus is not on the story you are telling yourself; but exploring who you are.
Be humble
Healing is a process. There are ups and downs, and the finish line is still a little ways away. Emotional maturity is learning about yourself and finding compassion and kindness in the little things. Enjoy the little things. Being humble means recognizing common humanity; we all struggle to belong. Everyone thinks that they are somehow separate. Common humanity is knowing because you are you, you belong. It tells a child I hear you, I see you, you have the right to feel exactly what you are feeling right now. I am here with you right now and will breathe and experience everything with you. Humble and at the right time. Compassionate and kind. Humble as if you are with your children as you always are.
Self-love
We let other people treat us as poorly as we treat ourselves. You are worthy of love; you belong. Character problems are a syndrome of self-love deficiency. Self-love is the answer to those who need to heal from character deficiency. That’s you if you know someone diagnosed with cluster B personality disorder. Here are nine things that help heal from character problems. In the end, self-love is what you need.
