Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) Feb/March 2018 Aspire Mag Full Issue: Inner Prospe | Page 48
5 SYMPTOMS OF SELF-NEGLECT &
5 Self-Nurturing
H
CURES
ave you been listening to and
attending to everyone else’s needs but
your own lately and found yourself feeling
overwhelmed and exhausted? Have you
been living this way for so long that it just
feels normal? Well if so you are not alone.
Many people, especially women, focus
on meeting everyone else’s needs in their
personal and professional lives, which
leaves little time and energy left to meet
their own needs.
BY KELLEY GRIMES
forgotten our own needs were important.
In the process of feeling overwhelmed by
all our responsibilities, we have come to
believe that there is something wrong with
us because everyone else seems to have
figured out how to be happy in their lives.
But I remind you again, you are not alone.
I have heard from hundreds of women that
they feel the same way and have struggled
to listen to the small voice within telling them
what is important and what is not.
When we give more of ourselves than
we have to give without nurturing and
rejuvenating ourselves, we end up living
from a deficit. Like with our bank accounts, if
we spend more money than we have and do
not deposit more we end up in debt. Most of
us would be very concerned if we overdrew
on our bank account, but often live from this
deficit model in our personal lives. We may
be unaware that we are engaged in a habit
of self-neglect, but this is what happens
when we give more to others than we give
to ourselves.
It is not surprising that we do not easily
identify our self-neglect, as we have been
fulfilling the role of caregiver in our lives for
so long and so masterfully that we may have
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www.AspireMAG.net | February / March 2018