Healing From the Religious Good Girl

Do you think that in order to heal from being the religious good girl, you must now become the opposite of who you are? It’s very common to hear from our clients that in order for them to recover, they must now:

• No longer care what others think!
• Never betray yourself again!
• Never struggle with being inconsistent!
• Communicate your needs at ALL times!
• Always be your most authentic self!

Can you see how this is just another form of your perfectionism showing up? In fact, it probably fits a well-worn cycle that you learned in religion: There must be something wrong with me so if I can just find the rules and follow them perfectly, then I'll finally be okay.

The truth is (and you might want to be sitting down for this) being the good girl is actually a part of who you are. It’s a combination between your conditioning in religion, your upbringing, as well as your DNA. So while you think it’s helpful to become the opposite of who you are, maybe what would really help is this new path of self acceptance…

 This is where we redefine what healing really means. Healing tends to mean "cure" but what if you replaced "curing yourself of" with "caring for" instead? Because the hard truth is that you can't heal yourself out of being human. And for someone who has trained to constantly fight her humanity, the most radical act you can do is to instead learn how to embrace it.

So remember this: As you enter into this New Year, it's easy to want to create new goals and resolutions that tell you to become the opposite of who you are. What if this was the year you chose to embrace yourself, tossing out this idea that you need to be cured, and start learning how to care for what is showing up?