Self-Confidence After Abortion
In this episode I’ll be chatting with Leah. She’s a fellow LCS (Life Coach School) coach who helps busy women get healthy with simple, doable, weight loss solutions. If you’re a woman who has struggled with weight she’s your gal, but today she’s here to chat with me about self-confidence after abortion. Putting on weight after an abortion is more common than you think and I can bet that just like the rest of the population about 1 in 4 of her clients have experienced an abortion in their past.
In every episode I read a blog post I’ve written and we follow up with a conversation about the topic at hand and what it means for women and their ability to thrive after abortion. Happy listening and as always feel free to send me your reflections and questions at the PodBlog page on my website.
The post:
Self-confidence as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary is, “confidence in oneself and in one's powers and abilities”.
Brooke Castillo adds, “It’s your ability to trust yourself, knowing that you can experience any emotion.” She goes deeper to explain that it’s knowing you will do what you have said you will do. You will follow through on your plan. You will take care of yourself.”
So what does this mean for women after abortion.
When we make the decision to end a pregnancy we have to have confidence. Mostly we have to have confidence in our providers, but also in our reason for aborting. Whether we like our reason or not, we have to have confidence that it’s the “right” decision at the time, this gives us the courage to say “yes” to the procedure. Confidence is the main player in our action taking.
After abortion our need for self-confidence is much higher. That’s when we have to go back to our lives and function like human beings again. Facing the landscape of thoughts and feelings in our body, hormonal fluctuations, and the reality of the social/political climate around abortion, it’s far too easy for us to slip into feelings of regret or shame, or experiences of depression and anxiety.
Self-confidence gives us access to get the help we need either directly from our inner strength, or from our capability to reach out and access external support. Self-confidence keeps reminding us of what we knew to be true when we said “yes” to abortion. It connects us back with the life we made our choice for. Maintaining connection to this vision of what we planned for takes an unwavering ability to take care of ourselves and the courage to follow through on our plans even when our external circumstances, like hormones and other people’s opinions, appears to get in the way.
Self-confidence allows us to feel all the feelings and remember that they can’t hurt us. Feelings are just vibrations in the body and self-confidence reminds us that feelings alone cause no harm. It’s the actions (or reactions) we take while feeling our feelings that can cause us harm.
It’s not our fault that we don’t know how to be self-confident. There’s a good chance that no one ever taught us. Our brains are so cluttered by judging ourselves and looking for what’s wrong that we don’t have room to think good thoughts about ourselves and or look for what’s right.
Lack of self-confidence after abortion might look like:
Believing you or your body somehow failed.
Believing you are alone, or different than other women after abortion.
Telling yourself you will never heal, or are now broken.
Feeling rejected by those around you.
Believing that other people’s opinions influence you.
Feeling like a victim.
Believing fear is in your way.
Learning to reprogram your brain to think self-confident thoughts takes time and practice. Most of us spend a lifetime believing things about ourselves that aren’t true and the brain patterns are deep. We think self-sabotaging thoughts as easily as we breathe, and we look for evidence that they are true. Anti-abortion media, and social programming is often our trigger. But we can stop the sabotage. We can choose self-confidence and think about abortion in a whole new light.
We can think thoughts like:
What others think about me is really about them.
What I make it mean is how I live into my future.
I am capable of making powerful decisions.
I have my own back.
What I’m feeling, is just a feeling.
And my personal favorite: I can do hard things.
Re-training your brain takes practice and support, but it’s worth it, because women who are confident in their decisions and in themselves:
Tune into the life they had their abortion for.
Discover and go after their dreams.
Aren’t afraid of failure.
Model strength and confidence for their loved ones.
And inspire others to do the same.
If you’ve had an abortion and find yourself thinking about it in less than confident ways, I encourage you to:
Imagine confidence on a scale of 1 to 10.
10 being totally confident in yourself and your choices.Notice where you are on that scale
Where do you want to be?
What are you willing to do to get there?
