Elizabeth Cush of Progression Counseling and Coaching On How To Learn To Finally Love Yourself
Take good care of your body, mind and spirit.
A part of my self-love journey has been to make my needs a priority. That means I’m taking care of my mind, my body, and my spirit. I’m drinking water throughout the day. I eat the things I love that nourish me. I’m taking time to meditate. I dedicate time to learn and read. I spend time with the people I value and who value me. I play with my dog. I go to therapy weekly, and I have a movement practice. And I make time for fun, relaxation and rest.
As a part of our series about “How To Learn To Finally Love Yourself” we had the pleasure to interview Elizabeth Cush.
Elizabeth Cush, LCPC, is a women’s life coach for highly sensitive women, a licensed clinical professional counselor, and business owner in Annapolis, MD. She’s also the host of the Awaken Your Wise Woman podcast. She incorporates the body, mind, and spirit into her work.
As a life coach, she helps sensitive women in midlife who feel stressed and overwhelmed find balance, flow, and ease to fully enjoy the beautiful life they’ve created.
Thank you so much for joining us! I’d love to begin by asking you to give us the backstory as to what brought you to this specific career path.
I’m a late bloomer and didn’t fully realize my career path until I was 53, when I graduated with my master’s in counseling psychology. I’d been working odd jobs for many years while I raised my children. I knew I wanted to do more, but I’d dropped out of college when I was 20.
I loved being a mom and I wanted to be sure I was “doing it right,” so I bought a bunch of child psychology books and started reading. It was then I knew I wanted to finish college and get my master’s so that I could help others be the best they could be.
Through that journey I recognized that I had some very anxious parts of myself that often left me sleepless, stressed and socially disconnected. And so, my own healing began as I started grad school. I think that’s important to share, because mental health is something any one of us could be struggling with. And it’s time to normalize that.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you hope that they might help people along their path to self-understanding or a better sense of wellbeing in their relationships?
I’m excited to share that I’ll be launching Sensitive, Strong, and Unstoppable: Group Coaching for Women Who Feel It All in the fall of 2023. My vision is that this will be a safe space for highly sensitive women in midlife to feel supported, understood, and uplifted.
As a woman with high sensitivity, I know it can be a struggle to find balance because you crave time alone, you value deep connection, and you want to fully embrace yourself at this time in your life. And finding other sensitive souls to connect with can make to journey that much more fulfilling.
As you get to know and honor our sensitive parts, you learn to love your whole being while connecting with other sensitive souls.
Do you have a personal story that you can share with our readers about your struggles or successes along your journey of self-understanding and self-love? Was there ever a tipping point that triggered a change regarding your feelings of self acceptance?
When I began grad school at the age of 50, I was very aware of the feeling of not fitting in. Most of the other members of my cohort were under 30. There were times when the vibe felt more like high school, instead of a master’s program.
I found myself questioning whether there was something about me that left me feeling like I was the problem. That there was something about me that didn’t fit in — and not just my age. I was also struggling with the end of a long friendship and that amplified those feelings.
Fortunately, at that time I found Dr. Kristen Neff’s work on self-compassion. I began practicing being kind to myself, as if I were my best friend. I also started a mindful meditation practice around that time, and I became very aware of how often I was really mean to myself.
As I learned to be kinder and more compassionate with myself, I learned I could truly love myself and all my imperfections.
Later, I discovered Internal Family Systems (IFS), or “parts” work, and I learned how to build relationships with the most challenging parts of myself — the shaming, critical, and reactive parts.
It’s opened a whole new way of relating to myself, my most important asset.
According to a recent study cited in Cosmopolitan, in the US, only about 28 percent of men and 26 percent of women are “very satisfied with their appearance.” Could you talk about what some of the causes might be, as well as the consequences?
We’re constantly bombarded by images of the “ideal” body. We’re told by the media and influencers that dieting and exercise are the only ways to achieve a “perfect body.” And if you’ve got an aging body — like me — you rarely see anyone on social media that looks like us. With wrinkles, or loose skin.
All these subtle — and not-so-subtle — messages have a way of creeping into our subconscious, leaving us feeling unsatisfied with how we look.
Human bodies are all shapes, sizes, and colors. And most of us are pretty average looking. But we’re left feeling like average isn’t enough. That has an impact on how we feel about our bodies and ourselves.
To some, the concept of learning to truly understand and “love yourself” may seem cheesy or trite. But it is not. Can you share with our readers a few reasons why learning to love yourself is truly so important?
We are our best resource. But if we don’t trust or love ourselves, we’re throwing away the gift of being our own best friend. The one person you can turn to no matter what or when.
To love yourself doesn’t mean you’re giving yourself a pass for every mistake or bad behavior. It means you recognize that you’re human, and that sometimes your parts get activated, and you don’t always get things right.
Every human struggles from time to time. And when you offer yourself kindness and compassion — no matter what’s going on — you build a foundation of self-acceptance and self-love.
Why do you think people stay in mediocre relationships? What advice would you give to our readers regarding this?
There are many reasons people stay in a mediocre relationship.
Finances, children, connection, fear of loneliness, and patterns from our past relationships are just a few of them.
If your partner doesn’t treat you with respect and kindness, maybe try reaching out to a therapist, friend, coach, or a person you respect, to get some insight into why you stay.
And if it’s time to leave, have support and resources in place to help you go through that transition.
When I talk about self-love and understanding I don’t necessarily mean blindly loving and accepting ourselves the way we are. Many times self-understanding requires us to reflect and ask ourselves the tough questions, to realize perhaps where we need to make changes in ourselves to be better not only for ourselves but our relationships. What are some of those tough questions that will cut through the safe space of comfort we like to maintain, that our readers might want to ask themselves? Can you share an example of a time that you had to reflect and realize how you needed to make changes?
Here are some of the questions that could lead to better understanding:
1) What is my critical part afraid will happen if it stopped criticizing myself?
2) When I treat myself like I would treat a good friend, how does that feel inside?
3) Do I believe I deserve the kindness?
4) Whose voice do I hear when I’m hard on myself? A current or former partner? My mom or dad? Another person from my past?
5) If I’m unhappy with myself, can I still relate to myself with compassion and kindness for how hard that is?
Some years ago, I realized that I was very closed off from the people I cared about most. But because I had been functioning from a place of fear for such a long time, I wasn’t sure how to let my guard down and still feel safe.
I decided to work with those scared parts instead of avoiding the fear and anxiety that I felt a lot of the time. Therapy and coaching helped and allowed me to move toward people that I could fully trust, and away from others who no longer served me.
More importantly, the work has helped me trust and love myself!
So many don’t really know how to be alone, or are afraid of it. How important is it for us to have, and practice, that capacity to truly be with ourselves and be alone (literally or metaphorically)?
Time alone has been very important for me. Especially because I’m highly sensitive, and time to myself helps me recharge.
I believe that time alone with your thoughts and feelings can be beneficial to your overall well-being. Through meditation and mindful practices, we become accustomed to the wide range of our feelings and the physical sensations that often accompany them.
Meditation also helps us recognize that our feelings and sensations come and go. And although it might feel like uncomfortable feelings last forever, the truth is that they’re a temporary state.
How does achieving a certain level of self-understanding and self-love then affect your ability to connect with and deepen your relationships with others?
When we can meet ourselves and all of our parts with love and compassion, it’s so much easier to do the same with others.
Compassion is a gift that grows and expands. The more we offer it to ourselves, the more we can see others with love and kindness.
I’m not sure I can explain why, but maybe it’s because when we let go of the expectation of perfection for ourselves, we can then let it go for others, too. We can see their humanity with fresh, caring eyes.
In your experience, what should a) individuals and b) society, do to help people better understand themselves and accept themselves?
I think the world would benefit from parts work and a self-compassion practice. When we learn to care for our parts with kindness and compassion, we better understand and accept ourselves and others.
Learning to acknowledge and accept our own imperfections helps us do the same for others.
So, instead of constantly judging others for their humanness, we can see them with kindness and care. And that’s good for everyone.
Here is the main question of our discussion. What are 5 strategies that you implement to maintain your connection with and love for yourself, that our readers might learn from? Could you please give a story or example for each?
- Practice self-compassion and get to know and love all your parts.
I used to try to find ways to push away or avoid my anxious feelings. They were uncomfortable. And the anxiety activated parts of me that felt ashamed for the anxiety — because I’m a therapist and I “shouldn’t” feel anxious.
But I’ve spent time getting to know my anxious and shaming parts, and I’ve learned that they want to protect me from being hurt by others or hurting myself. They’re driven by deeply held fears. When I can meet those parts with compassion and kindness for how hard they’ve worked to help me feel “safe,” it eases the difficult feelings in the moment and in the long term. That’s because the parts feel heard and understood.
2. Spend more time in nature.
Research shows that spending time in nature helps us naturally feel more grounded and present. It also helps you feel like part of something bigger.
I’ve noticed that when I feel lonely or distressed, being in nature helps me come back to myself and the universe. Knowing that I’m a part of our world — and the world beyond us — helps me feel less lonely.
3. Start a meditation practice.
Meditating has been a huge part of how I learned to love myself. It’s allowed me to go inward and listen to my parts with loving kindness. It took some time for the practice to become a part of my routine. And now that it is, I find it’s easy to integrate it into each part of my life.
4. Practice mindfulness.
Mindfulness has helped bring awareness to all the times I’m unkind to myself. I used to have parts that jumped into shame and guilt when I thought I’d done something wrong or embarrassed myself. It was so second nature that I didn’t even realize that those parts were treating me worse than I’d ever treat anyone or anything.
Through mindfulness I was more aware of when those judging parts jumped in. That gave me opportunities to offer myself compassion for my imperfections.
5. Take good care of your body, mind and spirit.
A part of my self-love journey has been to make my needs a priority. That means I’m taking care of my mind, my body, and my spirit. I’m drinking water throughout the day. I eat the things I love that nourish me. I’m taking time to meditate. I dedicate time to learn and read. I spend time with the people I value and who value me. I play with my dog. I go to therapy weekly, and I have a movement practice. And I make time for fun, relaxation and rest.
All of these things take care of me so I can be there for others fully and genuinely.
When you take care of yourself, it allows you to take care of others, feeling full instead of depleted, so you’re much better able to handle whatever comes your way,
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources for self-psychology, intimacy, or relationships? What do you love about each one and how does it resonate with you?
Books
Self-Compassion and Fierce Self-Compassion by Kristen Neff
Both books are a wonderful guides for bringing more loving kindness to yourself and others. I go back to both books time and time again.
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
Resmaa Menakem’s book is a beautiful, gentle way to look at how racism and white supremacy have impacted all our bodies. There are meditations and practices to help you restore trust in yourself.
Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
Just as the title suggests, Tara Brach discusses ways we can make self-acceptance a radical act.
Podcasts
The Mother Tree Network podcast
Host Dr. Amanda Kemp talks about social justice, communicating with nature and restoring trust within us. It’s a lovely podcast for our times.
Therapy Chat
Most of us has experienced some type of trauma. Host Laura Reagan talks with leaders in the trauma therapy field. Her podcast if full of great information, and she’s an expert interviewer.
Awaken Your Wise Woman podcast
I had to plug my own podcast. I love talking to women who continue to strive for self-love and acceptance. Their wisdom and stories always inspire me.
Mindfulness and meditation apps
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? Maybe we’ll inspire our readers to start it…
I would love to start a self-compassion revolution. When we can meet ourselves, and all of our parts, with kindness and compassion, it makes meeting others from that place so much easier.
And if we can all accept that we’re human, with lots of imperfections, we’re less likely to judge or criticize ourselves and others.
And that’s good for everyone around the world.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” that you use to guide yourself by?
Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life and how our readers might learn to live by it in theirs?
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” — Rumi
For a long time, I looked outside myself to try to feel whole and settled. But when I learned that healing starts within me, everything shifted.
When we love ourselves from our heart, so much healing happens.
When I meet myself and all my faults with kindness, I can meet others there too.
Thank you so much for your time and for your inspiring insights!
