The Underinvestor
Are you a Scrooge mcSelfcare?
Meet the Underinvestor, a miser toward self who won’t spend the time or money to resolve issues, heal wounds, or care for the greater system. It often arrives to therapy burned out like a piece of charred toast.
This protector achieves safety by making sure that others are safe. It is a compulsive caregiver, always giving to others and seldom taking its turn to receive nourishment.
It is safe to say that the underinvestor did not get its emotional needs met or reflected during its formative years. It internalized this undervaluing attitude toward self, and now struggles to value itself or to ask for its basic needs to be met.
The underinvestor does not have the energetic resources or mental frameworks to get a virtuous cycle of healing started. It is stuck in scarcity mindset and does not see any way out. Not valuing the self is deeply reflexive, “it’s just how I am!”
In the healing process:
The underinvestor skimps on healing activities, scheduling them less often and with cheaper practitioners and modalities, often those promising quick results or with low commitment. Funding cuts permanently loom over therapy. This puts pressure on client and clinician and undermines safety in the relationship and the depth of healing potential.
The underinvestor tries to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, using self-help books and sheer will power. This works to some extent but it never quite gets the underinvestor to the promised land. Ironically, the underinvestor often ends up spending more in compensatory activities, especially down the road when things get worse.
How to work with the underinvestor:
As always, notice when this protector takes over and learn to unblend from it to come back to your senses, or the deeper sense of the whole embodied self. Then, decide on allocating resources from this place of self energy and wisdom.
Experiment with quality mental health resources and see the difference. Buying a Patagonia fleece is more expensive but it does the trick and sticks around. Your time may be more of the issue than the cost. There are some good free resources such as meditation, qigong, and breathwork videos, and low-cost therapy clinics.
Experiment with leaning in to relationships and mental health services, softening your body language and asking for and feeling the support of the other. In this way you will find that you are more nourished by your relationships, feel deeper connection, and start to experience energetic shifts in your nervous system.
Self esteem is based on embodiment and acceptance. As you deepen your connection to self, you will find that you naturally value yourself more.
Refocus your life and harness the resources you do have, so that you become valuable, get paid more, and can afford to spend on yourself. You need to find a way out of tactical hell.
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