All month I’ve been highlighting the many benefits of feeling a sense of positive community and making meaningful connections by joining a group, activity, hobby, or interest where you can find people to connect with on a more molecular level. Hopefully, there have been some efforts from some to challenge yourself to seek out those groups, activities, hobbies, or interests, and you’ve been able to find something to help you along your journey to gaining a sense of positive community and having more support through meaningful connections.
Keeping along with the theme of this month’s blog topic, I want to take the opportunity to introduce you to a group I will be hosting and offering through Theravada Mental Health called Club Neon. It’s a group focused on women’s issues including, but not limited to:
- Self-Compassion, self-worth, and self-acceptance
- Understanding how adverse experiences and trauma have shaped our self-image and relationship boundaries
- Being the best versions of ourselves
- Finding out what unhealthy behaviors and boundaries we possess and how to become healthier
- Finding that fierceness we all possess but have continuously ignored or don’t know how to access
- Networking with other women in the group based on hobbies or interests
- Empowering ourselves and one another to live our best lives
- Make meaningful connections
- Eliminate stress and toxicity in your life
- Focusing on what you find acceptable and not worrying about what others think
- Finding that inner glow and letting it shine!
It has been my passion for quite some time to form a group surrounding these needs for women. Through my direct practice with clients, I’ve learned what women often come to therapy for – anything from not knowing how to stop being ‘people pleasers’ to wanting support to leave a psychologically/emotionally abusive relationship. I’ve loved the work I do with women who put simply, don’t know how to advocate for themselves at times, engender self-compassion (because their inner critic is so powerful), and have never been taught how to emotionally take care of themselves. These issues most often result in unhappy relationships, constant exposure to toxic, unhealthy people, and a perpetual loop of emotional regression and hopelessness.
Surprisingly, some of the most successful women I know in both my practice and personal life are the most emotionally unhealthy. These are the women who look great on the surface, well put together, and seem to have life ‘figured out’, but beneath the emotionally repressed vessel they carry themselves in, they feel lonely, empty, or just unfulfilled. They pour their hearts and minds into their work, family, friends, or social engagements (aka ‘distractions’) to avoid the accumulation of sadness and lack of understanding they have for themselves and what they want which perpetually festers inside.
In my opinion, all women possess an inner glow that is so dimmed or buried underneath a heap of emotional turmoil that it’s never tapped into or allowed to shine. I want this group to help those women get to know themselves, their needs, and what they want out of life, not accepting what they’re given just for the sake of it being presented or available. I want women to learn the power of healthy choice, only accepting the things in their lives that they want and are willing to accept, thereby alleviating the pressure I believe women often feel to make everyone else happy despite their own needs or simply lacking the awareness or empowerment to be able to get their needs met.
If you’re reading this and feel you or someone you know can relate to what I’m trying to say, I hope you look into researching and/or joining at least one group. Believe me, there’s no shame in identifying with some of the needs described; with the tools I’ve learned through providing therapy, I also work on these needs every day, putting the work in to live my best life, and now I want to teach other women how to use these tools. Here are some criteria to ask yourself to see if Club Neon would be a good fit for you:
- You have a history of unhealthy relationships/partners
- You struggle with ‘people pleasing’ or saying ‘No’
- You struggle with feelings of sadness and loneliness
- You feel unfulfilled in life, generally
- You’re looking for meaningful connections
- You’ve experienced childhood trauma or adversity
- You have a loud inner critic (super harsh on yourself)
- You’re constantly stressed or feeling burnt out
- You feel like ‘something’s missing’ in your life
- You are/were a victim (and survivor) of psychological or emotional abuse/trauma
- You feel like you don’t take the best care of yourself
Club Neon is slated to begin in January 2023, so if you feel like you’re even the slightest bit curious to find out more and see how this group can help you, stay tuned, and more information will be out shortly. Club Neon will be available on Meetup.com, Eventbrite.com, Allevents.in, and Theravadawellness.com by the end of November if you want to check it out or sign up. I look forward to meeting everyone who is ready to better their lives, make meaningful connections with other women, and let their inner glow shine.