Reclaiming Celebration

What does the voice in your head sound like after you’ve just accomplished something good? 

Do you allow yourself celebration and joy? How much? 
How BIG does the WIN need to be? 

Throughout my twenties and most of my thirties, I felt like I needed permission from others in order to feel good about myself. I CRAVED outside recognition in an unhealthy way and I was overly critical of myself even in seasons of high productivity and outward success. 

We all love to hear a “Good job!” or an “Atta girl!” from those that we love - nothing wrong with that. But I became incapable of seeing value in myself unless the people I had put on a pedestal said I had value. This is a dangerous place to live - let me tell you - and it resulted in a lot of pain, unfair expectations, and a major lack of boundaries in my life. 

As I’ve embarked on a journey of recognizing and naming some of the harmful patterns in my life that have caused these maladaptive behaviors, I now find myself invited to celebrate my own growth and healing milestones - especially since so much of this work is so deeply personal. Emotional growth isn’t a shiny award or achievement that everyone can see - there’s no trophy to set on my bookshelf. Personal growth and emotional health can sometimes feel difficult to recognize and celebrate - especially if you’re someone like me who struggles with needing “permission” from others to feel proud of yourself. 

When my tone toward myself sounds hopeless, condescending, and apathetic I remain unable to facilitate health, growth, joy, or community in my life. It’s a good indicator that something is off in my relationship with myself and I need to get curious if I don’t want to head into a season of burnout, resentment, depression, or worse. 

But did you know that celebrating small growth builds momentum for more growth? Celebration and recognition reassures us that we are good and that we are capable of transformation and worthy of our own joy and attention; celebrating personal growth releases good chemicals in your brain that begin to act as their own reward system.

So how do we retrain our brains to recognize and celebrate these personal wins? 

For me, this work began with taking an honest audit of my own tone toward myself, and getting curious about what age I was when I first could remember feeling this pressure to perform for the attention of others. This is a necessary step, because without finding the root cause, whatever new affirmations you learn to recite will just serve as a bandaid to a traumatic wound that’s in need of deeper care.

Getting curious about your own inner critic is brave work! It’s something that can set off a chain reaction of healing and growth, and it’s likely going to reveal painful moments from your past that will need to be grieved and tended to. This is exactly what we mean when we talk about reclaiming your story! This is the invitation to transformation that leads to healing and living a fully alive life!

Mallory Albrecht
FREEDOM MOVEMENT