Disconnection from Self

You’re super disciplined, goal-oriented, and expect a lot from yourself. Your friends are in awe of you when you wake up early to workout on vacation after a night of margaritas. You have a lot of energy and your friends envy your self-motivation.

But what’s going on in your heart? Engagement and wedding planning often brings up weird feelings about oneself. When it’s hard to face these feelings, we push them far far down. We avoid them by trying to plan a wedding in which all things, including ourselves, will be perfect. While trying to control every aspect of wedding planning, we become preoccupied with things like our diet and workout routine, but become disconnected from what’s going on in the heart.

The engagement process can also bring up old wounds around body image, self-worth, and inadequacy. The wedding fantasy we’ve been conditioned to pursue requires that we embody “bridal perfection.” This is an exaggerated version of the pressure women have long felt to be skinny, look beautiful, be demure, blah.

Recommendations for You:

Take some quiet time to contemplate how cultural conditioning and societal pressures around weddings, bodies, etc. has impacted you. Get really clear about the wedding fantasy that’s been injected into your mind, and check in with your heart: ”Is this what I really want?”
Feel those feelings! Make sure you’re tuning into the wisdom of your emotions, and not blocking them out by trying to control everything else. Those emotions are there for a reason. Use them!
Ask yourself directly: “Are old feelings, impulses, or behaviors around how I relate with my body getting reignited now?”
Schedule a therapy session, or join a Community group of like-minded nearlyweds for peer support. Read about our services here!

Tools for You:

The Mindful Nearlywed | An Emotional Resilience Guide + Workbook

The Mindful Nearlywed is a free 20-page resource that will guide you through four common struggles during the engagement journey, with actionable journal prompts for self-reflection and emotional resiliency.

The Mindful Nearlywed explores: