Judgement

What is the difference between a flower and a weed? 

Only your perception of it.  The judgement YOU place upon the flower/weed. 

It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Judgement is a very hot topic in Mental Health these days.  Many of the go to therapies right now advocate for mindfulness of ones thoughts and judgements.  The thinking is that if you are mindful of your thoughts and judgements then those thoughts will eventually have much less impact.  Positive or negative, they will not be attached to such emotional upheaval. 

Being aware of the negative talk and judgement in our minds allows a person suffering with Mental Illness to identify how they might be causing themselves harm.  When people struggle with depression their thoughts are inevitably negative.  They find the negative in every day things.  They are expressive in a mostly negative manner.  And their thoughts are all negative, especially when directed at themselves.  It's part of the illness.  They are in such a dark place they see only darkness.  Seeing only darkness makes things seem....darker.  It's a vicious cycle. 

Mindfulness therapy asks you to be being aware of your thoughts, especially negative self talk.  It doesn't ask you to try to change the thoughts, from negative to positive.  That takes an immense amount of energy and strength most struggling with mental illness do not have, or cannot find.  Often times a person cannot even comprehend that.  The process asks that you just be aware of your thoughts and how they make you feel.  You ride out that thought process and the attached feelings.  Your simple awareness of your own thinking will become so automatic that each time it will have less and less an impact on how you feel.  Of course the hope is perhaps you will stop having the negative thoughts altogether once you become infinitely aware of them and how they affect you. 

Trying to just alter your thinking without an awareness of it would be unto itself, a mindless task.  Until I am aware of what I am actually doing, I cannot undo it.  I am not there yet, but I becoming aware of my negative self talk and how it makes me feel.  I negatively judge myself constantly which makes me feel very badly about myself.  I struggle with self love. 

Just so we are clear, I hate the expression "self love".  I always think I am some how saying I struggle with masturbation.  Which is clearly none of your business.

Often times in group therapy I will hear people ask, "when is it an opinion and when is it judgement?"

I do not like Coconut.

Coconut tastes like crap.

One is my opinion.  One is my passing judgement onto the poor coconut.

If I think someone is doing something stupid, that makes it my opinion of what they are doing.  It does not make them stupid.  It's a very fine line I like to cross often. 

But one I am trying to be aware of doing to myself....far too much.