Patricia OGorman - The Girly Thoughts 10-Day Detox Plan: The Resilient Womans Guide to Saying No to Negative Self-Talk and Yes to Personal Power

Health Communications, Inc.

Deerfield Beach, Florida

www.hcibooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

OGorman, Patricia A.

The girly thoughts 10-day detox plan : the resilient womans guide to saying no to negative self-talk and yes to personal power / Patricia OGorman, PhD.

p. cm

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Self-esteem in women. 2. WomenPsychology. 3. Self-talk. 4. Negativism.
5. Resilience (Personality trait) I. Title.

BF697.5.S46O46 2014

155.33391--dc23

2014031148

ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-1815-3 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 0-7573-1815-0 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-1816-0 (ePub)

ISBN-10: 0-7573-1816-9 (ePub)

2014 OGorman, Patricia A.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos, and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
3201 S.W. 15th Street
Deerfield Beach, FL 334428190

Cover design by Dane Wesolko

Interior design and formatting by Lawna Patterson Oldfield
ePub created by Dawn Von Strolley Grove

To my sister Kathy.

Its hard to fight an enemy who
has outposts in your head.

Sally Kempton

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Girly Thoughts

PART I Your Negative Self-Talk: What It Is and Where It Came From

DAY 1 No, Youre Not Crazy: Those Are Just Your Girly Thoughts

DAY 2 The Wonder Woman in You

DAY 3 All in the (Original) Family: Leading Yourself to Relative Success

DETOX SUMMARY FOR PART I: Fully Seeing Yourself

Detoxing in Your Intimate Life: How Your Girly Thoughts Affect You Personally

DAY 4 You Are So Beautiful: Choosing Self-Love Over Self-Judgment

DAY 5 Sex: A No-Judgment Zone

DAY 6 Making Your Desire a Reality: Love, Intimate Relationships, and Marriage

DAY 7 Forever Youthful: Your Obsession with Staying Young

PART III Detoxing in Daily Life: How Your Girly Thoughts Affect You Visibly

DAY 8 Starring at Work: Developing Confidence in Your Contributions

DAY 10 Parenting: Tackling the Next Generations Toxic Self-Talk

Just the Beginning: Now the Fun Starts

References and Recommended Reading

About the Author

Suggested Questions for Book Club Discussion

Candace, thank you doesnt capture it... but thanks all the same. I couldnt have done this without you. You are the worlds best developmental editor. With each bookand were now up to threeI more deeply appreciate your wisdom, humor, and patience.

Christine, head of my team at HCI, thank you for believing in this book and supporting its birthand methrough all of its birth pains. And to Peter and to my other team members at HCI, I offer my gratitude for your belief in my message.

Id like to thank all the women in the talks Ive given, my patients who shared their lives, and the media, as well as the subscribers to my blogs all who shared their enthusiasm for the concept of girly thought s and demanded more. Your encouragement was largely responsible for this prequel to The Resilient Woman .

No effort of this magnitude devoted to help women out their most hidden, secret, self-destructive thoughts could be accomplished alone. My gratitude goes to my friends, particularly to Elie, Marie, Cynthia, Teena, Ellen, Elaine, Barbara, and Marsha, who patiently kept saying, Are you done yet? To my husband, Rob, who was in incredible good cheer as he fed me, emptied the dishwasher, and kept asking, What can I do? and made me laugh and laugh. And since he knows me so well, he was a great sounding board for my own girly thoughts about being able to finish this work as completely as I wanted it to be and on time. To my sons, Jeremy and Michael, and their girlfriends, Katie and Kaci, who are just so incredibly generous, creative, supportive, kind, loving, and patient.

As women we are in part created by those women who influence us, our own personal tribe or posse. These are the women who go largely unrecognized, except by us. Id like to acknowledge minemy mother and her sisters, all feisty, incredibly funny, bright women who fought back against the unfairness they encountered with the tools they had, teaching me not to accept what was offered just because it was, well, offered; my grandmother, whose struggles were never as apparent as her strengths; my family of strong and loving women in PEI who taught me so much, including how to bake; and my beautiful sister, who always believed in me. Frankie, who is sharing that life can go strong at ninety. Ruth Sondheimer, who helped me understand and love myself; Sophie Elam, who did for me what she did for scores of others at CCNY: forced me to see our potential and use it, making me one of Sophies Girls. Marty Mann, who early in my career told me Dont let those boys get away with this, and thus beginning my learning in how to make it in what was then a Mans World; Joanne Dobson, who encouraged me to write, really write.

And thanks to my summer intern, Jen, for all of your incredible energy and creativity; and thanks to the sweet little one in my life, my Tribal, who knows how to calm me down with a lick and a snuggle.

Introduction

The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.

Gloria Steinem

Abandon anything about your life and habits that might be holding you back: fortune favors action.

Sophie Amoruso

I once heard a comedian open his act with this story:

So, my girlfriend and I are cuddled up on the coach and I ask her, What are you afraid of?
She gets all teary and says, That youll meet someone else. That youll leave me, and Ill be all alone. What are you afraid of? she asks, all choked up.

Snakes, I say, shrugging.

No, I heard myself saying to his girlfriend as he was speaking. You should be afraid of your girly thoughts !

Girly thoughts? Ive developed that term to give you a name for the toxic inner voice that robs you of your personal power byfocusing you instead on counterproductive messages, including:

• I am too smart or too assertive to be desirable.
• I am too fat, skinny, or busty to be attractive.
• Its my fault my husband had an affair.

Girly thoughts are your inner, negative self-talk that tell you how you should and should not be as a woman, what you can anticipate when you are a good girl, and the price you can expect to pay when you step outside the often subtle societal standards you have been conditioned to follow.

Your girly thoughts are your own internalized criteria for how you should think, act, and most important, look. They are pretty exacting, too. When you step outside those values, you can expect to pay a price through some type of rejection, particularly from those you are close toand even from yourself.

Your girly thoughts are the part of you that pushes too hard to be accepted and acceptable and that acts like your own inner Mean Girls clubthe part of you that has internalized societys messages. And because you are forcing yourself to fit into a mold, you often feel like a fraud, as though youll be found out and rejected because you are not really acting in accordance with what is best for you or with whom you really are. You have been influenced by many cultural factors and social norms during the twenty or thirty or sixty-plus years youve been on this planet, and these factors and norms have shaped your reasoning, your reactions and responses, and even your feelings. So when you have such a thought, you are sometimes tempted to embrace it as reality, particularly when it is backed up by intense feelingsyou feel sad, or frightened, or just not good enoughand you take that as further evidence that your thought is correct.