Hair Loss and Wellbeing Hair Loss: It Is All How You See It
Hair Loss: It Is All How You See It
Written by Mitch Newman Friday, 01 January 2010 00:00
Your Own Beliefs About Your Hair Loss Create Your Reality
If you believe hair loss is a negative part of your life, it will be. Fortunately, the opposite is true.
So, maybe you’ve glanced at my picture and thought What is a guy with a full head of hair going to be able to tell me about how I should feel or act in a society that constantly sends me messages that my lack of hair is in many ways a scarlet letter? Here’s my short answer. I have nothing to tell you. At least not about how you should feel. I’m just excited to know that you are feeling!
And I also want you to know that, to me, issues around personal loss, such as physical death or ending of a relationship, run parallel to your concerns about your hair. Loss is indeed loss. Although many people who have ended a relationship or have just recently buried a family member can hide their emotional experience on the inside versus on the top of their head, we can always gauge when we're dealing with someone who is sad or carrying a large emotional burden. Instead of staring at their scalp, we need only look into their eyes.
But back to your reality, because that is what I want to support and eventually help you to alter. I trust that how you feel and act provides you with something, meaning you are gaining something from the experience of your loss. You might disagree, and yet the truth is we all do things to get a desired result. We may not like what we get, and wish otherwise, but as we feel and act, the Universe brings us our reality. Now, you can’t necessarily stop what someone you meet may think about you losing your hair, or what a date may think when you decide to remove your wig and “reveal” yourself for the first time. But I believe we can influence that experience through them by deciding what you want your experience to be.
I remember a story a client once told me about connecting with someone who was confined to a wheelchair, with tubes running, the sound of oxygen flowing -- the whole 9 yards you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. He admitted to me that he was very uncomfortable, and even though it was business related, he was looking for ways to cut the meeting short. Yet my client told me that as time passed, he began to realize that the discomfort was really his issue (his “story” about the man in the wheelchair) and that as he connected more with this person, the sounds and sights that initially disturbed him seemed to disappear. I understood what he was talking about, but I pressed him nonetheless to explain what he thought was taking place. Without missing a beat, he told me that he had realized he was sitting in the presence of someone completely comfortable in his own skin. We couldn’t deny that this person was in a wheelchair, that he needed a machine to literally keep him breathing. But what this person was denying was that his experience of himself was going to be anything less than any other person’s on the planet, and the natural by-product of that was that he was going to starve “your story” about that as well.
Tell yourself a positive story about your hair loss
At the end of the day, and quite frankly at the beginning, you are going to need to decide what you are gaining from your loss on both sides of the fence. One side is the story of who you are afraid you might be. The other side is who you are afraid to become. The first side is a guarantee of more of the same, all the “whys” you are alone, not in a relationship, unable to truly connect and relate to people. The other side is really the land of opportunity, and you get to decide if you want to jump in or just dangle your toes, one at a time. Both sides have their pros and cons. The I-am-alone side is strangely safe and familiar despite it being uncomfortable, but it can eventually get really old. The opportunity side can be pretty empowering when a person is ready to step into his or her greatness, and it can be scary for those battling the I-am-not-enough-and-therefore-unlovable bug. “Showing up” implies that you must deliver, and when your response to that has always been “Deliver what?” it can scare you silly.
Bottom line: Perception is everything. What you believe you conceive. What you desire you can inspire. I’ve got more of these sayings, but I know you get the point. None of this is about minimizing your experience. It is really about making a decision to maximize your uniqueness, beginning to distance yourself from the story you have been telling yourself and others -- the story that really isn’t true. No amount of hair can convince me otherwise. As far as attraction goes -- physical, primal, emotional, mental -- that will be something that will naturally and authentically reveal itself once you decide where you stand with you.
More about contributing writer Mitch Newman »
Keywords: Hair Loss Treatments
