Hi First name / my love, how are you? 

 

Have you had 5 minutes to yourself lately? 

 

It's often something we say isn't. 

 

 

Have you ever wondered why? I mean why, really? 

 

This week I've been talking about cold tea theory, as a gentle inquiry point to how you may truly feel about yourself and creating space, time and boundaries for you. 

 

The concept of ‘cold tea theory’ is the recognition that you never seem to have time for yourself; that the tea always goes cold because there are more important things to do first. The reality behind this is that you don’t think that your time to do what you need or want is as important as other things or people, which comes from-and feeds- the ‘I am not enough’ belief and the protection it creates. 

 

It indicates that at some point you learned to feel bad (unsafe on some level) if things or people weren’t ‘fulfilled’ before you were. This leads to a sense of over responsibility for others and not having capacity to say no to them and yes to you. The ‘bad’ feelings (often shame/ guilt) drive you towards the ‘feeling of ‘ok-ness’ (a sense of safety), by controlling things outside of you to take the ‘bad’ feeling away.

 

Your hope is that once the external obligations are fulfilled, then the time for you to ‘drink the tea’ (or insert your own analogy here) will come; the reality is there is always something more important than you if you believe you are not important. Let me say that part again...

 

 

Cold tea is really the tip of the iceberg. This will extend to doing more and more and more to gain the perfect scenario so you get permission to stop, but it in reality never happens. You find yourself resentful, sick of people ‘putting’ on you, exhausted by being there for everyone when they aren’t there for you, which leads to you thinking you are even less important, unappreciated, unseen, unheard and maybe even unloved and the reasons to not love yourself remain.

 

Because you believe your ‘safety’ and ‘identity’ as a human depends on it and because you are waiting for someone else to say you’ve done enough, so you can feel satisfied, safe and ‘off the hook’. No isn’t an option for you as someone might judge you negatively- think ‘good girl/bad girl’ conditioning as a child, and you are trying to retain the ‘good girl’ narrative and not be criticised, rejected, abandoned for putting yourself first

 

I believe it’s a simple way to reflect on your boundaries, self expectation and the expectation on you from others, and it’s one of the smaller things you could work on committing to to improving your relationship to Self and journey to self love.

 

 

 

Pause. Breathe. Take some time for you…

 

Pause. Breathe. Take some time for you…

As always, if you have any questions, let me know, and if this is something you want to work on in more depth, I have spaces in my online 1:1 therapy practice from January 4th.. if you want to explore the things stopping you from being more ‘you’, is 2026 the time? 

 

 

I'll be back soon, and for now?

 

Go love yourself more, 

 

Elaine Denton 

Prof. Psych. Dip MNCPS (Acc.)