Rewriting my inner dialogue and cultivating self-compassion

Mar 1

Self-loathing is a real struggle. If you know the experience of feeling crushed under the weight of your own thoughts, your own judgments and criticisms, you know how absolutely engulfing it can be.

It's an all-consuming shadow, gnawing at you and stripping away any feelings of confidence or self-respect that you've built up around yourself over time. It can be absolutely crushing when you allow it to run rampant - like a tyrant in your brain nitpicking and highlighting every single mistake, every failure, every bad decision you've made in your life to "prove" or show you the evidence of your inadequacy.

How often do we find ourselves in deep self-loathing? Sometimes even unconscious to it? Like a script running without any oversight, any intention, just scrolling across the screen of our minds and tainting our lived experience. It becomes the lens by which we view our lives. And if you let your regrets, your self-punishment take over, you live your life in a constant state of struggle and fear.

You try to find evidence of how you are not good enough. You try to prove to yourself that it's okay to feel this way, to think this way, to evaluate your life in this way, because, "See? I screwed up again. I deserve this."

How self-defeating this cycle can be. It's the place of "stuck". "Not enough-ness". The place of pain, and hopelessness. This is often how our own inner critics sound. We all have it and it can take on many forms.

Our inner critic serves a function - to keep us safe from any possible danger, known or unknown. And because it's often very tied to fear - it keeps us small, hidden, and unable to take risks.

When we live a life defined by, and led by our inner critics, any possible bump in the road, no matter how small, can be debilitating. It can feel as if life is out to get us, crushing us into submission. And this is because the inner critic doesn't know curiosity. It is not in relationship with that part of ourselves. It doesn't understand nuance or complexity. It doesn't orient to mistakes as lessons to be learned, opportunities to grow, but instead it views it as the source of our deserved punishment.

It can be difficult to create shifts in your ways of thinking because our thoughts can become habits. If you have ever read anything about neuro-plasticity you may have heard the phrase, "Whatever fires together, wires together." Meaning, your neurons are creating networks, pathways for your thoughts. If you are often thinking a negative thought - that becomes a pattern wired into your brain. It becomes easy to orient yourself to that belief. Our brains are powerful - our minds are molded and transformed by what we allow ourselves to think. And our brains want what's easy.

Discomfort, ambiguity, and the unexpected can be scary for our minds to contend with, it can feel very uncomfortable, which is why many of us have a better relationship with the inner critic in us, than we do with the creative, explorer within us. But know that over time you can build your capacity for nuance and develop the skill of adaptability.

It begins first with noticing your thoughts. Waking up to the common phrases, and self-talk that you are oriented to. Are you consciously aware of what you sound like in your mind? Are you paying attention to how you think about yourself? Are you hearing the voice of someone in your life who was highly critical of you in childhood? Have you made those criticisms your own?

If so, the first step is bringing conscious awareness to them. And begin to slowly interrupt those thoughts with a new script. A new self-orientation that feels a bit lighter, a bit more curious, a bit more freeing and open.

Language is important. Our words matter. What is the language that you are speaking? What are the words that you pull from most often? Are they positive, supportive words? Or are they words that cut down, that are critical, that are self-defeating?

Always remind yourself that you are in control of your own inner experience. How you respond and navigate challenges will determine your experience, more than the interaction itself.

Here are some words and phrases that you might want to “try on” so to speak, when you’re feeling down:

I have value. I have worth. I have meaning on this earth. (Try chanting it)

I nourish my mind, body and soul with good things.

I cultivate joy in my life.

I am safe in this moment.

I am learning to trust myself.

Every day in every respect, I am getting better and better (or happier, calmer, etc.)

My Personal Experience

I struggle with my confidence. It seems as though the more experience I get, the more life I live, the less confident I feel in my abilities.

Sometimes it’s so chronic that I can barely get a word out. There are times I feel soulcrushing defeat and hopelessness and I feel like I can’t quite go on. This is when I’m deep in the depths of my depression. The rumination distracts me from actually living my life.

Then there’s the constant onslaught of all that is wrong with the world, all the injustice I see, and it makes me feel as if I can no longer be witness to it.

When the self-hate comes in - the constant questions about why I’m not doing enough. The regret. It gets so bad that sometimes I go numb, and find it hard to reach any moments of joy. And at times, my loneliness only makes it worse.

I’m sharing this because perhaps I’m not the only one that feels this. I know I’m not alone. And sometimes it helps to know that this is a shared experience many of us are having.

Particularly women, who feel deeply, who are able to access the well of mourning that rumbles up from our creative source, that recognizes that there are so many things fundamentally wrong with our systems, and are often cast aside as an afterthought to be dealt with later, or to be controlled through the policies and rules that are put into place by those in power.

We feel deeply, we mourn, we silently suffer, and put on happy facades to keep the world spinning even when we fill its spinning in the wrong direction.

It’s easy to let all of that inform how we view ourselves, and allow the outside world to invalidate us, or make us feel worthless and small.

All I can say to you is to keep feeling what you feel. Allow yourself the depth and complexity of your emotions. It is the evidence of your humanity. And the more we allow ourselves to be honest with our emotions, the more we are in touch with truth. The less we will be willing to ignore, or to betray ourselves.

The more in tune we will be with the choices that will feed us, that will nurture us, and those around us.

Remember that you were made to shine. You were made for connection. For community. For love. For art. For creativity. For witnessing. For play. For mourning. For holding bitter sweetness.

You are here. Don’t play small, and don’t forfeit your power because of fear. Find your people, your community, those you can trust and keep on going. You’ve got this.

“As we’re liberated from our own fear. Our presence automatically liberates others.” - Marianne Williamson