She can.
Here’s the thing, we all want to be happy, have peace, eat well and see the Mets make it to the world series. What? You don’t agree? Because you don’t want peace? Oh, the Mets…well some of you are still with me.
While we want to have these things, we do just about everything in our power to get away from the one thing that will get us closer to happiness and peace. We overeat, binge-watch TV and fiddle away the day on social media to avoid just being with ourselves. Because hey, sometimes we can be our own worst critic.
Hey, I get it. One weekend I decided to change the sheets and clean the bedroom without music, TV, audible or even a dog to talk to. I didn’t have my phone with me. It was just me and the dust bunnies and I’ll tell you, things got ugly REAL quick.
No, I wasn’t sucked under the bed by the monster – he’s where he’s always been -in my head. First I became aware of a running loop of thoughts. My head was full of worried, fretful, self reproachful little thoughts running around in there. No wonder I prefer to clean listening to books on tape. Who wouldn’t? And that’s exactly where we foul it up.
By escaping from the thoughts we have playing on a loop in our brains, we lose the opportunity to bring them out and acknowledge them.
Not that day though. I was very aware of each thought and after about the fifth or sixth one, I got creative. I got a notebook out and laid it on the dresser. Then I waited to spring my trap. The next random thought that my brain offered me, I jotted down. Then I said, OK. That’s one. Next? I turned the page and went back to work. Soon, a new nasty bit of self-criticism popped up. I walked over and wrote it on the new page and turned that page. This went on for quite a bit. It made making the bed take longer, that’s for sure, but eventually, when I asked for the next thought, my brain was beautifully silent.
I still have that notebook sitting right here on my desk. I pulled it out to see what my real thoughts were that day. Here they are:
- People disapprove.
- I’m a worried person
- I’m going to be in trouble
- I’m being shoved aside
- My self-absorption is disgusting
- I’m not a good wife
- I feel bad for my husband marrying a waste like me
It’s not easy for me to share these on this website. But the truth is, I don’t even remember the situation that set this thinking off. I’m sharing my private and painful thoughts because I know that I’m not the only person who has a brain that does this type of thing. I’m sharing them on the off chance that someone out there will try this technique because writing these thoughts down on paper changed everything for me. Here’s what I learned:
- Writing this type of thought down gets it out of your head. The method was very important though. If you just sit down with a diary and write and write, your mind will build out logic and evidence for why these thoughts are true. You can wind up feeling even worse. But not engaging with the thought, just writing it down, turning the page and asking – OK, next? – objectifies it. Each time I wrote a thought and turned the page, my brain left that thought behind.
- Eventually, your brain runs out of canned thoughts. I kept writing and turning the page and finally, finally, my mind was quiet, calm, relieved. It was like it had a finite set of blather in there and was too lazy to go get anything new to bug me with. Blessed relief.
- Looking at what you are carrying in your mind can be the doorway to true self-compassion. When both my mind and my room was clean, I sat on the bed and turned the pages of the notebook, looking at each sentence dispassionately. None of these thoughts were true. They’re an example of what one of my clients calls snowballing -packing more and more negative around a small starting point. I thought about the woman who was having these thoughts. I felt such compassion for that person. No person should have to carry those thoughts around. It was obvious that the thoughts were overblown, and just as evident that she must have been suffering as she thought them. I had been suffering and it was completely unnecessary.
That day was literally the first time in my life that I felt compassion for myself. I wasn’t judging myself. I wasn’t full of self-pity. I wasn’t avoiding my thoughts and feelings but I also wasn’t rolling around in them. I could see the thoughts I’d been thinking and I could see that they weren’t true. I could empathize with the woman who’d been carrying them around but I also saw the error in her thinking. Until I was able to step back, I hadn’t seen how needless my suffering was. I gave myself a big imaginary hug and then told myself to move on. There were more rooms to clean.
Acknowledging that we are suffering needlessly and feeling empathy for the person who suffers is the first step in turning your inner critic into your inner BFF. After all, she looks like you, she hangs out with you and you’re stuck with each other. You two ought to be friends.
And that? Is just good to know.
If you would like help with your inner critic so you can stop agonizing over every little mistake, I’ve totally got you. Sign up for a free 25 minute mini-session. We meet using Zoom. We’ll see if coaching is something that might be helpful, and then we can see if you’ld like to coach with me or if I can recommend another coach for you. I’m pretty harmless and I love to talk about this stuff. Click here and get hooked up.
NEXT WEEK: how self-compassion is the key to showing up as yourself at work, and why it matters.