Self-Talk: Criticism vs. Compassion

Transcript

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Hello and welcome back my friends. If you dunno who I am. I'm Dr. Sarah Award-winning psychologist, helping high achieving women and harmful relationship patterns and build self-confidence. So let's get to it. What voice are you speaking to yourself with, and are you speaking to yourself in potentially an idiotic way? And I know that that might sound like a bit of a loaded term, but there is so much here that I want to talk about because ultimately. The way that we act out in life, the way that we treat ourselves, the way that we approach work, that we approach our body, that we approach our physical appearance, the way that we approach relationships, whether it be romantic or professional, or even with friends and family is. Ultimately dictated by how we speak to ourselves, and believe me, 24 7, there is a narrative that is going on inside of your head. There is a constant voice running in the background that tells you exactly what your worth is, how you position yourself compared with other people, and what it is that you should be doing or not doing, what it is to expect from yourself, and also to expect from other people. And broadly speaking, this is categorized into two ways. You can either go down at the first category, which includes criticism, and I'm sure a lot of people listening to you this are very familiar with that. And the second category is really around kindness. So let's get to it. What voice are you using to speak to yourself with? Now, I mentioned two categories here and I'm going to really delve in deep. So the first category in terms of criticism, that is the voice that is constantly speaking to yourself in a very harsh and very punitive way. You are constantly badmouthing yourself, even if it's in a joke. You are still. Deprecating yourself. You're still saying some really awful things. For example, like, oh my goodness, did something stupid again. Or Look at you compared with other people. Actually, you are not doing as well as your colleague. You are not doing as well as your friend. You really need to be losing weight. You really need to be doing it better. You really need to up the game, huh? You should not have said that. You've just offended somebody and actually now they don't want to be your friend. And you can even hear. That that narrative could just go on and on and on and it would never end. Right? But if you are in that realm, the sad truth is the reason why we develop the self-critical voice is because that is the only voice that has surrounded us, or it's one of the biggest voices that we've experienced, whether it be through upbringing. In childhood, whether our parents were very critical of us, and they only showed us love very conditionally. And so we learnt a lot of messages and we started to speak to ourselves in the same way. Or whether it be during adulthood, if we went into a very ruthless career, if we entered a relationship that perhaps wasn't so healthy for us, or if we got bullied in school or bullied at work. But all of these things can influence that self-critical voice. And underneath that self-critical voice, there is a deep fear. Ultimately the fear of rejection, the fear of being left behind, but. More significantly the fear of not being enough and all of these fears. Suggest that all you ever want is to be good enough, that you just want to be accepted and you want to be better. So we use criticism as a vehicle to be better. The ultimate goal isn't to hurt yourself, but the ultimate goal is actually to push yourself forward, to make you better somehow. And the only way that you've learned to do that is through criticizing yourself. But. How well does that work? Because if you are constantly speaking to yourself in that way, guess who's listening. It's just you inside of your own head. So if you are speaking to yourself in that way, and you are also listening to yourself in that way, then where else do you go? You literally become your worst enemy. You create your own chaos. You are your own nightmare. Because wherever you go, there you are. The selfism will follow you. And then you get more and more embroiled in this self-doubt. And unfortunately, I see so many women suffering from this issue. So many incredibly intelligent women who have a better version of their lives waiting for them, but they can't step into that because they are fueled with self-doubt and self-criticism. So if that's a space that you are living in. Imagine what that would do to your self-esteem or your self-worth, and you are constantly punishing yourself to try and be better, but actually you are punishing yourself and you end up being worse and worse and worse. It's almost like if you had a kid who fell over in the playground and you started yelling at them, shouting at them for falling over and that they need to get up. Okay, sure. The kid might end up guessing up, but how happy would they be? And actually, would they be recluse? Would they end up. Isolating themselves. Would they end up being ashamed of themselves? Would they end up being really agitated and irritated and anxious? Would they actually be really scared to approach you for help? Well, yeah, all of those things would happen. So as much as the end goal for that child might be for them to be okay and for them to get up and have fun and play again. That's essentially the goal, right? But actually the kid wouldn't do that if they are being yelled at and if they're being shouted at. Actually, we are just reinforcing the trauma. And guess what? If you're talking to yourself in the self-critical voice, you are reinforcing the trauma of the past. That trauma already lives in your nervous system. It lives in your unconscious mind, and you are just repeating that story again and again. The script is constantly running and you are just reinforcing it. The only way for you to really exit from this pattern is if you cut the tie and you literally have to sever the tie to be able to let go of that self-critical voice. You are needing to heal that trauma that lives inside of your nervous system, inside of your subconscious mind. We are needing to rewire the way that we speak to ourselves so that we can really start to embody. The kindness. Right? And often when I talk about kindness, especially if you have been living for so many years in a state of shame, in a state of self punishment, and somehow that's helped you to succeed and to climb up the ladder or to get a relationship or to lose weight or whatever it might be. And so you've learned that, okay, like criticism, self-criticism isn't so great. It, it doesn't feel good, but got some results out of it. Whenever I introduce this idea of, huh, be kind to yourself, or whenever you've heard the concept of self-love and self-kindness, for many people it gives us a bit of an ick, and I know that I was definitely guilty of this. I used to believe. That there was never a space for self-kindness. That actually, that that was something that was just totally out of my realm. That's something that's so unneeded and, uh, not only that I didn't need it, but I didn't want it. I didn't like it, and it was just like this airy fairy nothingness. It was something that was just made up by some hippies and that was it. Right? That's sincerely what I used to believe, and well. Huh. If anyone knows me, you'll know that my story is, uh, one with a loss of self-criticism, and unfortunately, the criticism didn't get me very far. I mean, it kind of did, but I was always my own bottleneck. I always limited myself, and I always entered harmful. Situation, harmful dynamic with somebody, harmful, toxic relationship, and whether it be with someone else, whether it be with myself, but I was not in a good state. And it is true for many other women as well who enter this. So let's talk about the other side of the side of self-kindness, that side of compassion. And for anyone who's listening to this who's like, oh, it's a little bit ick and I don't like it. Please just come in with an open mind. That's all I ask of you. And if you just have an open mind, see what you think, see whether or not there is a possibility that this could be true for you. Now, if we were to enter this realm of self-kindness. Self-kindness and self-compassion is not about being complacent. It is not about allowing yourself to procrastinate, to lie down and do nothing. Right. So if you think about the self-criticism, the intention of criticizing yourself is to get better. And so a lot of people fear that if they let go of the self-criticism, they will never get better. They will just lie flat on the floor, they'll procrastinate, they'll be lazy, they'll be fat, they'll be all of these things. And so they get terrified of this idea of self-compassion and they hold on to self-criticism for dear life. But the issue is that if you are really. Wanting to be better. It does not mean that you can't be kind along the way you can want to change and also be kind to yourself in the process. Right? The, the, the not mutually exclusive and the kindness is actually a concept of wise inte, uh, wise compassion compared with. Idiotic compassion. So let's talk about the difference, and this is something that I love to talk to clients about and it's a bit juicy, it's a bit edgy, but I promise this is where it's at now. There is wise compassion and there is an idiot compassion. The wise compassion would be to say, I see your suffering. I see my own suffering, so what am I going to do to take responsibility over it? Idiot compassion, which unfortunately a lot of people go down the path and they believe that somehow this is kindness, is to say, I see my own suffering, and somebody is to blame and they stop there. And guess what? If you are sitting there and you see your own suffering. And you have kindness for your own suffering. But the way that you show kindness towards your suffering is by blaming somebody else. And, and you know, you might say, oh, well I know that I've got my share, but the other person has their share. And you know, I'm only like this because other people are like that. If, if you are really entering this without taking on a hundred percent responsibility and you are only wanting to take. 50% responsibility or even less, then actually you are entering the realm of idiot compassion because what you are doing there is that you are displacing responsibility on someone else, even if it's 50%, because guess what? Over your life, you have to be a hundred percent responsible. There are no other options, even when you have been in really harmful and really toxic dynamics. By the way, I'm not saying that being in a toxic dynamic is okay. That's not all what I'm saying, and I'm not saying that abusers are okay in their action, but what I will be saying. Is that you need to take a hundred percent responsibility for whatever it is that allowed you to be in that situation and to maintain that situation. Because if you are exerting your energy and your time by blaming the other person in the hope that they will change, or you are sitting there holding onto this idea that you are only like this because of other people and you stop at that point, well, guess what? You are staying in your own victimhood. You are maintaining that victimhood, and then of course you're going to be procrastinating. Of course you won't want to change. Of course, nothing will change because you are not changing, because you are remaining within that victimhood state, within that victimhood mentality because somebody else is to blame. Someone else caused your pain, and sure that might be true. Somebody else may have caused your pain, but it would still be your responsibility to be your own hero. It would still be your responsibility to take action, whatever that action is, to get help to preserve yourself so that you are protected, so that you can strengthen your own core, your own pillar, and what it is that you stand for and what you want out of life. Right. You were not put on this planet to just be beaten by somebody else, verbally, whatever it is. Like you were not put on this planet to just suffer and just stay there, right? You weren't. There are better things out there for you, but you also have to take responsibility in how you get that, and that is really what wise Compassion is about. Wise Compassion is about seeing the suffering, having kindness towards the suffering. But also asking the question, well what am I gonna do? How do I help myself? How do I get out of this situation? How do I improve? How do I step forward? And so it's going back to the analogy with the kid. If you see a child falling down in the playground and they've hurt themselves, you might not have clean water or you might not have, uh, plaster or something to sterilize their injury. You might not. But you have a lot of kindness for that child in that moment. You might, you know, if it was your kid, you might wanna give them a hug, you might wanna give them a kiss, whatever it is, and, and you show so much love and okay, you might not have anything to sterilize, but you use another results. You might get some tissue, wipe it down, you might do something else. And so the thing is, is that you would still take action to move forward. You wouldn't just stay in that state of injury. If someone, if you broke your leg, sure there'd be a heck of a lot of pain, but you would still have to get yourself to the hospital and you can't sit there blaming the tiles on the floor for not being stray or whatever it might be. I mean, sure, that might be an issue that might have caused it, but you would still have to take responsibility to move forward otherwise. You are just destroying yourself. You are allowing yourself to be destroyed and maintaining that situation. So I really welcome you to consider this idea of your self-talk because believe me, the way that you speak to yourself will absolutely, I guarantee it will impact every single part of your life, whether it be your wellbeing. Your career choice, how you position yourself with other people, how good enough you feel about yourself and your relationships with other people. It is going to influence absolutely everything because the more that you criticize yourself. The smaller you become, the less value you hold. And believe me, if you hold less value, you are not gonna be holding boundaries. It's going to be very difficult to communicate your needs. You are going to shrink yourself. You're going to edit yourself. You are going to change to accommodate other people, even when you are not happy about it. You will enter trauma bonded relationships simply because you. Feel so fractured inside of yourself. You will become a people pleaser. You will overextend yourself to other people, prioritizing them while you deprioritize yourself. That is what is going to happen if you engage in that negative self-talk, that self-criticism. But if you are going down the path of self-compassion, the wise self-compassion, well that's a very different path because that is really where the magic plot is. That is when you can really grow in the way that you are wanting to grow. That is really when you take full ownership and responsibility over your life and over every situation, and consider the pain you have, compassion and love for your own pain, but. You also know that the step forward is not necessarily through hurting yourself, but actually the step forward is through what would be in most service to you. If you have enjoyed anything in this episode, please share it with a friend or a family member because if you enjoyed it, I bet you that one of them will eat you. And if you are needing any help in any of this, please get in touch. My details are in the show notes below. Until next time, take care.