When you speak to yourself, are you a bully or a friend?
Most people don’t like to think of themselves as a bully, but when they start listening to their inner voice, they can begin to notice how mean they are to themselves.
Most of the damage to our self-esteem is self-inflicted.
Unfortunately, we often respond to rejections and failures by becoming self-critical, listing all our faults and short-comings, calling ourselves names, and basically kicking ourselves when we’re already down. We also tell ourselves that we’re ‘not good enough’, that we ‘always mess things up’ or that we are ‘just too lazy and have no self control’. If we had somebody in our lives who spoke to us like that we would hate them and wonder why they kept picking on us. We then use ridiculous justifications to justify the way we speak to ourselves, the way we damage our self-esteem when it is already hurting—“I deserve it,” “It will keep me humble,” “It’s a way to keep my expectations low, or “It’s true; I hate myself!”
If there’s one “program” we could all start that would do wonders for our self-esteem, it’s abolishing needless self-criticism and punitive self-talk – it’s one of the most effective forms of self hypnosis and it’s free!
Try it today – If you hear your inner bully rearing it’s ugly head, see it for what it is, tell it to be nice and get your inner cheer leader out to give you a boost instead.
I really like to change this, because me bullying me takes a lot of energy. And it is so useless. Well, come to think of it, I am actually happy I think that it is useless now because before I used to think that it was the only thing I could do right. 😦
But bullying me is so normal (?) that I don’t even notice it. I did get a little more aware of it during my 15 minutes try out days. I set the egg timer every 15 minutes and noted what I was doing and thinking.
How do you become aware of it?
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Mostly by thinking about the sort of things you say to yourself and ‘listening’ out for it. Some therapists call it turning on your internal radio. Once you’ve got the knack of it you’ll notice all sorts of things that you tell yourself. It can help to imagine an internal cheerleader and think of some of the great things they would say to you.
Good luck with it, and if you’re not perfect at it straight away, that’s ok – you’re just learning – give yourself a break x
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Give yourself a break 🙂 That is the 3rd time somebody said that to me today. Maybe, maybe I should listen to it. 🙂
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Maybe 😊
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This is amazing! I totally can relate to this, I really find that at this point in my life I am my own worst enemy and it’s making my life so much harder. Definitely working on bringing out my inner cheerleader
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Good for you! It takes some deliberate thought at first, but it will become second nature soon enough – just keep working on it 😊
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Thank you!
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Three positives for every negative. The Grahamclan rule
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