Why do I hate myself? – Louise Amuir

This is one of those questions I keep coming back to, although maybe a better question might be ”how could I do this differently?”

I fell a couple days ago and am now sporting a bright pink cast on my right arm.  I kind of surprised myself with the amount of invective my inner critic had for me.

Stupid, clumsy, look where you’re gong, suck it up and carry on.  You should be ashamed of yourself being a bother to other people.  Focus!

Unfortunately, not a single one of those messages is helpful to me in the present.  I mean, I guess it might be helpful to look where I’m going and to focus.  But it does seem kind of inhuman to expect myself, or anybody else to be laser focussed and aware ALL THE TIME.

So what did I do?  Brushed myself off, picked myself up, put my smashed glasses back on my face and carried on without making a fuss and then was pissed off with myself for injuring myself.  All on auto pilot.

What could I have done?  Taken a moment to breathe and to feel.  Not in an assessment kind of way, but in a feel the feeling kind of  way.  Maybe taken a moment to acknowledge pain or shock.  But no, not my traditional style – that somehow I got caught doing something wrong because I was not perfect.  Toxic shame of not being perfect all the time. And wanting to cover that up and being perfect anyway – not being a bother, not being a whiner, not being needy, or needing to be taken care of.

And then a couple of days of being angry at myself for being so stupid, so non present to rocks on the path. Thing is, it’s not all that useful to me, all that self hate.  It’s kind of stuck in a “should” paradigm.  For me, when I notice I’m should-ing on myself, I’m certainly not in the present.  I’m back there in my brain replaying what I should have done differently and my shame that I didn’t do it “right”

As time goes on, well, I have a bright pink cast, friends have offered to exchange their automatic car with my standard so I can drive, my partner is willing to crack my breakfast eggs and grind up a little pepper for me.  I’m noticing how adaptive I am working out new ways of functioning with one (non-dominant) arm.

I decide to start focussing on what is, instead of how I want things to be.  What’s wrong, what needs doing, what I need to fix usually is where my focus is.  But what if I focus instead on what’s working, what is delightful, what am I learning?  Definitely the path less trod in my process.  And what if I speak to myself internally the way I long to be spoken to?  What if I encourage myself in the learning instead of berating myself for not having done it perfectly?

Things kind of soften.  Instead of I need to look to others that I have it totally together and don’t need anything, I spend some time noticing how well I am supported by others, how clever I am at working out how to do stuff that used to be easy but now requires some advance planning or some totally new way of doing things.  Turns out my left hand printing might be more legible than my right hand scrawl.  Oh yeah, it takes a little longer but it leaves space for me to tell myself, sweet girl, how well I am adapting and learning.

Cast signing says: “You’re loved in the clumsy times too!” 🙂

Come join me and Gillian in Befriending Your Inner Critic, August 22-25, as we all learn together how to notice and encourage some of the resources we already have, share some tricks and tips for turning the volume down on that bossy internal voice, transform a few old messages, and have some fun.