I am working through this book right now – Healing your Emotional Self: A Powerful Program to help You Raise Your Self-Esteem, Quiet Your Inner Critic, and Overcome Your Shame. It’s a very good book… I have read about half the book so far and the section I am on right now is dealing with Identifying and Disengaging from our Inner Critic. Some of the phrases Ms. Engel suggests to use (out loud) with your inner critic are the following:
*Shut up!
*Stop it!
*This is poison. Stop it!
*Get off my back!
*This is garbage!
*These are lies.
*These are the same lies my mother/father told me.
*I don’t believe you.
*No more put-downs!
If you are anything like me your inner voice gives a running commentary on every thing you do or fail to do… I know my inner critic has been particularly vociferous of late. I am working to silence those voices that tell me that everything I do is wrong and the thoughts I think are stupid. It’s a long road and I find that the voices are loudest when my anxiety is running the most rampant. Today is a bad day. I must admit, I’m about a 6 on my Levels of Not Okayness and it feels like a struggle just trying to feel at home in my own skin. But all of that aside, I am determined to use the tools I have been given and call on the strength I know I have in side and I WILL overcome this. I am more than my failings and I am not what has been done to me. I am strong and smart and determined to get through this. I will find that inner integrity and I will cling to it like a life raft… I am not crazy or weak… I am enough and I can do this.
captivatingbitter 