Ah, the inner critic… You know, that angry, negative voice that most of us carry within us. The one that is hurling insults and blame at us and saying things like “what’s wrong with you? You’ve been here before, how can you have allowed this to happen YET again?” a well-honed voice that knows exactly what to say to make you feel like you have failed in your new commitments to do better.
When I feel overwhelmed and unhappy with my physical, emotional or financial health, I start by taking a deep breath.
Really, try it now. Take a nice long deep breath.
Next, I start paying attention to my inner-critic and try to have a detached compassionate look at what is going on.
I acknowledge the inner critic and I try to park it to the side: “I hear you, old friend, there you are, good old faithful negative voice, you!”
If that doesn’t work and I feel really overwhelmed by the negative voice, I call or text a friend, someone who knows me well and who will lovingly provide me with support. Someone who has been around long enough to know my patterns and can be a strong sounding board. This person doesn’t need to solve anything, they just need to be able to listen, with love.
If that doesn’t work, and I’m really feeling distressed and paralyzed, I call a trusted therapist and get some additional support.
Over time, I have found some strategies that have helped me stay on top of my stuff. One of them is reflection and processing work. Getting a better understanding of my family history, the triggers and strengths and a sense of the lifelong patterns of my life. If you had a difficult childhood, and this is a continuous struggle for you, I highly recommend that you read Donna Nakazawa’s book “Childhood Disrupted” which is full of tools to manage difficult emotions for those who had adverse childhood events.
The tool that I use daily is called self-compassion. Dr. Kristin Neff is the author of a book and series of resources on Self-Compassion, and I highly recommend that you check it out (http://self-compassion.org).
The key aim of self-compassion is to learn ways to soothe ourselves when we are overwhelmed and self-blaming. The fact is that sometimes we make mistakes, maybe even really screw up, and other times what is happening to us is truly outside of our control. Neff offers some powerful words of wisdom and some guided meditation tools on her website.
Helping professionals tend to be pleasers, doers and often perfectionists. It makes us great at our jobs but also puts us at risk for overcommitting ourselves, burnout, exhaustion and self-neglect. We need to find ways to manage our own energy before we can be of service to others. A good starting place is to make self-care resolutions that are realistic and achievable.