I posted somewhere on this board some time ago about how I confronted my brain about calling me stupid, and actually managed to get an apology. I considered it a great breakthrough in my mental health at the time.
My brain has become more subtle in its disparagement since then.
Wow, though I can’t do a thing to help anyone here, at least it helps to know that I’m not the only one who constantly is saying exactly that to myself, while remembering every awkward, dumbass move I have made in the past fifty years. It’s kind of a mantra that goes on.
I am a cheerful guy, so nobody would ever know about the inner monologue telling me what a dumbass I am. I figure it’s my brain’s way of keeping me from getting too full of myself, but sometimes it is a bit challenging. Thankfully it’s not non-stop.
What was your religious upbringing? I attribute a large portion of my low estimation of my abilities to attending Catholic grade school. The effects were especially subtle and pernicious on us girl students.
Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Yep, that IS a factor.
Sometimes I think I wear self-deprecation like a shield. If I show that I’m aware of what I shit I am, maybe it won’t hurt as bad when other people figure it out. But that goes back to my pervasive feeling that I’m headed toward failure at any moment. Usually a very fuzzy and ill-defined sense of impending failure, but occasionally really specific.
I don’t like to admit that I still struggle with this stuff. I’ve come a long way and most of the time have an okay self-concept. But I recently discovered how much was lurking just on the periphery of my awareness. My therapist asked me to talk about my struggles with work and other people, and it was just a litany of bad memories and self-recrimination.
I had both abusive parents and I was an evangelical Christian so I feel like I got a double dose of feeling like shit for a long time.
I don’t disagree with you that you know your brain and what it was implying. I would just suggest that you can challenge that implication.
“There’s that ‘maybe it was actually easy’ thought again.”
My negative self-talk mostly evaporated after a very specific incident: I was on vacation at a beautiful beach on a gorgeous day, body surfing in the clear blue waves of the Pacific, glittering in the sunshine. A candidate wave came in, I swam hard but missed the face and had to bail out. My brain was telling me “you idiot, how could you miss that?”
The insanity of the situation suddenly struck me - no call for judgement of any kind, at all, just elemental pleasure, yet I couldn’t have it. In the blink of an eye I let go of that mindset and have been almost entirely free of it since.
Best habit to acquire for negative self talkers, that I ever learned, was to end every negative thought chain with the phrase, ‘…on the other hand…’, then some positive thing, however small or unlikely.
Just a small habit, like any other, but shifted the whole world, a tiny bit, for me. Small tiny thing, big change in how the negative self talk lands. It’s still there, but it mostly washes over or is simply (and easily) discounted then roundly ignored.
Good Luck, it’s not easy, I know!
Thanks, I really like this and I’m going to try it.