What comes with the tyranny of your inner critic/bully?

This is a continuation of my inner bully series.

The inner bully hosts a plethora of toxic friends.  These friends were once nice appropriate preferences that have now become Jehovahian absolutes or musts.   You will also notice that the Bully utilizes primarily binary thought processes full of judgment.

So who are these friends?

• The need to be right!  (and if you are not it is . . . . . )
• The need to feel right! (and if you do not it is . . . . . )
• The need to be accepted! (and if you are not it is . . . . . )
• The need to achieve and prove worthiness (and if you are not it is . . . . . )
• The need to control painful or embarrassing feelings (and if you can not it is . . . . . )
• The fear of failure (if you are fearful it means . . . . . )
• The fear of rejection (if you are rejected it means . . . . . )
• The need to never feel frustration (if you feel frustration that is horrible and should be avoided at all cost . . . . . )

THE CONTAGIOUS COMMITMENT TO THE PURSUIT OF UGLINESS

Every aspect of life follows a process; this is one of the primary truths that lend each of an ability to have some predictability in our lives, to possess a sense of security regarding our daily actions.  Just as a newborn baby is not born completely educated and full of wisdom each of us start out in life as a small child.  Metaphorically some of us grow to adulthood very quickly and others less so, and for some it seems like the process takes forever.

Being born and growing to maturity is a process, all living things follow this process, and it is laughable or the stuff of fiction writers to expect things to occur differently.  A child of four that openly looks at and berates oneself as being incompetent because he or she  cannot drive a car like their parent does might be amusing, but it if they were serious, this would sadly impact the child in the process of growth.  Yet many if not all people do an equivalent thing by raging against themselves for being in process, rather than having completed the process.  This internally focused rage at being in process is in part fueled by the inner bully with a contagious commitment to the pursuit of ugliness.

Wisdom comes through a process just as skills and knowledge.  Each of us learned through a process to be a son or daughter, sister or brother, student, to be responsible for our own grooming.  All aspects of living require time and process to reach maturity or proficiency on any consistent basis.  Each of us is an act of creation and becoming.  Creation is a process, a slow bringing of a thing to perfection.  The artist applies one hue at a time, the sculpture one stroke at a time and over time and their process a piece of art emerges and becomes visible.

Over years of working with students and mental health clients I have discovered that many are thoroughly committed to the pursuit of ugliness in thought.  I have mourned the potential that is blocked and subdued by the wholehearted pursuit of people focused on discovering and magnifying the ugliness, the ineffectual and the incompetent within themselves.  What is the toll on a person’s faith in a world with more abundance and possibility when they are completely and utterly bound to the inner bully who is the dark agent of a contagious commitment to the pursuit of ugliness?

Significant portions of this material are from Self-esteem by Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning (1987).

Do you suffer from an Inner Bully? Do you feel like you are your own worst enemy and suffer from low self esteem? Does your inner voice speak to you, whispering negative sentiments that shape how you perceive yourself? Do you tell yourself I am a failure, I hate myself, I’m worthless, I hate my life and other self-hating thoughts?

End self judgment. Stop hating yourself and feeling worthless.