My critical inner voice..

For me, the expression “you are your own worst enemy” holds a lot of truth. It’s a painful reality that much of what limits me in my life is my own feelings of unworthiness and self-hatred. “I hate myself” is a fairly common thought.

Where do these feelings come from? How do they influence me? How can I push past them to live a life free of the harsh attitudes of my inner critic?

I see myself as different, not in some positive or special way, but in a negative sense.  I believe people who seem well-adjusted and well-liked in their social circles also like me,  have deep-seated feelings of being an outcast.

I have a “real self,” the part of me that is self-accepting, goal-directed and life-affirming as well as an “anti-self,” a side of me that is self-hating, self-denying, paranoid and suspicious. The anti-self is expressed as my critical inner voice. 

My critical inner voice is like my internal coach negatively commentating on my life, influencing how I behave and how I feel about myself. It’s there to undermine my goals, It’s there to undercut my accomplishments, It’s there to sabotage my relationships, It’s even there to criticize those close to me.  Finally, this voice can seem self-soothing, coddling me yet encouraging me to act in ways that are self-destructive, then punishing me for messing up.

We could say I have hated myself for a very long time.

My struggle with weight as a teenager, even though I was actually not even big, but to me so was is one of the root causes of this. 

As a teenager, I was overwhelmingly self conscious, actually being honest I still am.  I look at my two nephews and worry, I cannot help it, I wonder will they feel sad and lonely and as serious about life as I did when I was at school.  I hope if they do they will find someone to talk too, if not their parents then Kim and I.  I have a great overwhelming compassion to any child or teenager that suffered how I did, trying desperately to find comfort in their own skin.   

It’s a feeling, ineffable, a longing, an ache, it's wanting to find some salvation from loneliness and pain and loss.  My teenage years has given me an inner compassion, for when I look at children now who are wrestling with eating disorders, obesity, or just a general sadness or loneliness they can't define.

It took me a very very long time and a lot of hardwork on my self esteem to get to this point aged 39.  Believe me, I still have a long way to go. 

Recently, I have done a very honest and open blog post concerning treatment and an increase in my weight and I don't have to admit that sometimes my inner-fat-child still wants to stay indoors.  So, there’s this dance I do around accepting my body for what it is vs. working really hard to change it; or, lapsing into treating it badly with old self-destructive tendencies that I’ve spent years trying to change.

It's a very long, struggling, strange trip to be inside a body, to have a body, to want to be somebody, to have a belief about my body, true or not.  To identify with it, live with it, understand it. To love it or hate it. To take care of it or destroy it.

My wife loves me for more than my body, it's part of me and is part of what makes me, every scar tells a story.    

To me, there's only one choice: love my body, for its the only bloody one I have. 

I have read somewhere that it is a sort of weird perfection that the opportunity for depth, understanding, and love for ourselves can evolve from our loneliness.

I only speak for myself and I know that in my life, ever since I was a kid, I’ve felt lonely or alone or so lonesome I could cry.  I have embraced this feeling fully and if when you are reading this you, yourself are open and honest and can admit a time you have felt alone, felt ugly, felt worthless or you have just felt you have wanted something or even wanted someone so badly that at some point you struggled to breath, struggled to stand up straight then I know how you feel.  

I have felt all of these things and felt like I was going crazy because of it.

Sometimes I have thought that I am those things.

Sometimes I have believed I am ugly and alone and worthless and afraid and consumed with need and desperation.

But..... I am me and I am so much more.

At 39, 8 years into a chronic condition, I am courageous, I am loving, I am funny, I am desperately awkward, I am hopelessly weird, I behave like I have terrets and I should not socially be left alone for fear of what I come out with, but I am me.  I know all these things about me because I accept the worst parts of me and the parts of me that drive me insane.   

I know that I need to remain being honest with myself because it's important to me.  I don't want to go through my life feeling like there is something wrong with me because it seems like so many other of the billions of beautiful people on this planet have their shit figured out.  

I don't have it figured out. But I'm trying.  I am not afraid to continue to try.  I know I am not alone.