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Invite the Lions In With Self-Criticism

  • Writer: Paula Ralph
    Paula Ralph
  • May 7, 2018
  • 4 min read


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I was with a friend the other day and she was putting her lipstick on using the rear view mirror of the car. She did a fine job of it – but as she was turning the mirror back to the original position she said ‘Ugh, you are looking so old now.’ Wow I said! That’s incredibly uplifting isn’t it. She didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.


We have been trained to beat ourselves up continuously when we are not doing anything ‘wrong’. And we are exquisitely good at it. This behaviour has been going on for a long, long time.


How often do you take the part of the berated? ‘I’m so fat/stupid/emotional,’ ‘I got it wrong again,’ ‘I’m looking older.’ We are so good at this that it is an unconscious reflex now. In fact, nobody can do as good a job at putting ourselves down as.....ourselves!


Self-criticism is an insidious form of stress and is directly linked to depression.

Stress is an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism to help us escape threats when we are at risk. It switches on the physiological parts we have for when we need to run for our lives. This being the surge of adrenaline and cortisol that make our muscles move faster, breathing faster and the heart beating faster. This surge turns off the ability to digest our food, relax and engage in fulfilling sexual activity.


So when we are continually stressing ourselves out with our own criticism, we are, in effect telling ourselves that we need to get a move on and really quickly. Get our hearts beating faster, blood pressure up etc.


Our bodies react to negative self-evaluations as if we were under attack from that lion.

Self-criticism is associated with negative health outcomes, both mental and physical, and also with loneliness – yes, self-criticism is not just saying that you are risk, it is also saying ‘I am lost.’



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And here is one weird thing that many women discover – they need their self-criticism to stay motivated. As if a little bit of torture will help them be ‘better’. ‘If I stop beating myself up for the ways I’m not perfect, that’s like admitting to the world and to myself that I’ll never be perfect, that I’m permanently inadequate! I need my self-criticism in order to maintain hope and to motivate myself to get better.’


As if stopping the criticising ourselves will make us fail forever! That is like saying that I can’t stop running or fighting or playing dead or that lion will eat me. Ahem – what lion?

This is a hideous cultural message that we have entrenched within us and as irrational as it is, we have made it rational.


It sure ain’t rational.

What might happen if you started to show yourself some kindness and compassion? If you stopped running from yourself and stopped beating yourself up? Put up the white flag of self-acceptance and compassion?


For somebody not trained in marathon running, too much running can give them injuries and the way to heal those injuries would be to stop, rest, and apply compassion.


So a million miles from motivating us to get better, self-criticism makes us more sick and it is time to stop that behaviour.


Notice the voice you use when you criticise yourself. Notice the tempo, the pitch and the type of language you use. Is it the voice of yourself? Often it isn’t. It could be your father, mother, an aunt, a teacher or anybody. Now it is up to you to do something with that voice. It can be changed and you can start to heal.


Imagine your own loving voice coming in over top of the ‘Ugh, my nose is ugly,’ with ‘I’m okay and safe and whole.’ Or ‘I’m home.’


Change can happen. Start to feel confident – fake it until you become it. After all who are those voices to tell you how to feel, when you are really quite amazing as you are.

So my friend, in the car asked me what I was talking about. And it turns out that she hadn’t a clue what she had said about her appearance. She couldn’t believe that she had spoken to herself in a way that she would never speak to anybody else. And then she started to notice other times where she was less than complimentary to herself. It even became a game to catch herself out.


It is about learning to respect yourself, your body and to treat it with love, living joyfully inside it, as it is today.


If you think you could live more joyfully within the you that is you, but feel a bit stuck on how to do that, contact me. There sure is more juice to be squeezed out of life and it would be my pleasure to help you do that. I offer a 9 month Loving Your Life journey where we find that juice, zest and vitality over a series of topics, or 1:1 coaching for when there are specific issues you would like to work on.

 
 
 

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