It's just me

closet-keys:

cptsdwillgraham:

cherrehc:

closet-keys:

You know all those posts about ways to make it easier to tell your mean inner voice to shut up? Like “imagine they’re an annoying kid on x-box” or “imagine they’re trump” or “give them an annoying name” etc.

If those things work for you don’t read on. If they don’t, though, and telling them to shut up doesn’t make your self criticism go away, it just makes it challenge you and spiral further into upsetting thoughts—

I really recommend looking into Internal Family Systems therapy.

Instead of being about shutting up your inner critical voice, you listen to it and figure out what part of you is saying that and why, and then you address the root causes of those fears and insecurities

For example, say you have the thought “ugh I look disgusting today” and telling that voice to shut up might make it just fire back with “I’m repulsive, I’m worthless, I should die” and get progressively more extreme and negative

An IFS model might identify that voice as a Part that sees your physical body as an objectified signifier of your worth. You can then address the Part and ask “who taught you that?” or “what are you afraid will happen if you like your body? Did someone hurt you for your body? Do you think if you hurt yourself first they won’t have reason to hurt you? Maybe you trying to hurt yourself is actually you wanting to protect yourself from a greater harm from someone else. Maybe you just want to be safe. That’s okay, you deserve to feel safe. And I have other ways to feel safe now besides self harm, I’ve learned new things to do. Let’s do those.”

Then you’ve made that part feel addressed so it settles down and let’s you take care of it instead of getting louder and more defensive and agitated. So the voice in your head will stop being cruel and find healthier ways to address its fears.

And of course, this is really a strategy for you to confront the fears beneath your self hatred and accept and work through them instead of trying to suppress them with more anger and self hatred at having those fears in the first place.

I hadn’t thought about it that way, but that’s an interesting way to look at it… how do you get to those root-cause questions? It seems like that takes a LOT of digging and knowing yourself or why the critic’s saying what it says to get to the point that you can address those call-outs in such a pointed way.

The best I’ve been able to figure out so far has been the whole, “well, my puppy-ass brain peed on the carpet again. Time to put it back on the newspaper and gently tell it that it’s okay it made a mistake and try again.” (And I’ve fallen off the horse on even that, haha!)

ime a good place to start is to ask yourself some information gathering questions:

• in what situations in the past have i felt this way [the sentiment the voice is expressing] before? were there any that were recurrent or made a particularly big impression?
  
• in what situations in the past has somebody told me this before? was it someone who had an important role in my life/development?
  
• what is the action urge associated with this? what does this part want me to do to resolve the problem? what do i feel like that action would change or accomplish?
  
• what triggered this? was i just in a situation or thinking about a situation that was stressful or upsetting OR that reminded me of one that was? when have i been in this situation before? what happened last time? what messages did i internalize?

word of caution: if you’re very traumatized or dissociative it may not always be safe to get right into this and there may be work you want to do to make your Parts less volatile before trying it. in that case, just trying to be compassionate to yourself and gently remind the upset part of you that you are safe, deserving of care, a good person, etc can be a good start.

excellent addition, thank you <3 

(via jaggedarchetypes)