Renee slumped into her bed after a long day which included a day of work then a night of conflict at home. She told herself that she wouldn’t yell at her 11 and 9 year old children about homework, cleaning their rooms or the nightly battle of dinner, bath and bedtime by 9 pm. She had yelled and as she lay in bed she went over every mistake, the battle of wits and then began berating herself.
“I’m a terrible mother! I try and try but instead of being patient, I yell, fight with them. No matter what I try, I fail. I’m a failure.” Her inner voice tells her night after night.
Inner Voice
We have continual voice in our head which I often think of as the tickertape that always plays on the bottom of news programs. It may sound like, “I need to get this one thing done before I can finish the assignment,” or “Don’t forget to pick up milk before you go home.”
The voice can be reminders of things to do or pick up in the day. It can also be problem solving as we are trying to work out a task such as working on the outline of an article. Sometimes that voice is planning such as the steps to make a meal or a problem from work. Other times it may be the voice that says, “get up, you have sat too long.”
As you are reading this it is quite likely that you tuned into that voice as you read. What was it saying to you? Or maybe you were trying to ignore it so that you can concentrate on reading. This inner voice is often helpful to remind us of what we need to do.
The voices that I will be talking about are our own voices that are the thoughts that we have constantly and not the voices associated with hallucinations.
Not all inner voices are helpful.
Inner Constructive Critic
This voice is about critiquing our performance at something. When we complete a task or in the midst of a task, the voice is the inner judge evaluating our effectiveness. For example, as I type I make mistakes with keystrokes. The inner critic might chime in with how often I mistype particular words and how repetition is reinforcing the mistake.
Or as I get older my typing skills have decreased markedly requiring me to take more time and awareness to complete as compared to me a few years ago. That criticism is quite helpful to realize that I may need more time or maybe consider other ways to get words onto a page such as speak to text.
The critic in this case is helpful as it pointed out areas of change or repeated mistakes that may require effort to correct. In this case the constructive critic is really doing it’s job which is to evaluate so that each of us can make improvements, adjustments or judge when it is time to ask for help to complete a task.
Renee’s inner voice wasn’t helpful. She made evaluations of herself that were irrational and hurtful. When the inner voice is an inner bully that’s the problem.
Inner Bully
To bully is to seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce. Renee wasn’t trying to correct a mistake but instead she was harming herself by condemning herself. You could argue that she was intimating towards herself and trying to coerce herself to stop yelling. Inner bully often results in strongly negative emotional states such as shame, depression, or anger towards self.
Here is the test to determine if it is an inner constructive critic vs an inner bully: If you said those things that you said to yourself to someone else, could they say that you were being a bully towards them? If you can imagine that you saying that to someone else might lead to the receiver to want to punch you in the nose, then it is bullying vs constructive.
The role of the inner bully seems to be the same as the constructive critic – to make changes in our behavior. But the inner bully is only about harm.
Role of Bully vs Critic
On the surface Renee’s inner bullying seems that it is trying to fix things. Here is how it typically goes:
We say something awful to ourselves to motivate us to do better. We feel awful about ourselves after failing once more. When we feel awful about ourselves we tend to focus on the negative feelings more than on the corrective action. In other words, we are not motivated to make change. Instead we may conclude that we can’t stand feeling bad and want to hide, sleep, avoid, distract or suppress the negative feeling away. The method of trying to rid ourselves of the negative feelings often restarts the cycle all over again.
Renee cried because of her perceived failings and felt terrible. She picked up her phone and started to look up parenting techniques but the inner bully wouldn’t let up. She couldn’t focus on the words that she had attempted to read and sometimes did read many times. The bully reminding her that she has never tried with any success what the experts suggest. She hated herself for not being able to concentrate, can’t stand feeling so ashamed and then finally turned to Facebook (Snapchat, TicToc, etc) to distract herself.
She finally fell asleep close to midnight. She woke up late, tired and frantic. She started another day of trying to rush the kids through the morning routines, get to work and get through a day on not enough sleep. Then like usual on her way home she told herself that she wouldn’t yell.
The bully did it’s job. The job wasn’t to motivate, improve or adjust any behavior. Instead the bully’s job is to harm, intimidate and coerce.
All the Problems of the Inner Bully
Bullying yourself is a problem. We aren’t motivated by the coach that cusses at us. Let’s get into why the inner bully is a problem
FHB
Renee started her bullying of herself with “I AM a bad parent.” Renee, like many of us was making the mental mistake of confusing a role with herself. There is only one accurate I am statement and that is, “I am a fallible human being (FHB)” or “we are all fallible human beings.” Fallible as it really is the nature of living things especially human beings to make mistakes. We cannot be any better than any other human being at being a human being.
When we bully ourselves with statements of I am a bad _____ we prevent any change whatsoever. If we are a bad _____ then how can we not be the bad ______ after all that is ALL that we are. We aren’t what we do. Renee is a fallible human being and then she has many roles – mother, daughter, worker, co-worker, wife/partner, runner, baker, gardener, collector of stamps, etc. It is helpful to think if these roles as things we do vs who we are.
Looking at what Renee said, she had two inaccurate and irrational “I am” statements. I am a bad mother and I am a failure. To rethink these statements using the FHB, her statements may sounds more like: “I am a fallible human being and my goal is to have a peaceful home where everyone is doing what they are supposed to do most of the time. I find that I am having difficulties with effective parenting.”
Now that she rephrased her “I am” statements, then she can look at what she wants to have happen in her role as parent. She wants her home to peaceful (goal) so without yelling, battling children to do their chores and take care of their responsibilities most of the time. Yelling, battling and throwing fits with the children aren’t meeting her goals and she doesn’t want to spend her nights fighting with them.
She is also in a position to evaluate what she is doing now and what is missing. Maybe she really doesn’t know what it takes to get the kids to behave. Now she can calmly research effective parenting strategies without the distraction of negative self-talk interrupting her concentration.
Myth of Self Esteem
This idea of self esteem came out in 1890 and became a movement in the 1960’s. Self-esteem is defined as our evaluation of our self worth or self value. The basic idea is that when we feel good about ourselves then we aren’t going to make choices that are difficult for us. In reality it is a concept that is ambiguous and often detrimental.
We are worthy as a living creature as all living creatures are worthy. No one of us living beings is more worthy or valuable than other living beings. We may contribute different things to society but none of us are less valuable. Again it comes back to not one of us is any better than any other of us human beings at being a human being and as such each and every one of have worth.
“You matter because you are just you. You just matter because you are one of the billions and billions of the particles that create the universe.”
If you want to hear her entire talk of It’s Not Personal, click here.Ven. Dr. Pannavati, a former Christian pastor, is co-founder and co-Abbot of Embracing-Simplicity Hermitage in Hendersonville, NC.
What does it even mean to esteem the self? I have high regard or esteem for my pie baking skills. Why? Because I make really good pies. Everyone who eats a slice of one of my pies has many great things to say. I have low regard or esteem for my basketball skills. I’m 57, 5’2″ tall and can’t shoot, dribble, or run. People will pay money to watch Shaq or LaBron play, but not me.
All the problems with self esteem
Inflated Self Esteem
I once belonged to a writing critique group called “She Ain’t No Cadillac” and the story of the title is an exemplification of inflated self esteem. The founders worked in a service business and often a young female employee came to work singing the song She Ain’t No Cadillac. Her parents told her that she had a wonderful voice but in reality she didn’t. One day a customer criticized her and told her to stop singing as she couldn’t sing well. The writing group wanted its members to evaluate one another accurately so that as writers they could grow in skill and competence.
The process of evaluation is a role within building confidence. When we get accurate feedback we are in a better position to more accurately assess our competence at a thing. Self evaluation is subjective and we can over and under assess our abilities. When groups have worked to improve self esteem unrelated to ability, they have a lot of over confident and under performing people.
When we work on our competence and then accurately evaluate our effectiveness at performing, then we are getting somewhere. If Joe has never asked a girl out on a date, it would be accurate to say that he lacks competence in that area. If Joe made a goal to ask a 100 women out on dates and then did so, he would likely build some competence and therefore confidence in talking to women.
Overgenralization
Self Esteem is very general. We can look at specific things that we do or traits that we have and assess those, but when we evaluate the entirety of self that can lead to problems. The term is so vague how do you know what it is even referring to. Also it is going to fluctuate wildly.
Renee may say that she is so bad at parenting that she has low self esteem. However let’s say that one week the kids do what they are supposed to, she doesn’t yell and everyone gets to bed on time. Would she then have higher self esteem? Then what if that same week she gets written up at work and is put on administrative leave for a few days. Does that mean that she has low self esteem?
Intelligent sounding noise
A quick internet search returned with a bunch of articles about low self esteem and depression. That’s not a surprise. If someone goes about bullying themselves on all their perceived failings, it is no wonder that they would begin to have hopeless thoughts that they can never get any better? The articles suggest that low self esteem is the cause of depression when in reality the inner bullying over time coupled with a dose of hopeless thinking is the cause of depressive feelings in this case for those with a normal healthy brain. Then once we are down, we lack motivation thanks to the hopeless thinking and the inner bully has a hey day with heaping more insults at us.
Now if it were a cause and effect of low self esteem and depression then the solution seems simple – raise someone’s self esteem. Tell someone how great they are and problem solved. Does that work? Not really and not for long. The internal bully becomes the external voice.
When someone does begin to feel better about themselves, they report higher self esteem. But without fixing the inner bully as soon as something goes wrong, then bully starts in and soon the person reports low self esteem or self worth once more.
Making Changes
To start, it is important to be aware of the inner bully. What is the inner bully saying to you? And in what situations? Whose voice is it? Sometimes it is just our own voice but sometimes if we have had a caregiver/parent in childhood who was a bully, that voice can include those bully statements.
Take a moment now and write out as many as you can think of or your top few that repeat. Interestingly enough, most of the thoughts that we have on a daily basis are repeated thoughts. Different researchers report different numbers from 6000 to 60,000 thoughts per day of which somewhere near 75% are negative and 60 – 90% are repetitive. The exact numbers aren’t as important as the realization that we can have lots of thoughts, most of which are negative evaluations and most are repeated over and over.
You could say that to bully ourselves is rather common. Not at all helpful. But common.
Facts are our Friends
When we make an irrational assertion, one of the best ways to counter that assertion is by finding facts. For example, let’s say that someone has a fear of house fires. The irrational fear may lead someone to unplug everything before leaving the house, check the house multiple times or even return home to check again. Their brain is believing that house fire is 100% going to happen and they have to do everything to stop it.
Is it possible to die in a house fire? Yes. 2620 people die every year on average in the United States in fires. What is the actual probability that a person can die in a house fire? Considering that there are 330 million people living in the United States the chances of dying in a house fire are 0.000000793%. That is such a small odd so does it make sense to continue heroic efforts to prevent a fire? It is low due to improvements and cautions so we do our due diligence and completely skip the heroic efforts and checking behaviors.
When we confront our irrational beliefs with facts, it becomes much harder to maintain those beliefs.
4 A’s
Self evaluation is quite a subjective process so my teacher Dr. Pucci developed a tool that is very helpful in self evaluation and being accurate.
The 4A’s – Accurate Assessment of our Attributes and Abilities
RLT-4As-page-fillable_distributedDownload
This is a fact finding mission. You will do this and you will ask 3 other people (minimum) whose opinions are important to you to do this. One client, Dawn, had an inner bully that was so off base and when she did this activity she wanted to discard herself, her children, her husband and me. She eventfully had 15 people at last count complete this and she still wanted to dispute it. She finally had to accept that what people said about her attributes and abilities were true because they all included most of the same traits and skills.
ATTRIBUTE
An attribute is a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something. These are qualities within us. Examples may be: good listener, bubbly, artistic, athletic, patient.
ABILITY
An ability is a thing that we do well. Some examples may be: gives good advice, great cook, great singer, good writer, good friend.
WHY GET HELP?
When we listen to the inner bully, we may not accurately see all the traits and abilities that we do well. We can list out our perceived failings and may struggle with seeing the positive. That’s because we are making the mental mistake of discounting the positive. Let’s say that Jennifer believes that she is dumb. Then she gets a good grade on a test or assignment. Then she may say, “Oh that doesn’t mean I’m not dumb, the teacher likes me and that’s a pity grade.” Or that it was easy and everyone passed it. That’s why having other people also complete this for you is very helpful.
The number of people who do this is arbitrary. I pick three so that we have enough to look for the patterns. You could ask as many as Dawn did. Now if your support system is very small then you may have only a couple.
Word of warning!!! Refuse to pick people who you know have bullied you in the past. Sometimes the first bully is a parent so it isn’t helpful to have that same parent complete this. The list is about accurately defining your attributes and abilities and not a laundry list of your perceived failings.
LOOKING FOR THE PATTERNS
Once you collect all the 4A’s including the one you do for yourself, then read them. If the inner bully pipes up, just tell it to shut up as you are in charge and not it. Then really see these statements. Your closest people believe these things about you. They may have identified some different ones than others as they may value different aspects of you. And there are likely similarities.
AMMUNITION
Now you are armed against that bully!
You know that the bully isn’t around to motivate but to do harm. You know that self evaluation is subjective and self esteem as a concept is problematic. Instead you now have an accurate assessment or facts about yourself from you and trusted others.
Disputing the Bully
It is better to dispute that inner bully before it starts in with its litany of insults. Go back to that list that you created at the beginning. What you are going to do is to pretend that you are a defense attorney arguing in front of the judge after being accused of these things the inner bully said to you.
To do this, use facts and as many as you can. Be sure to replace any I am statements with “I am a fallible human being….” Use the 4A’s and refuse to discount the positive and instead look for times in your life when you did adequately what the inner bully said you were “bad” at.
Here is what Renee did to dispute her inner bully:
Problem thought from the inner bully: “I’m a terrible mother! I try and try but instead of being patient, I yell, fight with them. No matter what I try, I fail. I’m a failure.” Her inner voice tells her night after night.
Rational replacement: I am a fallible human being and my goal is to have a peaceful home where everyone is doing what they are supposed to do most of the time. I find that I am having difficulties with effective parenting. I didn’t have a great model growing up and realize that many of the things I said to myself were from my parents. My parenting skills do need help. I know that I can learn, that I’m not a failure after all I have a degree, teachers and bosses have given me compliments and everyone on my 4A’s included smart of intelligent. I realize too that in order to be a nurse, I went to school and learned. I haven’t learned effective parenting so it is no wonder that I wasn’t effective. Since I don’t know what I don’t know, I need to learn. I found a parenting course with a local community college that I plan to enroll in. And in the meantime, I am kind to myself if I make mistakes as I learn.
Get Pragmatic
Renee wasn’t effective at parenting and lacked the knowledge. In her replacement thought she added that she was going to take a class on effective parenting strategies. When you complete your replacement thought, if you identified that you lack a skill, or need a refresher, include a pragmatic or realistic and doable activity to gain the skills.
Here are some examples: take a class in person or course online, join a group online, read a self-book or 2 or 3, join a gym, seek professional help, hire a consultant or coach, implement a plan or strategy.
Want to Learn More?
If you would like to learn more, please look at other articles or my website at Rational Lifestyle Consulting.
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