Being Kind to Yourself
“Stay out of the court of self-judgment, for there is no presumption of innocence.”
― Robert Brault
In my last blog I talked about limiting beliefs and their role in keeping us from attaining our dreams and goals. Underlying our limiting beliefs is self judgment. What I’ve found in my work as a therapist is that oftentimes, my clients don’t realize how much they are judging themselves.
When I ask clients to pay attention to how they are talking to themselves, I ask them to notice the words they use. Are they using “shoulds” and “why’s”? Are they being overly critical, blaming themselves or even belittling with words like “stupid”, “pathetic”, “unlovaveble”, “lazy”?
In my work as a therapist, I have found that most people don’t realize how harsh and critical they are with themselves. Because our brains are hardwired for the negative, it’s easy to be oblivious to our negative self talk.
Judgmental self talk feels familiar and therefore, comfortable. If it’s comfortable and familiar, it isn’t going to stand out to us. But once we pay attention to the words in our head, we are often surprised by how much negativity there is. This self judgment keeps us from growing and living our most fulfilling life.
We tend to subconsciously think that if we judge, we are being self aware and that will make us better-we’ll learn from it or it will prevent us from embarrassment or judgment by others. That’s partly true—our brains learn from experience, but what is your brain learning from negative self talk? More negative self talk and judging. Remember, “What wires together, fires together”? Judging doesn’t move us forward. It keeps us stuck and can even push us further backwards.
Try this exercise:
Bring your hands in front of you, a couple of inches from your face, palms facing you, pinky fingers touching, forming a barrier.
Now, look strait ahead. What do you see? You will only see the palms of your hands and a very little bit of the perimeter outside of them. Just enough to know there’s something in front of them, but not enough to make out the full picture or details.
Now bring your palms closer to your face and keep moving them, but don’t touch your face and don’t move your head. Is it possible to keep bringing your palms towards your face without touching it or moving your head backwards? Eventually your hands will be on your face and your head will be bent backwards. This is what judgment does. It gets on us and pushes us backwards, keeping us stuck in the negativity with no way to see around it.
Oftentimes judgment leads to rule making.
It can be a vicious cycle. We judge ourselves and then that judgment becomes a rule:
“I’m not good enough, so I shouldn’t try”
“I can’t because I will probably fail”
“They are smarter than I am, so I shouldn’t speak.”
Do you see how these things prevent us from trying new things, from moving forward?
When we make rules, we believe they are true and that they can’t be broken or changed. The reality is, if you made the rule, you can change the rule- or even discard it all together!—-Remember-“Just because you think it, doesn’t mean it’s true!”
By using curiosity without judgment, noticing the words we use for ourselves and the rules we’ve made, reflecting on where the rules came from, we can begin to notice our negative self talk and judgment, label it, and reframe it. Then it begins to move out of the way, creating space for grace, allowing us to step forward, to grow, to try new things.
Pay attention to how you talk to yourself. Would you talk to your best friend that way? Probably not. Reframe your beliefs about yourself. Remember, you don’t have to believe the reframe yet. You just have to do it. Be your own best friend and give yourself the grace and space to make mistakes without judgment, to validate yourself and to grow in confidence and self esteem. Take that first step forward, towards self respect. You’ll never regret being kind to yourself.
