I’ve Learned to Replace My Self-Critical Voice with a Self-Loving One
I owe it all to becoming my own loving parent
My mom and dad were crappy parents. They weren’t bad people, but they had zero emotional intelligence. They were incapable of teaching me to be self-loving or giving me emotional support.
Here’s an example.
When I was 6 or 7 years old, I was diagnosed as having a speech impediment. From my classmate's perspective, I talked “funny” and they sure let me know about it. They viciously teased me, pretty much daily.
I can’t recall a single time I was comforted by my parents when I came home emotionally distraught. I don’t recall them even noticing.
The only times I can recollect my parents giving me positive attention was when I came home with straight A’s on my report cards. And once a year, when they took me to Coney Island Amusement Park to celebrate my birthday.
Other than that, I felt like the invisible child.
The lessons I took away from my childhood neglect were:
- Keep my feelings to myself. Nobody is interested.
- Self-worth is all about what I accomplish. It has nothing to do with the effort I put in.
- If someone has a problem with me, I must have done something wrong to cause it.
- I’m better off playing life safe than showing my authentic self to the world.
I stepped into my adulthood believing there was something fundamentally wrong with me.
The perfect foundation for an active self-critical voice.
Up until the last few years, I religiously applied my childhood lessons to my adult life. I trusted my self-critical voice knew what it was talking about — that it was an expert on me.
It’s no wonder I was a very unhappy person.
Who wouldn’t be — I was criticizing myself at every available opportunity, personalizing the subtlest hint of criticism or disapproval, keeping all my feelings to myself and leaving them to eat away at me.
Here Is What Turned My Life Around
I found another voice in my head. I call it the voice of my inner loving parent.
Adult me now has a voice in my head that gives me the love and supportive guidance I didn’t receive when I was a kid.
The voice of my inner loving parent speaks the truth about me, always in the gentlest of ways. As opposed to the voice of my inner-critic, which speaks nothing but harsh lies.
The voice of my inner loving parent tells me I’m a sweet and lovable guy exactly as I am — flaws and all.
It would never in a million years think of criticizing me.
If I feel upset and overwhelmed by my feelings, it hugs me with words, telling me: I’m sorry, hon. You look so upset. Come here and tell me all about it.
If I feel bad about myself because someone treated me poorly, it tells me: I know it’s hard, but try not to take it personally. Everyone is not going to like you. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes people will treat you unkindly. That says nothing about you and everything about them.
I sure wish that’s how my parents spoke to me when I was growing up. If they had, I wouldn’t have struggled so much for my entire adult life.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. However, looking at the flip side, it set the stage for me to learn a life-changing lesson.
I don’t need external approval to feel good about myself.
I’ve never felt so empowered. So optimistic and full of hope. I’m ready to soar.
How I Discovered the Voice of My Inner Loving Parent
I owe it all to my psychotherapist, who suggested I attend meetings of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACoA).
The primary philosophy of ACoA is to learn to reparent oneself. Two foundational sections of their literature are The Problem and The Solution.
Here is a brief summary of them.
The Problem:
We had come to feel isolated and uneasy with other people, especially authority figures. To protect ourselves, we became people-pleasers, even though we lost our own identities in the process. All the same we would mistake any personal criticism as a threat.
The Solution:
The solution is to become your own loving parent — to reparent yourself with gentleness, humor, love, and respect. You will find freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the shame and blame that are carryovers from the past. You will become an adult who is imprisoned no longer by childhood reactions.
How I Access the Voice of My Internal Loving Parent
I do it via writing out dialogues between my internal loving parent (LP) and my wounded child (WC). That’s the part of me that has yet to fully heal from the lessons I took away from my childhood.
When something happens in my life that triggers my wounded child to go into self-attack mode, I open my laptop, double-click on my Loving Parent Dialog file, and start typing away.
Here’s where the magic happens.
I have consistently found that the very instant I key in the two letters “LP”, my self-critical voice shuts up and retreats to the corner.
That’s because I’ve stepped into the mindset of my loving parent. My inner critic detects that shift and knows he can’t compete with my inner parent’s love — that he would only be fighting a losing battle.
My Wish for You
First and foremost, I wish you the peace of mind which comes along with replacing your self-critical voice with a self-loving one.
I don’t care how you get there. No doubt, there are many approaches that may be effective. I’m not advocating my approach over any other.
I wrote this article to share what’s worked amazingly well for me, with the hope you’ll consider it as an option.
Even if my approach doesn’t resonate with you, I’d be more than happy if my article has motivated you to at least question the messages your inner critical voice tells you about yourself. That’s a major step in the right direction.
Better yet, I’d be thrilled if you’re now telling yourself: Enough is enough. I may not be perfect, but I’m a hell of a good person. I deserve better than this, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to figure out a way to treat myself with the loving-kindness I deserve.
I wish you luck on your journey.
Kind regards,
Art