Friday Prompt: How can I silence my inner critic?

Naming My Inner Critic

So I can tell her to get lost

When I was in the 5th grade, we learned about self-esteem in school. They talked about people who had confidence in themselves and didn’t follow the crowd just to impress people. They sounded like the cool kids.

I was a shy, awkward kid who only knew how to relate to people by making fun of myself. I wanted to make people laugh, and the easiest way was to get them to laugh at me. I never felt like I fit in, and I was rarely invited to any of my so-called friends’ houses to play. I was desperate for someone to like me, to accept me.

I knew I wasn’t one of the cool kids and I was pretty sure that meant I didn’t have any self-esteem.

I added not having self-esteem to my growing pile of failures. It was one more thing that made me “not-normal.” I would curl up in my bed at night and run down a list of things I needed to fix about myself.

The teachers talked about ideas to improve your self-esteem. They talked about negative self-talk and choosing healthier habits. I realised my “fix me” list was this negative self-talk. It was a bad habit and I could choose to change it.

I had listened to that voice in my head every night for as long as I could remember. I wanted to stop thinking these things about myself, but how do you stop yourself from thinking? I never imagined I could control my own thoughts, they were just something that happened.

So, I did what any reasonable 10-year-old kid might do.

I gave the voice in my head a name.

She’s called Brenda.

Why Brenda? Brenda was the name of a lady that my mom knew. I don’t remember how my mom knew her, but I do remember whenever she and mom were talking, Brenda always had a salty comment or a judgmental word to say about nearly everyone. Everything she said seemed to be negative. When I thought about the idea of negative talk, I thought about Brenda.

When something has a name, it has substance and weight. Suddenly the voice in my head wasn’t my own thoughts, it was Brenda. Brenda was someone I could tell to get lost.

I was terrified to stand up for myself to the other kids, the ones I encouraged to laugh at me. The ones that never invited me to play. I wanted them to like me.

There was no reason to worry about if Brenda liked me, I knew she didn’t. She only existed to tell me what was wrong with me.

At first, I thought inventing Brenda was only a way to banish the negative thoughts in my head. It was a way I could fall asleep at night without a big knot in my stomach and tears on my pillow. But Brenda would teach me something much more valuable. Brenda was my first experience setting boundaries.

Brenda couldn’t talk to me when I was at school. I needed to pay attention and Brenda was distracting. My grades improved and I felt more focused.

Brenda wasn’t allowed to talk to me when I was trying to fall asleep. I felt better about myself because I thought less often about how I wasn’t like everyone else.

I could argue with Brenda too. I could pick apart the things on my long list of differences. I could see if these things were really true or if they just seemed true. I stopped making fun of myself so much because I stopped believing all the negative things in my head.

By the time I got to middle school the following year, I was no longer making fun of myself. The school was bigger and had kids from other places. I got a fresh start to make a better impression. I finally started to make some friends.

They weren’t great friends, honestly. I still had a pretty low opinion of myself and there are always those groups that have an opening for a punching bag. But I finally had people in my life that laughed with me more often than they laughed at me. I finally had people who would share their secrets with me and ask for my advice.

Brenda was a lot quieter. Then, she stopped talking.

Negative thoughts would still surface for me. Especially when one of my new friends decided to vent her anger from her home life by turning our group against me. I assumed I had done something wrong, and Brenda was no longer the negative voice in my head. My friend became my bully and it was her voice that rang in my ears.

Eventually, I had enough. I tried to set a boundary. I stood up to my friend/bully and told her to stop. She broke into my locker and destroyed my class project. Looking down at the Gatorade stained confetti that had been my project I knew it was time to talk to an adult.

My parents moved me to a different school. I was broken and afraid of trying to make friends, but I got lucky and good friends found me. I still talk to some of them decades later. They helped me find a positive voice inside my head, one that didn’t need a name because it was my own.

Today I think a lot about Brenda, and about how she helped me when I was young. I recognize now that it might not have been the healthiest option to invent this negative persona, but to 10-year-old me, it seemed like a great idea.

These days, I don’t think I need to be fixed. I have accepted that I can work on habits I want to change, and a lot of the stuff I thought was bad when I was a kid are things I love about myself now. I have grown and learned much better techniques to redirect and examine my negative thoughts.

Sometimes though, when depression kicks in and I find my negative thoughts are louder than everything else, I am glad I can say:

Get lost, Brenda.

As an aside; Nice Brendas — I know you are out there and I love you! I am sure you may meet people called Kelley who are jerks. I hope I’m not one of them!

This personal story was written in response to 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊.’s Friday Prompt.