The Mindful Self-Express

Great article! Would you think a lack of self-knowledge or awareness causes the voices in our heads to go bad? If so how would you fix this?

@2gnoME

I think a lack of self-awareness can make us less consciously aware of the inner critic that drives our behavior. Being more aware of our inner dialogue can help us to evaluate the truth of the harsh criticisms based on objective criteria and gain insight into the emotions driving these self-critical responses. To help clients gain more self-awareness, I use both Mindfulness and Cognitive Therapy techniques. Clients learn how to watch their thoughts with less reactivity or generate alternative, positive views of the situation.

What would you suggest to someone that in their childhood, recognised their family was dysfunctional and because of this took it upon themselves to break-the-cycle of abuse by learning how to take care of themselves and learn how to heal from their past and be a polyanna and eventually learn proper respect and love for self and others. This person (me) falls in love with someone wonderful and with that person's warm, loving family but things appear they may not work out but there is hope for the future. The question is WHY, if I have concluded from this experience that wow, I am capable of being in love and loved in a wonderful way and so now I will move foreward content in my own skin and with hope for the future, but so suddenly after damage these wonderful acknowledgements, push any feelings of love away and continue to sabotage myself for months after, turning this learning experience into disaster?

Dear Tara,
I applaud you for recognizing and trying to right a negative childhood cycle. It sounds like you have worked hard to learn to trust and take care of yourself. You now seem to be facing a situation that is challenging your coping skills and perhaps re-triggering old traumas. It is often difficult to deal with dysfunctional or abusive childhood experiences without some professional help and support. You might want to consult a therapist in your area for an evaluation. The Psychology Today website has a good list of counselors and is searchable by area code.

Dear Tara,
I applaud you for recognizing and trying to right a negative childhood cycle. It sounds like you have worked hard to learn to trust and take care of yourself. You now seem to be facing a situation that is challenging your coping skills and perhaps re-triggering old traumas. It is often difficult to deal with dysfunctional or abusive childhood experiences without some professional help and support. You might want to consult a therapist in your area for an evaluation. The Psychology Today website has a good list of counselors and is searchable by area code.

Dear Melanie,
Thank you very much for your response.
I am currently seeing a therapist to try to figure this situation out and although I am seeing a therapist, I hope you don't mind me asking one more question after a long story...
When I was a child, I dreamed of being a mother and treating my children right. I even had names for them picked out like many of us do as kids. As a child, I looked forward to my future and turned every negative situation into a positive one to the best of my ability. I can relate to Polyanna. I am a stubborn, determined fighter with strong faith in God and fortunate to have a strong mind. These are what have enabled me to move forward though so much and only allow myself to mindfully absorb good things in life around me. I have continued with this determined mindset into my adult life of responsibility and independence. I learned how to eventually conquer severe anxiety without medicine to the dismay of some, eat very healthy to prevent stress induced diseases, always keep busy and rest when needed and help others. Through this process I learned how to sympathize with others, volunteer my time doing good things, experience everything good and smile, take one day at a time and even heal my body with good food, high-quality vitamins and exercise. Because of some health issues I was developing due to extreme stress on my body from anxiety, I discovered that many diseases are caused by emotional problems. A year ago, I was happy to acknowledge that I felt better than I ever had for the first time, emotionally, spiritually, mentally and physically and I had great peace of mind with myself. I finally had much to share with others, experiences, character, love and joy.
As you read in my prior email, this suddenly changed a year ago. Now I am left disgusted with myself because I knew better than to distroy my self-worth just because someone doesn't love me in return, but I destroyed it anyways because I was upset at what I percieved as a "lack of love" and support from the people around me in my life at the time. (to explain: I had been away for half a year to volunteer with a bible teaching program in Spanish [warm, fun-loving people & awesome experience] and then I returned to my own home congregation) I immaturely rebrought up past issues that I have already dealt with and moved on from and knowingly made myself feel guilty about them so I could be depressed and need attention from others. I didn't want to be strong. I really did become depressed to the point where I actually thought I had lost my relationship with God and I was going to turn into a horrible abusive person and go crazy and I didn't want to live anymore. Now that to me is sad and I am dumbfounded with myself because I have came through so much hardship and trials with faith in God and support from others and I have NEVER intentionally hurt myself or others before and I never thought I would hurt myself.
Literally, just a year ago, at the age of twenty six, I was still a strong-spirited, giving and fun-loving child at heart who loves to be around others with a kindred spirit. Now I fear I will never have this again after this excruciating experience of knowlingly breaking down all my self earned dignity, being disrespectful to God and making myself believe I was going to turn into a terrible person, just so I could be selfishly miserable for no good reason and have nothing left to give to others. Others are going through way worse things than I have gone through and with less support. I have nothing to complain about. Many people as well as God have been very kind to me throughout my life.
I completely went against myself, my values and who I had proudly become. Let me tell you, I have suffered and am still suffering from knots in my stomache from extreme guilt, remembering the horrible fears and thoughts I had and bad memories of how low I allowed myself to get.
So, after all this reading, and no pressure on you, do you have any suggestions of how I can redeem myself and forgive myself and trust myself again and move on?

Dear Melanie,
My wife, Rosalie, and I both enjoyed reading your Psychology Today article about the voices in your head and the Inner Critic. What you describe so clearly in the article relates very well to a concept and dynamics with which we have worked since 1977. At that time, we met John Cooper, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist who discarded his psychoanalytic training for gestalt, TA, and visual imagery. He also taught us his concept of the Judge (Inner Terrorist). Having had 3 psychoanalytic courses with Bruno Bettelheim at the U. of Chicago, at first, I didn’t fully appreciate what Cooper had created with his Judge concept compared with the superego. However, once I had unleashed the full wrath of my own Judge and felt the utter terror of that experience, I became convinced that Cooper was on to something extraordinary. One of Cooper’s colleagues was a gifted art therapist who could bring out the powerful image of a person’s Judge in a drawing or clay sculpt. In imagery and art form, the Judge could be experienced as a powerful psychological entity that elicits an intense stress response. Attaching an image to the critical judgmental verbal messages of the Judge made it possible for a person to confront his/her Judge and “shrink” its destructive domineering effect on the person’s life.
When we brought in the Inner Child concept from the addiction field, we began to create a simple, but powerful model of what we call the “inner psychological drama.” In this psychological model, the Inner Child carries the destructive verbal psychological messages together with the muscle tension and other stress reactions from childhood. The Judge is inherently a negative psychological entity that is anti-life, anti-spirit, and anti-love. It is always into power, control, and domination of the Inner Child and others. It resorts to many different ploys to maintain total control, but threats and intimidation of the Inner Child are its main actions. It demands perfection. Failure to meet its demands for perfection and total submission can trigger a sense of doom in the “inner child”. Your description of the “Stockholm Syndrome” and “bonding with our captors” applies to the “alliance” that the Inner Child makes with the Judge in order to placate its wrath and comply with its extreme demands. Any attempt that the person makes to break away from the Judge’s domination and control to change his/her life can trigger a merciless attack by the Judge on the Inner Child. Such a Judge attack will quickly trigger an intense stress reaction that adversely affects self-esteem and brings on anxiety, panic, and sometimes utter terror. This inner psychological drama occurs outside of awareness so that the person doesn’t understand what has happened to him/her to bring on such awful feelings.
Becoming aware of the Judge and Inner Child is a major step towards breaking this unhealthy alliance and freeing the Inner Child. Adding the mature Jungian Warrior archetype to this psychological model can be used to empower the person to confront and, ultimately, “shrink” the Judge image and break up its tight control of the Inner Child. When a person is able to do this, he/she experiences a tremendous sense of relief. The inner psychological source of stress is greatly diminished.
Diana’s case is a good illustration of how the Judge components are built up in childhood and are closely related to intense stressful experiences. The energy that is generated under intense stress (Diana’s chronic anger) is used by the Judge to inflate itself and intimidate the Inner Child. As a general rule, stress inflates the Judge and relaxation “shrinks” it and reduces it power and control over the Inner Child. This is why the relaxation of mindfulness is very beneficial to a person. Relaxation biofeedback is also beneficial.
Tara’s case is another good illustration of the Judge and Inner Child dynamic. It sounds like her Judge would only allow her to experience a certain amount of love and joy in her life before it launched an attack on her Inner Child. Her Judge became inflated outside of her awareness and threatened her Inner Child, forcing her to submit to its demand for total domination and control again.
In our experience, reading and cognitive processes are too often insufficient for dealing with the negative entity that we call the Judge. Drawing its image or sculpting its form in clay allows a person to access this negative psychological entity that pulls all the strings when it operates outside of awareness. There are several ways that we teach a person to deal with the Judge image in order to break up its illusionary psychological power over the Inner Child. This process breaks up deeply embedded visual and neuro-psychological pathways that operate on a reflex level rather than a cognitive level. In effect, this process greatly reduces inner psychological stress and empowers the person. The visual aspect of the Judge is like a computer chip that contains destructive verbal messages, body tension, and other remnants of childhood memories and experiences.
More information can be found on our web page http://www.malterinstitute.org.

Woo hoo! Ten stars for Melanie plus a giant hug of appreciation! We get excited seeing anything posted on this subject because it is SO not covered enough! At IABPM we teach young people about "monkey" self deflating thoughts with our Monkey song and even a lesson plan to catch them young. As a GF of 9 years, I have trained my better half (who worries) to laugh and say "Uh oh--must be a worry thought!" often enough. As a daughter of a mom who still swears I do nothing right, I fully understand that monkey thoughts can be painful. Oh, the unhelpful blah blah in our heads at times! Thank you for this lovely article. Plan to re-tweet, fb, pin etc. Inner bullies be gone!