Who could you become if you were more compassionate with yourself?
Would it mean the inner critic would lose its high-profile inside you?
Less noisy? Less punishing, less abusive, less impactful and less annoying?
Damn, that inner critic is a nuisance! Imagine if you could finally respond to it and say – “There’s no meaningful place for you inside me. Because I’m kinder to myself these days.”
Let’s just process and mull in that for a few seconds…
Is it possible that if we were kinder to ourselves, it could truly mean disempowering the imposter?
How could it disempower your inner critic??
Would you believe me if I said that sometimes my imposter was cruel. So nasty. There was a long period where a main thought I had was, “I hate myself.”
Woooof. That’s already rising emotions within me. At that time, I couldn’t see all the good inside me and I also couldn’t see a future version of me where all the underlying pain and suffering would stop.
Underlying pain and suffering comes in different shapes and at different times in our lives. It isn’t always about trauma and one thing for certain is – it’s not easy to deal with it – and it’s heavy. It can become the norm to just bury the pain. Or avoid the issues causing the pain. But the heaviness or some describe it as fogginess – that remains, and you continue to carry that weight into all areas of your life.
Ask yourself how kind you are to yourself when your inner critic rises? When he or she starts talking at you, getting a hold of you. Are you kind in your response? Or, are you so overwhelmed that it’s difficult to manage your emotions and regulate?
It’s difficult to get perspective since you’re imposter has been programming your thought pathways for so long.
I hear you.
At that point in my life when I hated myself, like truly just wanted out of my existence; it would cause me to ‘act-out’ in different ways. My behaviour didn’t align to who I wanted to be – so everything was foggy. It’s a good indicator for all of us. Where you notice that you’re doing stuff in your life and it’s not quite you – that’s it. Something isn’t quite right.
With complete vulnerability… here’s my acting out… I would overeat. Or undereat starving myself as punishment. I would lock myself away, sometimes drinking 1,2,3,4,5 drinks away and falling asleep on the couch until 3am then waking up to go to work to mask what happened the night before. Sometimes I wouldn’t talk to people for days. Letting friends down at the last minute. And at times I’d look in the mirror and just want it all to be over with. Crying and crying until I was so saturated that I could barely open my eyes. One thing that always sticks with me about how I felt at that time, is – hopeless.
When you’re hopeless you have no objectives, no life goals, you’re not interested in your learning or growth. There’s a real lack of motivation. But more than that – there’s a lack of trust that everything will be ok.
And what else is perpetuating it? Oh, the cruel imposter.
“You’re worthless.”
“No one respects you.”
“No one will love you.”
“You don’t deserve to be loved.”
Let’s remember as well that our imposter doesn’t just pop up in the workplace. And research shows that an estimated 20-25% of women feel an imposter in their relationships and within their family life.
So what was the turnaround for me? Honestly, it was a mixture of things. My therapist really shook me one day and told me I had to be signed off from work – because I was just a walking robot. Then I also started to test how I *could* feel about myself.
How did I do that?
I tried teeny weeny step at a time to find ways to be kinder to myself. For me this involved not comparing my present status to where I was x number of years ago or comparing myself to others from university or school.
I tried hard to stop-the-inner-critic-talk-in-motion… My coach had taught me the value of having an physical anchor to distract me out of self-talk but also to remind me of something I needed buckets of – self kindness.
It’s not an understatement to say that self-kindness saved me.
It saved me from years of self-hatred and anguish. I hadn’t realised growing up how at every point in my life – all the big milestones – had piled up a heavy weight of crazily high expectations. Noone can be THAT perfect, can they?
So with my therapy, coaching and my mentor, I started to cultivate self-kindness… and with that I started to practice some gratitude practice. Not always about myself but just about my life in general. It’s quite easy to miss what’s in front of you when you’re too preoccupied with the things that are missing.
Look for the things in the present! That’s real self-kindness right there. In reality, for all to see and more importantly – for you to see.
So my small steps to self-kindness and treating myself more with love and compassion allowed me to just dim that ole imposter. He’s still there, The Almighty… but sometimes all I need to do is put the self-kindness lens over it. A good battle like Yoda would take on!
Step by step you can reprogramme your thought pathways and I truly believe that having the courage to break out of habit, to challenge the most consistent thoughts and beliefs that come from our imposter has to come from being more kinder to yourself.
That courage to challenge yourself will start to break the mind prison that your imposter has you in. He’s taken hostage of you – but it’s not forever.
So, ultimate question:
Who could you become if you were more compassionate with yourself?
