My life is better than ever. So why can’t I turn off my inner self-critic?

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Dear Hera,

All my life I’ve had a bad habit of beating myself up mentally. It used to be that if I did badly on a test or embarrassed myself, I would get stuck in a thought spiral of telling myself I am stupid and worthless. My family and friends have always been very kind and supportive of me, so I have no idea where this voice came from, only that the fear of not being good enough has always haunted me.

There have been times in my life when I felt this voice was motivational because it meant I worked really hard to prove it wrong. But now, after getting a great job I studied hard for, and having lots of people who love and care about me, I find this negative self-criticism impossible to turn off. The crazy thing is, I genuinely feel like I don’t even believe these thoughts anymore – I am truly proud of who I am, and what I have accomplished. It feels more like a mental tic I can’t break than an honest reflection of my inner feelings. I’ve tried meditation and a few other things. But the harder I try to block the voices out, the more “sticky” they feel. Any ideas? 

From,

Spiralling 

Dear Spiralling,

With the important caveat that I am not a mental health expert, and if you’re experiencing real distress, you should absolutely seek the help of someone whose academic qualifications aren’t based on giving a close reading of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I do think this is a common problem, which is possible to overcome with patience and self-compassion. 

It sounds like, despite your persistent negative mantras, you have managed to build a happy and successful life, which is something you should be enormously proud of. But it’s notoriously hard to change entrenched thought patterns. Even though you’ve comprehensively proved these thoughts wrong, they remain, like vestigial organs of a former sea-dwelling animal that has managed to crawl up out of the primordial ooze and build a new life on land. 

It’s impossible to break any habit overnight, and negative thought patterns are harder than quitting cigarettes, because without a full lobotomy, you can’t stop thinking altogether. It will take practice and compassion to get there, so don’t feel discouraged if you can’t give up cold turkey. 

How do you start to move on from mental patterns that are holding you back? 

I think part of the answer has to do with acceptance. It would be great if you could simply erase these thoughts from your brain, but they have already worn deep neural pathways. Sometimes when we try to actively resist negative thoughts, it only serves to entrench them further, because they evoke such a strong emotional reaction. I wonder if trying to suppress them is counterproductive, and it might be more helpful to acknowledge them as dispassionately as possible and try to let them go. 

It’s hard not to react emotionally when someone is telling you you’re a worthless loser, even if that person is you. But try to remind yourself that thoughts are neither good or bad, and that we are all subject to fleeting paranoias and strange echoes, and sometimes the best thing you can do is summon your inner Nathan Fielder, say ‘oh OK’ and then move on with your day. I do realise this is easier said than done. But I think being able to accept that negative thoughts are a natural part of life and don’t have to be anything more profound than a passing fart in the wind is a good basis for starting to reform your relationship with your inner critic. 

One of the most common pieces of advice I see repeated on the internet is to imagine the person you are “talking to” is yourself as a child, or your best friend/mum/icon and diva Dolly Parton. But it doesn’t seem like “challenging” the validity of the thoughts is really your main problem, although I suppose you could always give it a try.

When it comes to breaking habits, sometimes it’s easier to replace the habit than get rid of it entirely. I wonder if, every time you reflexively think “I am a worthless piece of shit” or whatever evil mantra you have stuck on repeat, maybe you could try and add a rhetorical flourish to take the edge off. 

Instead of saying “I am a worthless piece of shit”, you could try:

I am a worthless piece of shit, and it’s my birthday!!!

I am a worthless piece of shit, and that’s valid.

I am a worthless piece of shit, and everyone loves that about me. 

I am a worthless piece of shit, and there’s nothing any of you losers can do about it! 

I am a worthless piece of shit, and I will not surrender until I have destroyed the infinity crystal.

I am a worthless piece of shit, and the coward Hugh Grant’s body is decomposing in the trunk of my car. 

To be honest, I don’t think you will find this approach in any reputable dialectical behavioural therapy workbook, but it has worked for me in the past. If you can turn a sinister earworm into an incomprehensible slogan so stupid it makes you laugh, why not? Maybe when that phrase is fully embedded in your psyche, you can alter some of the more demeaning aspects. “Worthless” might become “world-renowned”. “Piece of shit” might become “psychic investigator”. Whatever works for you. 

The point is, it’s hard to erase something from your memory, but you can learn to hijack the thought and drive it cheerfully into the nearest skyscraper. Take some of your stock phrases, give them a makeover, and whatever you do, don’t tell your therapist this advice came from me.

My last piece of advice is that you can also learn to wield your propensity for recurring thoughts for good! 

There is a Kurt Vonnegut anecdote I love:

“One of the things [Uncle Alex] found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’ So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?'”

Is this shit unbearably hokey? Yes. Excruciatingly American? Yes. Does it work? Like calcium borogluconate injected into a hypocalcemic cow. I haven’t read a single Vonnegut book, but ever since I read this essay, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” has earwormed its way into my mental vocabulary and genuinely brings me a lot of joy. Having a cup of tea in the sun? If this isn’t nice, what is? Sleeping in bed after a night camping in a wet field? If this isn’t nice, what is? Eating some hot noodles while watching old episodes of Poirot? You get the picture. I bequeath it to you, in the hope it similarly improves your life. 

I realise that between the incoming climate catastrophe and American oil wars, this sounds unbearably Pollyannaish. But perhaps here, at the end of the world, it’s more important than ever to make a habit of paying attention to these fleeting moments of happiness. 

Best of luck, and always remember:

You are a world-renowned psychic investigator, the coward Hugh Grant’s body is decomposing in the trunk of your car, and nobody can ever tell you otherwise.