My Critical Inner Voice is a real witch. Seriously. It is why I call it my Evil Inner Witch (EIW). I could stay awake all night, listening to my EIW making mockery of everything I did all day, all week, all month, all my life…. Or… I could find ways to silence her and get some sleep. I have chronic neuropathy in my feet, legs and hands and the nerve pain can be incredible. That keeps my mind off all my many failures and flaws…. Or… I can take my meds as I am supposed to and get some rest to do battle the next day. My EIW never gets tired and knows when I am weak.
Every morning, as I turn from my daily household chores, to work on art…she starts up and my EIW leaps to be cruel and to set me off in a negative direction. Each morning, I take a wide swath of self-compassion and push that critical inner cruel voice aside. She is ot my friend. I am friend to myself. I am more friend to those around me or who I might meet throughout the day. I have learned to turn how I make myself suffer into a chance to show some comfort and care to self.
First of all, I have to know the why of the negativity. Once I name it, I can claim it fixed because what happened a moment ago is no longer an issue. (btw, I do a warming of a white substrate in this way too… I begin with color of mark making or old sheets of substrate I have doodled or doddled over and it moves me into a painting. How that painting works out is yet to come. These are some pages warmed up.)
We all have negative self-talk. It is not a unique personal thing. We all have I ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ moments. It is all part of our flight or fight response and some of these moments get left over because we did not stop and asl, “If this a threat to my lfie? Are my guts hanging out? Are we bleeding too death? No? Then for goodness sakes, what IS your problem. Once I know what triggered the response, I can deal with it. (Note to Self: See ‘I love me because I am…’ list.)
Next, if it does not start to silence the voice, I find where I first heard that of myself and turn that voice into Mickey Mouse because that voice does not belong in my present. For instance: Sometimes my critical inner voice is that of my mother, when I was a child, “What will others think?” Well, I, now, know that it did not and does not matter what others think. With restrictions tightening and loosening and tightening again, we have more time to think. Thinking can really get me in trouble, so I try to think only Present thoughts. What was WAS. What might be might be. What is IS! I move into a space where I can see myself rather than be myself. It is like the idea that a baby must crawl before they walk. (Note: I had to do this after a brain bleed, in that they had to teach me to swim, then to crawl again before teaching me how to walk again.) In order to BE myself, I had to SEE myself. And if my EIW wants to criticize me, then I must see why and see that, at this moment, I am only being cruel to myself. And, then there is the fact that we, sometimes, get all involved with ourselves and forget that we are not the whole of our all. There will always be critics; whether we listen to them, believe them, is a choice we make. I choose not to listen to others unless my life is in immediate danger. I am my own best friend. Seriously. I AM my own best friend. I would not treat any other friend so; so why am I accepting the treatment of my self in such a way? Do I like degradation? No, I do not! And, I have to stop it.
I am enough. I am okay. I am good. I am worthy. I am loveable. I am! Now, I need to go do and be that. No more ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’. When I think otherwise, I am no friend of mine. When I hear that voice, it means I am feeling vulnerable. As I would empower others, I need to empower self.
If, in the night, my brain decides to let the EIW have her voice loud and clear, I find something to distract me. I will not lie there and take it from her. If I lay there and continue in a negative tone, it is like a runaway truck with no speed ramp. The more I allow her her negativity the more she grapples and finds more things to be nasty about. I am in control of me, of nothing else but me. Therefore; I am in control of that voice in my head. I have to give myself permission to be human, to have flaws, to fail and turn all that into positives. I need peace. You need peace. If we say we are loving and kind and compassionate, it must start with us for our Self.
Life is long and hard, but it has its shortness and it has its softness. If I am walking the rest of my life with this inner voice, I have to find ways to make her friendly.
©Carol Desjarlais 2.15.22
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