How to "Not be so Hard on Yourself"

[RedLeader]

I've started to notice a common theme to a lot of the help I seek - that I am "too hard on myself" and that I would greatly benefit from "not being so hard on myself." I have been told this at in-patient, in meetings, therapy, by friends/family and even by fellow BLers. My gut-reaction is that oh that's just one of those formalities popular in advice-giving communities, but maybe there actually is something to it. My next thought becomes okay, great, but I have absolutely how to change that, and you make it sound like it's a switch I can flip!

A few reasons why I believe that I am hard on myself...

(1) I am extremely goal-oriented, and this inevitably gets corrupted by my obsessive-compulsive thinking. I need total structure or none at all, and with the former I end up making lists, am prone to making recreational things feel like chores and then get very upset when I fall short of something or have to deviate from my plan (with the latter, my life falls apart completely, so that's not realistic!).

(2) I am extremely hard on myself for the bad things I've done in the past. I guess I've always seen the whole "acceptance" thing as an easy-way-out, if not an enabling way-of-thought. This is not helped by those close to me, including family, telling me that it's an extremely selfish thing to say things like "I've forgiven myself for the wrong I've done." In my memory, the bad things I've done were really bad and I think it would be borderline bizarre to ever be able to be free of those mental beds I've made for myself. That idea seems completely foreign to me, no matter how many medical professionals and seasoned addicts try and tell me otherwise.

(3) I fell from a very high place and I feel like I've got more work than a lot of other people to regain a lifestyle where I no longer feel like a failure. I understand that it's not what you have that matters, but instead who you are. But I still cannot shake this feeling of somehow failing, no matter how healthy and well-balanced my life will ever become. It's probably those closest to me who judge me the worst for having lost the money, the professional life, the academic respect, the potential...it is those people who, in the back of their minds, are still going to be a bit perplexed with how my life turns out UNLESS I regain everything I've had. I feel like I have a pressure to establish myself in society to feel content with how my family sees me, and a pressure to find peace-of-mind for myself and for my intimate friends/relationships.

(4) I have an intense pressure to get everything back to normal sooner than later. First reason, because my mother is coming down with Alzheimers and I do NOT want her to fade away with her current image of me in her head. I do not want to be her son who lost everything to drugs and self-doubt, no. I want to be her son who climbed back from all of that and found some success and peace. But I need to do this quickly, given the situation. As well, if I ever want to make it in some of the fields for which I'm qualified, age does matter. If I want to achieve my physical goals, I want to do this sooner than later because of the whole biological clock thing. There are a lot of things I still want to do when I'm young, and I am going to put a lot of pressure on myself to pull this all of before it's too late.

To benefit me, and to benefit others like me, is anyone willing to elaborate on how they are hard on themselves, and any steps they have taken to successfully feel better about this? Things that actually work to "not be so hard on yourself," when that line once felt like someone telling you "not to blink so often"? I'm open to anything CBT to esoteric to practical to whatever works for you. I truly believe that if I could figure some of this out, I could become a lot more comfortable in my own skin, and in turn could minimise my chances of collapsing under all of the pressure. Can anyone relate to this at all?

 

[herbavore]

(2)

I am extremely hard on myself for the bad things I've done in the past. I guess I've always seen the whole "acceptance" thing as an easy-way-out, if not an enabling way-of-thought. This is not helped by those close to me, including family, telling me that it's an extremely selfish thing to say things like "I've forgiven myself for the wrong I've done." In my memory, the bad things I've done were really bad and I think it would be borderline bizarre to ever be able to be free of those mental beds I've made for myself. That idea seems completely foreign to me, no matter how many medical professionals and seasoned addicts try and tell me otherwise

Being able to admit that you have done "really bad" things in your life takes courage. Most people rationalize and justify them away. My brother abandoned his two kids (quite literally) for years while they were growing up. When he finally got sober at age 40 he came to a huge family reunion on my mom's side of the family. That would have been stressful enough, but my mom, who had been partially supporting his kids, paid for them to fly in so that they could see their Dad and reconnect. Everyone was nervous but my brother was petrified. He wondered what he could possibly say to them after all these years. We talked about it the night before they were to get in and he decided that he would simply say,"what i did was terrible"; no excuses. He would not try to avoid their anger, talk them out of their feelings or portray himself as a victim. His daughter was cool but polite but his son was having none of it. He launched right into my brother with 15 years of hurt and anger and my brother calmly sat in that maelstrom, looking his son in the eye and nodding his head in agreement at every accusation his son hurled at him. It was an incredible act of courage and in the end his son was able to accept his father's humbleness and willingness to admit fault , and his anger dissolved. No one will ever say that what my brother did to his kids was not awful, but no one can say that what happened in that room that day was not redemption. Acceptance doesn't have to mean finding ways to paint a comfortable explanation for past actions that you know were wrong. It means that just as you would do for a friend or a beloved family member: you give yourself the understanding that you are a whole human being, you admit what you did in the past, you honor the knowledge that was gained and you try your hardest not to let it singularly define you in your own mind.

(3) I fell from a very high place and I feel like I've got more work than a lot of other people to regain a lifestyle where I no longer feel like a failure. I understand that it's not what you have that matters, but instead who you are. But I still cannot shake this feeling of somehow failing, no matter how healthy and well-balanced my life will ever become. It's probably those closest to me who judge me the worst for having lost the money, the professional life, the academic respect, the potential...it is those people who, in the back of their minds, are still going to be a bit perplexed with how my life turns out UNLESS I regain everything I've had. I feel like I have a pressure to establish myself in society to feel content with how my family sees me, and a pressure to find peace-of-mind for myself and for my intimate friends/relationships.

I read and reread this paragraph, trying to figure out whether it is how your family sees you or whether it is how you think they will see you (in other words how you see you) that makes you come down so hard on yourself. In other words, do you need to regain what you lost to prove in your own mind to them and yourself that you have regained your life? If so, then you have a task ahead of you and you know what direction you have to go to get there. (And being hard on yourself isn't going to help with the hurdles you will inevitably encounter one bit.) But if is only for family, for what they will think of you, then I say work on letting that go.

(4) I have an intense pressure to get everything back to normal sooner than later. First reason, because my mother is coming down with Alzheimers and I do NOT want her to fade away with her current image of me in her head. I do not want to be her son who lost everything to drugs and self-doubt, no. I want to be her son who climbed back from all of that and found some success and peace. But I need to do this quickly, given the situation. As well, if I ever want to make it in some of the fields for which I'm qualified, age does matter. If I want to achieve my physical goals, I want to do this sooner than later because of the whole biological clock thing. There are a lot of things I still want to do when I'm young, and I am going to put a lot of pressure on myself to pull this all of before it's too late.

I am really sorry about your Mom's situation. Alzheimers carries its own deep grief. While I understand your desire to be the son you know she wants to see, I know that as trite as it sounds, in the end the obvious love you have for her will trump everything else. Finding success will take time and creativity and some luck. Being at peace is something that you can achieve anytime, under any circumstances, but we forget that. I think of it like learning to float. When you are tense and stiff and stressing about sinking, you sink like a stone unless you expend tons of energy flailing around to tread water. On the other hand when you relax completely and take deep filling breaths, it is effortless and you learn that the water holds you--you do not need to do anything. Projecting this peace around your mother will help so much.

To benefit me, and to benefit others like me, is anyone willing to elaborate on how they are hard on themselves, and any steps they have taken to successfully feel better about this? Things that actually work to "not be so hard on yourself," when that line once felt like someone telling you "not to blink so often"? I'm open to anything CBT to esoteric to practical to whatever works for you. I truly believe that if I could figure some of this out, I could become a lot more comfortable in my own skin, and in turn could minimise my chances of collapsing under all of the pressure. Can anyone relate to this at all?

I can relate to this so much, mainly as a parent, but also as an artist, two worlds full of the potential to feel like an absolute failure. As a parent it is built in that you will feel overly responsible for everything that happens to your child. It is so easy to feel like you have failed them at every turn. I was never one to take my children's successes as somehow related to me but I seemed to have no trouble assigning all their mistakes to my bad mothering. I have had to work very hard to understand that being hard on myself in this instance was in fact a misguided notion that I was in control of things. I give Al-anon a lot of credit for helping me get that. When my son was spiraling down into his addiction, I went to a man that does body work and visualization. He helped me immensely with "unsticking" a lot of my useless thinking, without any self-blame. I was able to re-frame my thinking in an almost hypnotic state. Normally I scoff at this kind of thing. Being near suicidal, I was scoffing at nothing!

Finally I will say that nothing, absolutely nothing, has helped me more than studying mindfulness (through reading, audio, web and contact with a Buddhist retreat). The practical tools it has given me to use against anxiety as well as my own lack of compassion for myself (being hard on myself, guilt, etc) have literally transformed me on a very deep level.

Thanks for starting this thread. It has made me think--and even at midnight on a work night, I like that!

 

[theseeker]

My work is that of scientific research- failure is commonplace. In fact there's always going to be a lot more failure in my career than success. I used to really beat myself up over making stupid mistakes, or not seeing all the angles in an experimental set-up and missing the obvious. I mean- I really used to harshly chastise myself. I came to the conclusion that all this is way more complex than I can really understand, and that many people fail, and that it is the human condition to make mistakes. I now make a note of what I have done wrong- then I move on.

What use did I have in berating myself so? Well, for one thing- I felt that if I beat myself up, maybe other people would give me a break or look at me less harshly as I had already done all the "work" of disciplining myself. I guess it made it so that I had some control over the situation instead of them having control over me at that vulnerable moment.

Please keep in mind that- while it may look like you have screwed up your life entirely of your own volition and actions- there are wayyy more complicating factors at work than you might now be able to understand. We operate under the illusion that we have complete free-will and control, when in fact there are the clandestine workings of forces beyond our control such as mental illness, life experiences and simple chance. It's not that you're blameless- but don't fool yourself into thinking you have absolute control over the events in your life- you don't. It's now up to you to put all the pieces together and figure out what went wrong...for the most part. Identify them and move on. If you can accept that not all is under your control- then you can ask yourself why you feel the need to whale on yourself.

Stop focusing on making yourself into what you were- by saying you feel you need to regain a past lifestyle. Forget that. That's in the past. You've got to move on because if all that was working so well, you might not be in the position you now find yourself. I mean, sure- some of the things you might want to regain such as a professional focus, etc. But don't use that as a model for who you should be. You could be a lot of things- your idea of what it means to be successful again need not be tied to who you used to be. Here's an opportunity to remake yourself, and it's an opportunity many never get. Grab onto it, let go of the past.