Silencing Our Inner Critic After Attachment Trauma

[ad_1]

Source: kflour/Unsplash

One of the most common sequelae of childhood attachment trauma is the development of a harsh inner critic that overrides the person’s inner voice. By nature, we are wired to connect with others, which teaches us to love and respect ourselves.

However, attachment trauma caused by abuse, neglect, abandonment, or invalidation forces a child to adapt to punitive environments where their sense of self is compromised. Instead of feeling a connection and security with those around them, they learn survival mode. Instead of learning self-love and autonomy through healthy nurturing, they give up self-acceptance in exchange for compulsively trying to become what they believe their caregivers will want.

Who is our inner critic?

Anyone can develop negative feelings about their choices or behavior, especially in times of vulnerability. However, what separates negative feelings from a cruel inner critic is a sense of worthlessness at the heart of his message. Negative feelings based on a bad choice relate to guilt, while messages related to inner criticism relate to shame.

Thus, the negative feelings associated with guilt may include a person saying, I made a mistake, while the received message of shame may include, I am a mistake.

Three common internal critical messages and how to overcome them

Comparisons. Children are not programmed to compare themselves to others. This learned behavior results from constant harassment, minimization, disdain and invalidation by abusive and demanding parents. For example, if a parent is narcissistic and values ​​image over their child’s emotional health, they may nitpick the child for bringing home a B on a test while shaming the child that he should have done better. Or, they may compare their child’s weight or appearance to the child’s friends by devaluing them in front of others.

As adults, they may mistakenly believe they are not good enough and may make mental comparisons about everything from the car others are driving to themselves, to what degree they have, to their appearance, which keeps them stuck in a perpetual comparison loop. themselves to others.

Overcome comparisons. It is important for a person to learn to identify their emotional triggers to help minimize falling down a rabbit hole when comparing themselves to others. Once these are recognized, it may become easier to browse through them without comparing them. For example, if you notice that you tend to start comparing yourself to your friends’ accomplishments, it’s important to notice this as a potential trigger and then counter it by reminding yourself that your own accomplishments are worthy and worthwhile, although different from the achievements of your friends. .

All or nothing thinking. Shame is the breeding ground for all-or-nothing thinking and behavior. Children who grow up being conditioned to mistakenly believe that their worth depends on their accomplishments or how beautiful they look to their parents are subliminally learning the basics of all-or-nothing thinking.

For example, if a child achieves the best in his class, his parents may consider him the best. This conditioning can create a slippery slope of unspoken expectations or value conditions, where the child only receives attention or acceptance when they meet the expectations of their caregivers.

As adults, they can learn to associate their merit with their success (while thinking), or their inner critic can take center stage if they don’t live up to the expectations they set for themselves. (nothing to think about). All-or-nothing thinking leads to a person’s behavior being aligned with those types of cognitive distortions where they are either over-functioning or not bothering to try at all.

Overcome all-or-nothing thinking. Learning to express fewer all-or-nothing thoughts is important to help overcome this pattern. Common expressions include the use of words like everything, nothing, always, never, and everything. It is also important to begin to relabel these types of all-or-nothing thoughts as they arise to reduce these distortions. For example, never or always can be changed to sometimes, which is more inclusive and less absolute in its approach.

Self-loathing/self-neglect. Children raised in families with traumatic parents are also raised to believe that they are worthless. As a result, many turn to themselves in the form of self-hatred and self-neglect. In adulthood, this pattern can generalize to self-sabotaging behavior where the staging of trauma is likely. For example, a person may be subconsciously attracted to narcissistic or predatory types who negatively reinforce these toxic internal critical messages based on self-hatred and self-neglect.

Essential readings

Overcome self-hatred/self-neglect. At the root of self-hatred and self-neglect are conditioned beliefs that they are not good enough to be loved or cared for. Healing from this pattern usually involves learning to observe the message of the inner critic from the outside, by looking within. When a person changes their perspective on how they hear the message, it can become easier to take action to challenge the inner critic and call them out on their toxic messages.

[ad_2]