Kindness from Shelley C. Wilson MFT

I have been thinking alot about kindness lately. It is a trait that most of us profess to value. We teach our children to be kind; we are kind to our animals and others. Yet I am surrounded by lovely people (clients, friends, family, me) who are exquisitely kind to others, but are mean, cruel and horrid to themselves. We talk to ourselves and say things that we would never say to others: "Fat, Lazy, Stupid, Loser, Worthless, Failure, Bad." We chastise ourselves for the smallest of mistakes because "we should have known better."

Everyone seems to have that voice in their head that runs an ongoing critique like the CNN crawl. Author Anne Lamott calls it Radio Station KFKD. This critical voice and its lack of kindness is a huge obstacle to change, to creating the life of our dreams, to feeling love, to all good things.

Somehow we got the idea that if we are just mean, nasty, harsh and critical of ourselves that it will create whatever positive transformation we desire. We treat ourselves as if shame, deprivation and punishment lead to change and improvement. We believe that with a little more criticism and self-disgust, we'll succeed and be lovely, enlightened, positive, successful, happy people.

Our deeply held belief is that hatred, torture and criticism work. This is a lie! Cruelty does not create love. Judgment does not lead to peace and ease. Being harsh does not produce happiness. Shame does not lead to change. The critical voice in your head does not produce success. Kindness is the transformative material.

Our voice preaches "If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough with judgments, criticisms, and other harsh thoughts, you will become a peaceful, relaxed person." It seems absurd when you read it like that, right? But how do you talk to yourself? If you want to improve or feel better, the answer is to be kind to yourself. To speak to and of yourself (out loud or in your head) with love and with kindness...no matter what.

This is easier to say than to do. It is hard work to deal with your inner critic. I know because it challenges me all the time.

The first step is to be aware of what the voice in your head is saying to you and about you. My guess is that the inner dialogue has been running for so long that you are barely aware of your own nasty criticisms. Work on consciousness. What do you say? When I'm tired and want to rest, my mind immediately tells me that I am lazy and never want to work hard at anything. What does your critical voice say to you? Does it have a theme or several recurrent themes? Work on being aware of the messages. Write them down. Say them out loud and use the tone of voice that your inner critic uses. The voice is usually a composite of past authority figures with an emphasis on primary caretakers. My guess is that you will be astounded by how often your voice is yammering at you and how cruel it is. You have likely become inured to the insults.

The second step is to not believe and to challenge what the voice in your head is saying. When you stop believing the voice, you are free. It is freedom to hear this litany of lecturing, criticisms and directions and not believe a word of it. Imagine a response of "oh, well, who cares. That's just what you think." This is tough because we may believe the absolute truth of what the critic says and we love to believe our own thoughts. My voice lies; I am not fundamentally lazy and I work hard at lots of stuff. My voice is wrong and I tell it to be quiet since it is not helpful. After you have written down your critical thoughts, write responses to them about what is actually true in a way that is caring of you.

If you believe the painful truth of what the voice in your head says, you also believe that you need to hide your defects from other people so they don't withdraw in horror. If the voice is right about you, you don't want anyone else to know how monstrous you are.

If you don't challenge the voice's messages to you, you convince yourself that your best recourse is to be ashamed of yourself and try harder to get it right. This is an incredibly painful way to live especially since there is no need to believe these critical thoughts in your head. So begin to name and disengage and challenge.

The next step which can be concurrent with the prior actions is to choose kindness for yourself. Even if I am being lazy, being critical of myself is not going to motivate me. If I wanted someone else to work harder or be more productive, I would not yell or call him/her a "lazy slob." I would find an incentive (chocolate?) or an inspiration for motivation. I might ask kindly what is inhibiting the desired result and see what can be done to help. I would not use hatred, torture or criticism because they lead to failure. So treat yourself and talk to yourself as you would your most beloved other. Make the choices that you would for someone you care about. Live as if you deserve kindness in your life. Speak to and treat yourself as your best friend does. Find a model of kindness and apply it to yourself all the time.

Be kind to yourself; challenge and do not believe the critical voice in your head. I promise that you will not turn into a slothful degenerate despite what your voice has to say about it.