My Inner Voice is an Abusive Bitch
She is mean, volatile and cruel. She works me over in ways the" Mean Girls" could only dream of. Every time I look in the mirror she mercilessly tells me how ugly, fat, and worthless I am. If I were to draw what she looks like, she would be different from every angle. Each angle would reveal that she resembles some one from my past that told me I'm ugly, fat or worthless. She seems to have no soul. She criticizes me constantly. She whispers, she laughs at me, she screams.
And I listen to her.
It feels almost impossible to tune her out. She is unpredictable. When I get all fired up and determined to change, she is my best friend, but if I slip just a little bit, even for a second, she becomes my worst enemy. She just doesn't know how to be supportive or kind to me. This puzzles me because I work so hard to be supportive and kind to everyone around me, yet I can't seem to be kind to myself. When the voice really gets going, I feel like an unlovable loser. Recently, I've felt like that all the time. And when I feel like that, food is often my comfort.
Two weeks ago I was riding my bike, walking, eating right, and feeling good. My weight was starting to drop, my clothes were starting to loosen, and I was four bandannas away from my first 50 bandanna goal. Somehow this taste of success must've threatened the hell out of my inner voice, because she kicked her nasty criticism into high gear and sent me sailing off track. I lost my appetite, and then when I did eat, I only ate garbage. That abusive, ever-present voice was a constant stream of "I told you so" and "I knew you couldn't do it." I sank lower.
You know, I have never tolerated and will never tolerate anyone abusing anyone else-physically, emotionally, or verbally. Why do I allow my inner voice to do it to me? My illustrious, super-smart counselor and I were talking this week about this and she asked me to consider what it would be like if my inner voice actually liked me. Sadly, I couldn't even guess at what it might be like. My inner voice has been this way for as long as I can remember-brutal, unforgiving, and always demanding perfection. However, they say that the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Crazy is not the title I want, so it's obviously time to try something different.
How do I do this? How do I change how my inner voice speaks to me? How to I rehab her from Mean Girl to Sister Supportive? I want to do this, but I have no idea how. And the idea scares me to death because sadly enough, like a long-term victim of abuse, I am comfortable with the Mean Girl. She is least a known entity. The unknown of having a supportive inner voice for the first time scares the heck out of me. What is she even going to respond to? Do I force the change? Does it happen over night? Seriously, how does this work? I guess I will figure that out as I go.
In the meantime, I am going to resume the bandanna wars. The first 46 bandannas were certainly for learning. I'm starting over with a new 50, and those will be for growing.
Stay tuned....
