Have you forgiven yourself for that thing you did?
Notes on the inner critic, compassion and self-forgiveness.
One thing I’m very good at is making myself feel guilty or rubbish for things that happened in the past. I know I’m not alone here. I’ll clock it when I make instinctive, harsh throwaway comments about my character or abilities, or coldly hold myself accountable for something I’ve said, done, or “failed at” in my life.
I can slate myself with ease for that time I got fired for being late all the time, that client that left under a cloud, that strategy that didn’t go quite to plan, that disagreement I had with someone who is no longer here (the Extended Disco Version of this one is that I can make myself feel horrendous about the fact they died without me ever properly apologising and letting them know what they meant to me, which isn’t true in the grand scheme of things) - and so much more.
It’s exhausting.
Before our son was born, I’d say proudly and confidently that this harsh inner critic “kept me motivated”. Little did I realise that it’s fairly easy to silence a critic when you feel relatively comfortable, competent or at ease with whatever it is you’re doing.
But what happens when that critic gets a front-row seat to something you’ve not experienced before or feel confident in?
I found this out at the beginning of my motherhood journey and it was eye-opening, to say the least.
It’s something I’ve had to consciously work on ever since.
So let’s settle in and talk about the inner critic, compassion, and self-forgiveness, shall we?
Like most new parents-to-be, I’d read all the books and watched all the online courses, and truly believed that I knew what was coming and exactly how I was going to deal with it. I was treating having a baby like running a business and, if I’m honest, the pre-birth content out there lulls new parents into thinking they have any element of control. It’s almost laughable to me now.
The baby doesn’t read the books or watch all the online courses.
What you later find out after about 24 hours - if we’re being generous - is that you haven’t the foggiest about what’s to come, how it might affect you and everything you know, or how you’ll handle it.
So when this realisation hits, it’s very easy for someone predisposed to slagging themselves off all the time to get stuck into criticising themselves for the various levels of incompetence, stupidity, and inexperience they’re displaying.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I harangued myself for being delusional about the reality of what it’d be like, for reading the wrong things, for not being prepared enough, for needing help, for feeling anxious, exhausted, and unsettled, for “not healing quickly enough”, and even for being impacted by the horrible birth I’d experienced. Those last two are hard ones to swallow, even now, almost 20 months on…
I’d messed up many things before, so I was bound to mess this up too, right?
“Other people just GET THROUGH THIS. Why can’t you? What’s wrong with you?”
The thing about this, however, is that I simply wasn’t acknowledging that I was getting through it. I was coping. I was doing it every single day and night.
It was just really bloody hard because - spoiler alert - those early weeks and months are, actually, really bloody hard. I wasn’t taking even the slightest second to recognise what I was doing, whilst still in recovery. Instead, I chose to focus on what I wasn’t doing, or how I was messing it up. I’d tie myself in knots about how I was going to mess up our son, and that he’d be the collateral damage of how RUBBISH I was. It was a deeply upsetting and disturbing place to be.
I saw myself as a failure because I believed I didn’t really “get it” from the off, and therefore, given past experience, I was failing.
It has taken several months of work and practice to get myself to a point where I realise this just isn’t true. I am not a failure. I wasn’t then, and that person back there deserves a whole load of compassion, praise, comfort, a hot cup of tea, a shower, and approximately 240965096 hours of sleep to catch up on all the lost rest.
Part of the work I’ve done in therapy about this very topic is understanding context and the role it plays in having compassion for ourselves.
Context, I’ve discovered, is a crucial component of compassion and self-forgiveness. Sound obvious? It wasn’t to me. I thought all the evidence I had about myself being rubbish was the context. All the things I hadn’t forgotten or forgiven myself for were evidence against myself.
Actual context puts all the learned criticisms you have about yourself (mine’s an anthology at this point) to bed, with a good dose of reality. The full picture. Exploring the realities of a situation with all views covered helps the brain break down the thought processes that led to choices being made, and can show you how well you dealt with something, given the circumstances, or simply why things rolled the way they did. Sometimes you have to dig deep to get that context. Sometimes, you have to get reassurance from others in order to see a different perspective.
I tend to breeze past context sometimes in favour of supporting my preferred narrative, so rather than acknowledging the many ways that becoming a new parent is hard, the medical trauma I’d experienced, the fact I’d somehow landed in a new life entirely (and it was mine?!), I’d go straight to the concept of me messing it up somehow, because, well… that’s just what I do, isn’t it. I have the receipts from before!
Of course, the toxic traits of the automatic inner critic are present in several situations and go beyond parenting. The foundations are built on past mistakes that you’ve never cut yourself some slack for and its reach is all-encompassing.
For many, the inner critic pipes up about work, romantic relationships, familial situations, academia, hobbies, physical image, friendships… the list goes on. Its existence is often a symptom of not receiving a lot of positive feedback in childhood and adolescence, and the brain replaces the voice of whoever provided the criticism and handily does it for you. Brilliant, eh?
I’m gradually learning that it can be quietened. Tamed.
Now, for every instant thought of negativity, I’ll try and acknowledge the bigger picture/context, and understand my role and decision-making in whatever it is my critic is trying to make me feel bad for.
I’ll then think about all the ways I’m proving the critic wrong and often, I’ll journal it, for reference in the future should these unhelpful thoughts crop up again. I’m finding that I need these references less and less these days, but I’m still a work in progress.
I also remind myself that my intentions are always good, but sometimes shit happens, and that’s certainly something worth remembering. A mistake made with good intentions is still a mistake, but it deserves self-forgiveness, not waking up at 3 am one night and vilifying yourself for how you screwed something up, and what that shows about who you are.
It all sounds so obvious to me now, but there are far too many of us living with these horrible automatic thoughts, berating ourselves for the tiniest thing, when we’re just getting up and doing our best every day.
What needs to be forgiven?
Ourselves.
Within the topic of the inner critic, I see a clear line between two parts of ourselves.
The self that is conditioned to self-criticise, the one that holds on to the receipts, and the self that does its best but sometimes gets it wrong. Or maybe gets it right but isn’t quite hitting the impossible expectations of the harsh inner critic. Both are doing all they know.
It’s not our fault, by the way.
We’re not born with this inner critic. It is developed from and honed by formative experiences, an unjust society, the expectations put on us by others, generational trauma, comparisonitis, and more. It is terrified of failure and rejection, can’t stand criticism (ironically) and, in a lot of ways, is designed to protect us. But it’s hard to live with, gets in our way, and often makes us feel terrible about ourselves.
It is black and white, with no grey areas. It’s mean and brutal. But, it deserves our forgiveness and understanding, because only then can we start to reassure and quieten it.
I recognise this all sounds quite hippy, and it’s probably the type of content I might have scoffed at a mere two years ago, but it’s only through being on a journey of navigating enormous life change and self-discovery that I can even comprehend this, and I can’t unsee it now.
Soothe, don’t silence
A quick Google search will deliver a heap of articles on “silencing” the inner critic and, whilst sometimes that’s exactly what we want to do, I’d like to propose a gentler approach.
How about we soothe it instead? We hear it, we acknowledge it, and we soothe it. We show our working out to ourselves. For me, silencing it just shuts it down for another day.
I believe that by acknowledging the inner critic and adding that vital context, gently, we can have compassion for both sides of this mental argument we’re having with ourselves, and provide a longer-term solution to the problem. We can forgive ourselves for past errors and move forward, knowing they’re not our definition.
Journaling is a tool that I find helpful for this; writing the worry/criticism/anxious thoughts down and providing context in the form of cold, hard facts, or evidence that shows how the automatic negative self-talk is incorrect.
Another thing to accept is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and that’s ok.
I gave myself a hard time for not knowing exactly how becoming a parent would impact every facet of my life, not to mention not really knowing how to care for a vulnerable, tiny little person, but I’ve been learning on the job and that’s the best anyone can do. The critic in me saw this learning as something bound for disaster, something related to a failure before, and could not let it go till the whole damn thing was unpacked.
I know many of you reading this will resonate, and many will not. But we all have ways of making ourselves feel bad, and if there’s something I know for sure after recent experiences, is that life is too short for this.
Understand the thoughts, give yourself the time and space to find context, and forgive yourself for whatever came before.
I will leave it there before my inner critic starts telling me off again.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you again in two weeks. Maybe.
Have you experienced this? How do you soothe your inner critic?
I’d love to discuss this - and future issues of the newsletter - in my subscriber chat.
Excellent post Lauren - so much to unpack and think about. Self-compassion is so hard to put into practice isn’t it?! I tell my friends to “talk to themselves the way they’d talk to their best friend” but I can’t do this myself. Journaling does work for me to some extent - mainly because I’m emptying those thoughts from my mind onto paper, still work to do. Think I’ll come back for another read of this later!