Are You Being Mean to Yourself?

January 2023                

Dear Kaibigan,

Do you ever hurt your own feelings? I’ve caught myself saying mean words to myself when I’ve made a mistake – “You’re so stupid” – or forgot something – “What’s wrong with you?”. I cringe just repeating those statements as I write this letter to you. What are some mean things you’ve told yourself?

These kinds of negative self-talk can create distrust in ourselves and perpetuate criticism we’ve heard throughout our lives from others. Those digs that we nonchalantly say are forms of self-humiliation, feeding our inner critic verbal ammunition to put us down and make us feel unworthy and less valuable. Life is challenging enough, no need to add to your stress by being mean to yourself. Heck, you probably have people who freely criticize you as it is!

So, how can you stop being so judgmental of yourself?

Our pasalubong to refine the balance of your wellness this January are ideas on understanding why you’re mean to yourself and how to challenge this mean spirit:

Question how you learned to be mean to yourself in the first place

We aren’t born with the mindset that we need to be mean to ourselves and others. This is learned behavior. We picked up the notion that we can say mean things and direct those negative statements onto others and ourselves.

Here are reflection questions to uncover potential sources of this learned behavior -  

• When can you remember the first time someone said something mean to you? Hold old were you and how do you remember feeling?

• What criticisms have you received from family, a partner, or a friend?

• What did a colleague or someone in your professional or educational world do to hurt your feelings that made you think mean things about yourself?

• What negative messages have you received from society and/or the dominant cultural?

• What about messages from social media?

• Based on your responses to the questions above, what themes or patterns are coming up for you regarding how you developed your mean-spirited side?

Bring into awareness the criticisms you tell yourself

Let’s do a 2-part activity together. I’d like you to first take 5 minutes (go ahead and set a timer if that helps) and list common negative thoughts you’ve had about yourself. No need to explain when or why you had those thoughts, I don’t want you to judge these thoughts in any way. Here’s a printable if you want to print out or type onto the document to free flow your writing or help you to verbally list your negative thoughts.

Go ahead and start your list…

After listing your self-deprecating thoughts, I’d like you to reflect on the following questions,

• What feelings are coming up for you in this moment?

• What memories are surfacing for you as you look at your list? Describe them now.

For this second part, I’d like you to challenge each of the negative comments you listed by writing next to each one a positive or neutral statement that contradicts the thought.

For example, if a comment you wrote was “I’m so stupid”.

I’d challenge this with,

·       “No, I’m very smart and like to think through my decisions”

·       “I made a mistake and now I know”

·       “I was in a rush and wasn’t paying attention. I’ll slow down”

·       “That wasn’t a nice comment to say to myself. I’ll be more compassionate”

·       “That was a mean thing to say, stop that”

Finally, I’d like you to reflect on the following questions,

• What feelings are coming up for you now that you’ve challenged your negative self-talk?

• What’s one way you can practice having gentler thoughts about yourself?

Remember that our brains have gotten good at focusing on the negative

Have you heard of negativity bias? It means we focus heavily on the negative outcomes and experiences and less on the equal number of positive ones. Our inner critic who resides in our brain is constantly on the lookout for potential bad events and ready to pounce on them like a predator capturing its prey. Our inner critic’s voice manifests as negative self-talk and negative thinking which can cause us to view our experiences, relationships, and others with cynicism.

You can challenge negative thoughts, also known as thinking errors, through questioning. Here’s how:

Step 1 – pick one thought from your list from earlier

Step 2 – Challenge your thinking error by asking these kinds of questions:

• What’s my proof that what I think is accurate based on facts?

• What part of my thought comes from what I’ve learned or heard from others?

• What feelings contributed to my negative opinions and reactions? Was it feeling scared, sad, angry, disappointed?

• If I were to view myself or my situation from a positive or neutral stance, how would my thinking be different?

Step 3 – Now, jot down one question of your own that would be useful.

Step 4 – Replace the negative self-talk or thinking error with a neutral or positive statement. Ask yourself, “what could I say instead that is gentler and kinder?”

Expand your perspective through conscientious self-care

Laura and I are prioritizing in 2023 talking with you about taking proper care of yourself. You can expect our offerings to continue to center on the theme of caring for oneself. She’s been posting on Instagram reels since last October about self-care, paying attention to our emotions and listening to our bodies’ cues that we’re undergoing stress. We also launched in November 2022 our first online course from our Self-Guided Workshops collection, Crafting a Sustainable Self-Care Practice. In this course, we focused on getting you to identify your sources of stress, your physiological reactions to stress, and using the 10 wellness dimensions to build a self-care plan that suits your lifestyle and personality.

These resources we’ve shared are purposeful to get you to think more often and more consciously how listening to your physical sensations and thoughts reflect either a state of relaxation and hopefulness or a state of high stress, fatigue, hopelessness, burnout, and negativity.

Being mean to ourselves can be a signal that our mind is stuck in a state of negativity bias, making it easier to have a pessimistic attitude towards ourselves. Being mean to yourself through negative self-talk will fuel self-doubt, low confidence, increase malicious attitude, feed a victim mindset, and it’ll be harder for you to see what’s good about yourself and your life.

Broaden your perspective away from the negative commentary by taking care of yourself in a thoughtful manner. The western world’s term for this is ‘self-care’. Regular and ongoing acts to care for oneself – whether it be through having health appointments, exercise, eating healthy meals, doodling or drawing, sleeping and resting when you’re feeling tired, and spending time with people who help affirm you – counter acute and chronic stress by helping to turn on your internal relaxation response system.

Your brain releases the neurotransmitters, or chemical messengers, serotonin and dopamine that regulate our emotions and mood and help with other bodily functions like sleep, cognition, and metabolism. Basically, they send messages between our brain and the rest of our body that we’re feeling good. Any activity we do to make us feel less tense, feel excited and happy, or feel good about ourselves can stimulate serotonin and dopamine production. This is partly why self-care is necessary.

Self-care activities don’t need to be lavish or expensive. They just need to be meaningful for you. Some self-care acts can include enrolling in our Crafting a Sustainable Self-Care Practice online course for guidance, watching our videos on Instagram for encouragement, journaling, walking in nature, dancing, singing, reading, having a hard stop with your work hours, listening to motivating podcasts, and spending time with those who cheer you on.

Talk to yourself the way you would to someone you love

It’s easy to be mean to ourselves and not even realize we’ve reprimanded ourselves over a minor incident or for not a good reason. Recall a time when a friend or loved one confided in you about a hard day or troubling relationship they were in. If you’re like many people, you probably were tempted to rescue them by problem-solving for them. Maybe you even gave out advice to get them out of that situation and said comforting words for encouragement.

How come you felt compelled to talk to that person in a kind and compassionate way? Perhaps a driving force was that you care for them. Imagine your future self, belittling you, like insulting your appearance or mocking how you’re not good at your job or you’re a dumb student or a useless retired person. Ask your current self, “is this how I would talk to my friend or someone I love?”

My kaibigan, I know you care about others. Think of all the generous ways you let people know you support them. How about you stop being mean to yourself by using gentler and compassionate language towards yourself? Aren’t you a person you want to respect and show love to through caring words? Practice self-compassion. It’s an elixir that stimulates gratitude, positive thinking, and kindness.

Begin 2023 caring for your mind, body and emotional health by being kind and respectful towards yourself. Being mean to yourself is not self-care. It’s degrading, shaming, hurtful, and destroys trust in yourself. Think about it, why would you trust yourself if you label yourself as incompetent, not good enough or ugly? So, stop the mean words that come with your negative self-talk and thinking. Use gentle language, replace the disparaging comments with encouraging ones, and do something nice for yourself on a regular basis (daily is what I want for you!) to challenge hideous thinking errors.

 Oh, one parting thought…stopping being mean to yourself is a form of self-care!

 Your cheerleader for all of 2023 and beyond,

 Angel, on behalf of The Giving Well