So, for now, I'd like to get back to regular programming!
Something I love about my therapist is that she's caught on that I am introvert in an extrovert's clothing, and that I will steer the conversation to anything more comfortable to talk about. When I'm doing this, she just waits silently for my mind to go back to what I need to be talking about.
In one of these quiet moments, I surprised myself by saying this: My mind (my emotional brain) and my brain (fact/logic/common sense) tell me two different things, and I give my emotional brain way too much credit.
As an example, here's how my fact-based, common sense brain and my emotional brain have to say about my college experience.
My fact-based brain looks at it like this....
I studied Aerospace Engineering in college and minored in math, and I worked my ass off. My last three years of college, I was averaging 4-6 hours of sleep a night just so I could get my work done. The only time I was with friends was to work together on homework. My senior design project took even more time than usual, on top of me maxing out the number of credit hours the university would let me take in a single semester. But the project turned out fantastic, landed me the job I have today working on a NASA satellite subsystem, and created many lasting friendships.
That said, my first few years of college were unbelievably rough on me. I dealt with things ranging from feeling abandoned by God to having vicious, unfounded rumors spread about me to feeling as if I had lost the love of my life, and I dealt with them in unhealthy, college-like ways. On top of all that, I contracted Mono and was sleeping all the time, which killed my GPA. The only way I graduated on time with a decent GPA was to take maximum credit loads for five semesters, which is commendable on top of an already difficult major: out of the 200 people who started out in my major, less than 30 graduated, and only 4 of them were women.
But....
The first thing I feel when I think of college was the terrible things I did the first year. Getting black-out drunk at parties, smoking pot, sneaking off weekends to other college towns, getting involved with men who were jackasses. I think about trying to get boys to fall for me at parties, getting sick in the dorm bathroom, walking home across campus at 4am after waking up on a friend of a friend of a friend's couch. I think about how I screwed up that Physics lab. I think about how I could've done better in mechanics. I think how I could've been a nicer person through it all. And on and on.You get the gist. I know that if I met somebody on the street who has done the things I have, I would consider them successful. I would be able to see their mistakes as being lost, hurt, confused, and young. But when I think about myself, my emotional brain trudges up everything I've done wrong and conveniently ignores the commendable accomplishments.
Today I had an epiphone. My "emotional brain" is my mom's voice in my head! And its not saying, "As long as you try your best, nothing else matters!" or "I love you no matter what."
It's saying: "You should have done better." It's saying: "You're so lazy!"
I was reading McBride's Will I Ever Be Good Enough and came to the recovery section a few weeks ago. In this section, McBride tries to help its reader develop their "Inner Mother," which I dismissed as Self-Help Bull Honky. But hell, that's what I'm talking about here: replacing my mom's voice in my head with a unconditionally loving voice that is understanding above all else.
I think the first step to replacing my mom's negative voice is to take all the sore spots and write them down. Write what my brain knows about the situation. Then write what I feel about myself with regards to the situation. I think I'll come to find out that most of the negative rhetoric will sounds just like all the crap my mother has fed me throughout my life.
I'm curious -- has anybody done this before? Any other suggestions with pulling apart my mom's voice in my head from my own?
I had a whole lot of counseling. Almost 2 years spent exclusively on my mother. I found that I was kinder to other people than I am myself. The suggestion my counselor gave is write a letter as if these events happened to a friend or my daughter. What would I say to them? Then the kind advice I give to them I should follow myself. I have a friend that when the tapes in her head starts she repeats to herself that the unhealthy tape is lying. Then replace it with a new reality. Takes practice. I keep a couple of affirmations in my pocket that were written by my counselor. I find I still have to practice being kind to myself. I call it 'self parenting.' Being the parent to myself that I wished I had.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I can be much help because I am struggling with the same thing myself. I've come to recognize the difference between my voice and their voices, but I can't seem to get theirs out of my head completely. I learned the distinction partly by listening to my childhood voice through my memories and partly by learning to become my own authority. I think my childhood voice is a good indicator of my true voice because it was who I was before they really got control over my thought process. In my experience, most of the time when I feel badly about something, I identify it as the voice of my family of origin shaming me for this or that. However, when I feel good and content about something, it's always, always been my voice. I'm hoping for the day when I can only hear my own voice. Wishing the same for you too.
ReplyDeleteRaven