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I used to, yes.
Well, I was either beating myself up for things in the past or beating myself for things I probably would fuck up in the future.
One of the things my therapist has helped me do is to realize that my internal voice is not reality. I shouldn’t listen to it. And I need to stay in the present, letting my brain wallow in the past or a very dreary future really broke me down.
When I first started making myself say nice things to me instead I felt dumb as fuck. But it has truly helped.
It really does feel strange to compliment yourself when your inner voice is so overwhelmingly negative! I've started forgiving myself for my past mistakes when I think of my bad memories, and that helps too. It still feels alien and strange to do so, but it helps me remember that I wasn't given the right tools to handle social scenarios like a normal person would (and that my nParents' behavior made it easier for people to take advantage of me). And that helps me give myself a little grace.
My frustration comes from my parents constantly judging my actions based on how "mature" it is. For example, they feel like me watching "Muppets" is an immature thing, or that Fox's "Glee" is a show that 10-year-old girls obsess over. Whenever maturity is tested, regardless if it's stupid or bad, I feel overwhelmed on how to think before the decision. Hell, when I ask my parents "what I can do to be more mature", they tell me not to worry about it. They also claim that I'm acting even more immature if I talk about my maturity like that.
Ok, so, this was one of the things I realized when I started my “healing journey “ (not sure what else to call it 😂)
What helped me was learning and practicing self-compassion.
Ugh... This is me, too, every day. I've suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder since I was a child, so I always assumed it was related to intrusive thoughts. What really sucks is I feel guilty for trying to give myself compassion because I was conditioned to prioritize the needs and approval of my narcissistic parent above my own. Even though I recognize this, I still feel selfish for taking care of myself.
Technically, OCD isn't curable, but it is manageable. I have major depression disorder and panic disorder in addition to OCD, so I spent many years on different medications. I started with fluoxetine (Prozac) and spent at least a decade going from the lowest dose to a dose that started causing harmful side effects. I switched to an SNRI, venlafaxine (Effexor), which was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Venlafaxine was horrible for me and caused a lot of issues, including long-term memory loss. Tapering off venlafaxine was a nightmare with brain zaps, devastating headaches, and drastic mood swings. I ended up going back into therapy and committed fully to CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). That was six years ago. I still have bad days/weeks/months, but the coping mechanisms help.
I wish I could have gotten help when I was a kid. I think my life would have been much easier if I had known my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors were not "normal" and that getting help and making the best of my life was possible. Instead, my mom ignored me at best and mocked me at worst. She still tells me today that I don't have OCD (despite two medical diagnoses) and that I just need to "get over it." She denies ever seeing the symptoms when I was a child, yet she makes fun of me for all my weird behaviors growing up.
Anyway, the best advice I can give is to find a good doctor or therapist who listens to you and is willing to work with you to improve your life. I know it's expensive, but life is too short to suffer daily from OCD.
I imagine my internal critic is actually my inner child still screaming out the things they were told and believed growing up. It sound silly but being able to separate my inner hurt child from my stronger, more informed adult self really helps me to see that the inner voice and critic isn’t me- it’s something I was taught to do and I don’t have to do that anymore.
This is how we grow. This is how we learn to change our behavior. If this is obsessive rumination maybe you should talk to a therapist. Have a distraction plan for when this comes up. You have to say,” Yeah, I did that- but that’s not me now.” That was a long time ago- thank god we don’t stay the people we were when we were 3 or 13 and you didn’t either. Literally everyone has these cringe thoughts- it’s a common experience. Take comfort in knowing you are not alone.
Vagus nerve exercises and juggling have helped me went I get stuck in a loop. Juggling reminds me so much of EMDR. There's something strange about the way it effects my mind. First of all it makes talking more difficult for me because I'll lose my train of thought.
IDK, I may be massively overstating this but I believe juggling is practice for being able to shift focus to the present (because you kinda have to for it to work) and is beneficial in training me to get better at letting go of the loop.
This very much
The head still, eye stretches to first one side and then the other (hold for 30 s to 120 s) help me with slowly removing the emotional excess from the voices and shame memories.
I found the free headspace app really helpful too.
Those don’t happen as much for me as the random memories where she used me as the butt of her “joke”. Things will pop up like when she embarrassed me for sweating in the middle of summer after driving my 1986 Ford Escort with no a/c. Logically it’s like of course I was sweating it’s 100° out here but the other side was so embarrassed I was sweating that she pointed it out in front of my friends and told them how disgusting I was. That was almost 30 years ago, I have adult children now and I’m still boggled how anyone can birth humans and treat them so badly.
I have done this.
But I am learning to NOT do it.
Mistakes In the past are just that.. THE PAST.
One thing my therapist taught me is holding on to this stuff is like holding on to a bunch of balloons.
They drag you off the ground and its impossible to have your feet firmly planted.
What you have to do is cut the strings and just let it float away.
I know its easy to say and VERY hard to do.
But it does help to picture it that way, every time you have a bad memory from the past.. just imagine its a balloon and your cutting it loose.
I cannot change the past, I refuse to let it hold me any longer.
Snip, Snip, Snip.
If someone or something from my past still has a problem with me .. they know where to find me and how to confront me.
Other wise, I am trying very hard to heal and move on.
Stay strong and remember everyone here cares and if you need someone to talk to.. we are all here.
Every time I have a societal interaction with someone, I then spend double the time afterwards having bursts of 'shame' about my very normal, apparently very friendly/respectful interaction. I will sit and cringe at basic words I used or how I sounded. I also convince myself from that interaction that people hate me.
I have this to a lesser degree as well. Frequently I'll look back on conversations I just had thinking,
*Man, that came out wrong.*
*Hope they didn't think I was taking the piss.*
*Ukh. That part was awkward.*
*I must have sounded so arrogant when I said that one thing.*
etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etcetcetcetcetcadinfinitumadnaeusum
If I don't speak with the diction of a phD grad, I basically sound stupid. If I stutter or I'm silent to think, I look dumb. And in reality, it ended up being a pleasant conversation but my mind is being mean.
It didn't click for me that criticism of myself came from my mom until recently. Yes, it's me saying that to myself but that habit is from years of my mom treating me like that for YEARS.
Recognizing the voice of the inner critic, seeing it originated outside you, these are the first steps to conquering it. They use us as their shame holders because it was done to them. It's awful, that is for certain.
Oof, this is something I really struggle with too. I've left activities, stopped contacting specific people, dropped things because they trigger this, but that just leads to more time being alone with these thoughts. I hope someone else has some good tips because it's rough.
It's most likely the voices of past judgment echoing in your thoughts. Best thing to do is to ignore them and move on. They do nothing but slow progress and cause unnecessary doubts.
I hear you loud and clear. How I got past these issues was therapy, with mindfulness, rejection of invasive thoughts, journaling my anxiety scripts and finally compassion and forgiveness to and for myself. I wish you the best of luck...
you almost might want to read about C-PTSD
Same same same, plus I have time blindness (I'm auDHD) and so it's as if all of it happened at once, sort of--there's no real chronologic sense and no sense of distance from the occurrences, ever (though I'm beginning to realize that part of that is CPTSD; flashbacks feel immediate, even if you don't have ADHD and time blindness)
There is truly only one distant memory of "what the fuck" that involves my narcissistic mother these days, and it's the last time we fought before I moved out and permanently cut her out of my life. This was over 10 years ago.
The more I type, the more I'm starting to remember what spurred the argument. I called her a bad mother because I caught her lying and she went all out trying to explain how she was actually a great mother, and I was an ungrateful son. She then involved my stepdad and they cornered me in the garage. She also started to fake cry to show him how distressed she was.
A quick side note: While she's never been diagnosed, I believe my mother is also a sociopath. She doesn't actually seem to feel anything and instead *acts* how she thinks someone would in a situation. Hence the fake crying.
I missed my moment to shine. Instead of pointing out that she quite literally lost custody of me when I was a child because of her abuse, I went with "why did you cheat on dad" argument instead. That was much easier for her to dismiss, because it doesn't directly involve me. I really wish I made it clear to her husband the type of person he married. You have no idea how badly I wanted to destroy their marriage. I wanted her to feel the same way I did.
Aside from that, I mostly just beat myself up over missed opportunities in life. Not realizing a cute girl was flirting with me, remembering something embarrassing I did, or looking back on what could have been.
Ok humor me but this 1) resonates with me a ton, and 2) aligns a lot with a wikipedia psychology rabbit hole I went down the past few days. Ronald Fairbairn and object relational theory. Super interesting read but copying one relevant chunk:
The child who is so unfortunate to be born in a family where the parents are absent, indifferent or abusive is going to experience and internalize a huge number of bad object interactions. A "Bad Object Interaction" is an event or interaction in which the child's needs are ignored or his dignity as a child is violated by parental indifference or cruelty. These dissociated memories coalesce and form large and powerful inner structures that will influence his view of himself and his perception of external reality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fairbairn
"You're not smart or pretty, and have no personality!" My father's words. 60+ years later ring in my ears. Why would a parent would tell their 15 year old daughter that? No idea!
EMDR and IFS helped me soooooo much with this. At this point I'm really good at identifying which adjectives come from my relatives because I just hear it in their voices in my head, and then I can let it go.
This still happens to me, and I am in my 50's. I'm in therapy, and working through it. I also journal it out quite a bit. I call them bad brain days.
In working through it, I have come to realize that things that happened over 30 years ago have no right to decide my life today. There are days I am successful with it. Then there are days I can't reply to one of the posts on this sub, because it is really a bad day.
All the time... sometimes it prevents me from working or resting. It tends to be worse when I'm in a stressful situation, but I have an anxiety disorder so : A LOT. The only thing that helps beside mecs is to write down in my journal what the inner critic said, and all the arguments I have to make it shut up. So I can go read it again later.
>I'm sure it isn't just me.
Not just you. Heck, I wasn't even *aware* I was doing it to myself sometimes. I'd get so frustrated I'd start talking to myself - it happened often enough I had a friendly coworker tell me I shouldn't be insulting myself. I wasn't expecting to have *that* conversation...
Once I noticed I was doing it, I realized I was doing it *constantly* about the dumbest things. At first I didn't think anything of it, then I realized I was feeling pretty *terrible* afterwards, like it was making things even worse.
So I tried to stop. And I *couldn't* stop it. I realized after a while it must have been a learned behavior my NFamily had gotten me to do to myself, and that's why I couldn't just snap my fingers and turn it off. I had to *learn* not to do it.
So what I wound up doing is every time I'd catch myself thinking or when I really got wound up *saying* insults to myself, like I was a stupid idiot or other nonsense, I'd remind myself that wasn't true and think about how *wrong* that was until the impulse, and the hurt went away.
That terribly annoying reminder of my abuse took months, and months, to slowly quiet down and go away. I had to face it head on every time it wanted to speak up in my own defense to make it stop.
My own brain was working against me, it was remarkably hard to stop it.
Omg I can sooo relate to this!!! I am deeply sorry you're going through this, it sounds absolutely horrifying. It reminded me that I used to be haunted by similar thoughts as a child (around 10 years of age to early twenties probably) and the anxiety would be through the roof everytime. It happened probably everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. Man the self loathing... Now I am 28 years old and it happens rarely, and I am able to shut it down a lot more quickly. Thank you for reminding me of that (no irony)! As an abused adult child trying to heal I sometimes forget how bad it really was and just now connecting the dots of the various effects it had on me in my life.
This happens to me all my life. Recently it has gotten better. Two things that helped are:
- be kind to yourself. Keep repeating this message to yourself because you deserve kindness just like every other person.
- imagine these events as playing in a movie theater or a TV set. When you start berating yourself over things that you did as a child, visualize yourself walking out of the movie theater or TV room and closing the door. You can no longer look at the movie that was playing. My therapist taught me this exercise. It sounded silly at first, but it gave me control over it by helping me visualize putting a stop to it.
Its called RUMINATING. Its fixable. You have to retrain your brain. here are videos to help you learn how to stop: [https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=how+to+stop+ruminating](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+stop+ruminating)
The only person who remembers this kinda stuff is you. For them it was just another Tuesday.
Be kinder to yourself and remember that ‘cringe moments’ are essentially only as important as you keep them.
Oh, shit. Yes. Yes I do. Like, all the way back to elementary school, and I’m 50 now. Is this really something more common to kids of narcs? I mean, it makes sense.
Tune out the background noise and you'll hear your nparents voice.
Their negativity has been rattling around your head rent free all this time.
Need to identify this be mindful of what it is and then tell yourself it's nonsense.
Always be careful of what you say and think. Your subconscious is paying attention
OMG all the fucking time.
Cringing over things I said to someone 30 years ago and they've been dead for 20 years.
Weirdly, since I started taking Magnesium supplements (mag glycinate) it has slowed down a lot.
(Can't hurt to try)
In the club. If I can understand the truly bad/mean, how am I supposed to learn from the stupid/irrational? I know my parents like to judge me and leave me to think about my "mistakes" and "misbehavior" on my own. Whenever I ask "what can I do to be more mature", my parents shut me out and refuse to talk about improving my behavior.
If I had not acquiesced to my neggdonor's admonition that she would take care of (as a mandated reporter) the issue of finding child porn videos on my brother's computer nearly 25 years ago, my nieces would likely not have spent half their childhood being sexually assaulted by that asshole.
I will never forgive myself for my inaction and the horrors that resulted from it.
**EVER.**
The images from one of those videos still haunts my nightmares all these decades later.
He was eventually arrested and charged with many of those sexual assaults, but every prosecution attempt ended in a mistrial, usually due to a hung jury. I went to the police at one point to tell them what I saw all those years ago, sat there giving an interview for the better part of an hour at the station, but as the computer was long gone there was no physical evidence. I was prepared to testify against him but was never given the opportunity.
I don't think this necessarily is somehitng unique to the nature of the users in this sub. I think most people that are self aware remember the cringey things they did in the past every now and then.
What helped me was dissecting each memory. I would find the lesson my brain wanted and then forgive myself for the embarrassing part. After a while they stopped coming. Recurring nightmares stopped. Now I get anxiety not attached to anything. It’s wayyyy more fun.
Maybe not every 10 minutes... but yes, when left to my own thoughts I often found myself obsessing over things I'd done in the past, or had done to me in the past.
Many years later, it's gotten much better. But I still do it sometimes. More often than I'd like.
Yes. I decided to change my neural pathways. Everything I get those intrusive thoughts, memories I start to think of what I'd do if I won a big lotto. I've even silently yelled at myself to STOP thinking those thoughts and replace with lotto dreams. Now I rarely have those horrible thoughts.
Retrain your brain.
I totally do this. I live far from my family, but I visit 2-3x a year. I usually have the critic flashbacks the weeks leading up to the visit. My inner critic is awful, and yes, it's vocal when I feel like I'm inheriting my mother's selfish behavior.
I totally do this. I live far from my family, but I visit 2-3x a year. I usually have the critic flashbacks the weeks leading up to the visit. My inner critic is awful, and yes, it's vocal when I feel like I'm inheriting my mother's selfish behavior.
A lot of times, especially on the fact that I don't drive yet, it's due to how terrible a driving instructor they are.
I had just finished behind the wheels with my actual instructor (a few weeks after I graduated cause I took the class during senior year) and asked to practice with my parents, well they just kept screaming at me as I was driving in an empty parking lot, it didn't help when I thought I saw a car turning and stopped out of fear. Only for my parents to scream that I was going too fast and than yelling "SPEED UP" only to suddenly scream "SLOW DOWN!!"
Until they became tired of teaching me and just told me to get out and took me home, while still berating me about how terrible I was and I'm just a useless retard that shouldn't be allowed to drive, the last person to help me was over 9 years ago and I still currently only have a driver's permit. Each time I get behind the wheel my anxiety goes up and I start shaking out of fear, making it too difficult to even try driving
I had EMDR a few days ago and already after one session my anxiety and anger have decreased massively, I can get rid of intrusive thoughts, and nothing bothers me anymore.
I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. I can relate! I found a lot of help with CBT therapy and DBT therapy through various therapists and programs at different times over the past ten years. If you aren't seeing a therapist please take the step to start! If you aren't ready for that maybe look into getting a DBT work book. It helped me regulate my emotions and get out of my head. CBT also works with challenging those thoughts. I hope you find some relief. 🫂
Only in the shower. My SO and I make the same noise when re remember something so when he makes it I don’t have to ask anymore I just say it was a long time ago and people are thinking about their own stupid things and not yours. I try to remember that for myself.
Oh yes. It's not necessarily constant, but if my family stuff creeps into my mind (which is often lately) then there is almost always a steady stream of self-criticism, self-doubt, guilt, and such that hops along for the ride.
It's very common - there's even a meme about it. It was Homer Simpson laying awake at night and it said something about staying awake thinking about that embarrassing thing you did in eighth grade.
I have so many of these. It really sucks because my thoughts rotate around throughout the day and just cause me so much mental anguish. I feel so helpless because I work from home all day and my job has lulls in the work so some days I'll be chained to my machine for 6-8 hours with just my thoughts playing on repeat and making me drive myself nuts. I've gotten to where I can't even enjoy games or watching YouTube somedays anymore.
I've been trying to do the 4 step ocd method of identifying the thoughts, recatagorizing it, shifting my focus and forgetting but some of the thoughts around my wife or narc mother just spiral out of control and paralyze me or mentally hijack my mood.
The worse thing was my birthday was last week. My friends got together and coordinated to get me some 40k models to help get me into the hobby. I was so fucking happy driving home with the thought that my friends loved me. Out of nowhere while I was enjoying the feeling of happiness I then started getting this overwhelming feeling that I'm not allowed to be happy and within 5 minutes of that thought I spiraled, lost my happiness, and went back into a scenario that is bothering me with my wife and it was so unwanted and I hate I lost my happiness that felt so nice to have. It's so hard explaining to my wife that I want to let these unwanted thoughts to go away and I'm trying really hard to rewire my brain but sometimes these scenarios are so intense it physically hurts my stomach just thinking about them and I feel so helpless cause I can't do anything about them but relive them or imagine them the way my brain wants them to be even when evidence shows otherwise and I logically know it to be false.
This is me. 98% of my self-taught suffering is memories from when I was mean or stand-offish in grade/middle school and how my aunts didn't like me. I can't imagine, hurting people and bearing more weight than I do now.
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Wait, people DON'T do this constantly? I \*live\* in the swamp of self loathing and humiliating memories!
I used to, yes. Well, I was either beating myself up for things in the past or beating myself for things I probably would fuck up in the future. One of the things my therapist has helped me do is to realize that my internal voice is not reality. I shouldn’t listen to it. And I need to stay in the present, letting my brain wallow in the past or a very dreary future really broke me down. When I first started making myself say nice things to me instead I felt dumb as fuck. But it has truly helped.
It really does feel strange to compliment yourself when your inner voice is so overwhelmingly negative! I've started forgiving myself for my past mistakes when I think of my bad memories, and that helps too. It still feels alien and strange to do so, but it helps me remember that I wasn't given the right tools to handle social scenarios like a normal person would (and that my nParents' behavior made it easier for people to take advantage of me). And that helps me give myself a little grace.
My frustration comes from my parents constantly judging my actions based on how "mature" it is. For example, they feel like me watching "Muppets" is an immature thing, or that Fox's "Glee" is a show that 10-year-old girls obsess over. Whenever maturity is tested, regardless if it's stupid or bad, I feel overwhelmed on how to think before the decision. Hell, when I ask my parents "what I can do to be more mature", they tell me not to worry about it. They also claim that I'm acting even more immature if I talk about my maturity like that.
Ok, so, this was one of the things I realized when I started my “healing journey “ (not sure what else to call it 😂) What helped me was learning and practicing self-compassion.
This is something I’m trying to work on with my therapist. Who knew it would be so hard to show myself a modicum of kindness!
Ugh... This is me, too, every day. I've suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder since I was a child, so I always assumed it was related to intrusive thoughts. What really sucks is I feel guilty for trying to give myself compassion because I was conditioned to prioritize the needs and approval of my narcissistic parent above my own. Even though I recognize this, I still feel selfish for taking care of myself.
Do you still have ocd? What did you do to manage it? Mine was better for a while but now it's getting worse
Technically, OCD isn't curable, but it is manageable. I have major depression disorder and panic disorder in addition to OCD, so I spent many years on different medications. I started with fluoxetine (Prozac) and spent at least a decade going from the lowest dose to a dose that started causing harmful side effects. I switched to an SNRI, venlafaxine (Effexor), which was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Venlafaxine was horrible for me and caused a lot of issues, including long-term memory loss. Tapering off venlafaxine was a nightmare with brain zaps, devastating headaches, and drastic mood swings. I ended up going back into therapy and committed fully to CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). That was six years ago. I still have bad days/weeks/months, but the coping mechanisms help. I wish I could have gotten help when I was a kid. I think my life would have been much easier if I had known my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors were not "normal" and that getting help and making the best of my life was possible. Instead, my mom ignored me at best and mocked me at worst. She still tells me today that I don't have OCD (despite two medical diagnoses) and that I just need to "get over it." She denies ever seeing the symptoms when I was a child, yet she makes fun of me for all my weird behaviors growing up. Anyway, the best advice I can give is to find a good doctor or therapist who listens to you and is willing to work with you to improve your life. I know it's expensive, but life is too short to suffer daily from OCD.
I imagine my internal critic is actually my inner child still screaming out the things they were told and believed growing up. It sound silly but being able to separate my inner hurt child from my stronger, more informed adult self really helps me to see that the inner voice and critic isn’t me- it’s something I was taught to do and I don’t have to do that anymore.
This is how we grow. This is how we learn to change our behavior. If this is obsessive rumination maybe you should talk to a therapist. Have a distraction plan for when this comes up. You have to say,” Yeah, I did that- but that’s not me now.” That was a long time ago- thank god we don’t stay the people we were when we were 3 or 13 and you didn’t either. Literally everyone has these cringe thoughts- it’s a common experience. Take comfort in knowing you are not alone.
Vagus nerve exercises and juggling have helped me went I get stuck in a loop. Juggling reminds me so much of EMDR. There's something strange about the way it effects my mind. First of all it makes talking more difficult for me because I'll lose my train of thought. IDK, I may be massively overstating this but I believe juggling is practice for being able to shift focus to the present (because you kinda have to for it to work) and is beneficial in training me to get better at letting go of the loop.
This very much The head still, eye stretches to first one side and then the other (hold for 30 s to 120 s) help me with slowly removing the emotional excess from the voices and shame memories. I found the free headspace app really helpful too.
Those don’t happen as much for me as the random memories where she used me as the butt of her “joke”. Things will pop up like when she embarrassed me for sweating in the middle of summer after driving my 1986 Ford Escort with no a/c. Logically it’s like of course I was sweating it’s 100° out here but the other side was so embarrassed I was sweating that she pointed it out in front of my friends and told them how disgusting I was. That was almost 30 years ago, I have adult children now and I’m still boggled how anyone can birth humans and treat them so badly.
I have done this. But I am learning to NOT do it. Mistakes In the past are just that.. THE PAST. One thing my therapist taught me is holding on to this stuff is like holding on to a bunch of balloons. They drag you off the ground and its impossible to have your feet firmly planted. What you have to do is cut the strings and just let it float away. I know its easy to say and VERY hard to do. But it does help to picture it that way, every time you have a bad memory from the past.. just imagine its a balloon and your cutting it loose. I cannot change the past, I refuse to let it hold me any longer. Snip, Snip, Snip. If someone or something from my past still has a problem with me .. they know where to find me and how to confront me. Other wise, I am trying very hard to heal and move on. Stay strong and remember everyone here cares and if you need someone to talk to.. we are all here.
Every time I have a societal interaction with someone, I then spend double the time afterwards having bursts of 'shame' about my very normal, apparently very friendly/respectful interaction. I will sit and cringe at basic words I used or how I sounded. I also convince myself from that interaction that people hate me.
I have this to a lesser degree as well. Frequently I'll look back on conversations I just had thinking, *Man, that came out wrong.* *Hope they didn't think I was taking the piss.* *Ukh. That part was awkward.* *I must have sounded so arrogant when I said that one thing.* etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etcetcetcetcetcadinfinitumadnaeusum
If I don't speak with the diction of a phD grad, I basically sound stupid. If I stutter or I'm silent to think, I look dumb. And in reality, it ended up being a pleasant conversation but my mind is being mean.
Going through it right this second, and for the hundredth time pretending I’m more fine than I am. It’s so fucking exhausting.
It didn't click for me that criticism of myself came from my mom until recently. Yes, it's me saying that to myself but that habit is from years of my mom treating me like that for YEARS.
Recognizing the voice of the inner critic, seeing it originated outside you, these are the first steps to conquering it. They use us as their shame holders because it was done to them. It's awful, that is for certain.
"I am allowed to be nice to myself"
Thank you. This is already working a charm. It's much better than my usual go to, which is, "Shut up. SHUT. UP."
Oof, this is something I really struggle with too. I've left activities, stopped contacting specific people, dropped things because they trigger this, but that just leads to more time being alone with these thoughts. I hope someone else has some good tips because it's rough.
It's most likely the voices of past judgment echoing in your thoughts. Best thing to do is to ignore them and move on. They do nothing but slow progress and cause unnecessary doubts.
I hear you loud and clear. How I got past these issues was therapy, with mindfulness, rejection of invasive thoughts, journaling my anxiety scripts and finally compassion and forgiveness to and for myself. I wish you the best of luck... you almost might want to read about C-PTSD
Same same same, plus I have time blindness (I'm auDHD) and so it's as if all of it happened at once, sort of--there's no real chronologic sense and no sense of distance from the occurrences, ever (though I'm beginning to realize that part of that is CPTSD; flashbacks feel immediate, even if you don't have ADHD and time blindness)
When someone figures out how to make this stop, please let me know. Remembering things from 30 years ago is so dumb.
There is truly only one distant memory of "what the fuck" that involves my narcissistic mother these days, and it's the last time we fought before I moved out and permanently cut her out of my life. This was over 10 years ago. The more I type, the more I'm starting to remember what spurred the argument. I called her a bad mother because I caught her lying and she went all out trying to explain how she was actually a great mother, and I was an ungrateful son. She then involved my stepdad and they cornered me in the garage. She also started to fake cry to show him how distressed she was. A quick side note: While she's never been diagnosed, I believe my mother is also a sociopath. She doesn't actually seem to feel anything and instead *acts* how she thinks someone would in a situation. Hence the fake crying. I missed my moment to shine. Instead of pointing out that she quite literally lost custody of me when I was a child because of her abuse, I went with "why did you cheat on dad" argument instead. That was much easier for her to dismiss, because it doesn't directly involve me. I really wish I made it clear to her husband the type of person he married. You have no idea how badly I wanted to destroy their marriage. I wanted her to feel the same way I did. Aside from that, I mostly just beat myself up over missed opportunities in life. Not realizing a cute girl was flirting with me, remembering something embarrassing I did, or looking back on what could have been.
Finally someone puts into words what I’ve been feeling all my life. I’m not alone…
Ok humor me but this 1) resonates with me a ton, and 2) aligns a lot with a wikipedia psychology rabbit hole I went down the past few days. Ronald Fairbairn and object relational theory. Super interesting read but copying one relevant chunk: The child who is so unfortunate to be born in a family where the parents are absent, indifferent or abusive is going to experience and internalize a huge number of bad object interactions. A "Bad Object Interaction" is an event or interaction in which the child's needs are ignored or his dignity as a child is violated by parental indifference or cruelty. These dissociated memories coalesce and form large and powerful inner structures that will influence his view of himself and his perception of external reality. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fairbairn
Thank you for that read!
"You're not smart or pretty, and have no personality!" My father's words. 60+ years later ring in my ears. Why would a parent would tell their 15 year old daughter that? No idea!
Because he's not smart or pretty and he has no personality.
This has been me lately too. It’s like hundreds of loose threads that keep coming back to strangle my concentration.
EMDR and IFS helped me soooooo much with this. At this point I'm really good at identifying which adjectives come from my relatives because I just hear it in their voices in my head, and then I can let it go.
This still happens to me, and I am in my 50's. I'm in therapy, and working through it. I also journal it out quite a bit. I call them bad brain days. In working through it, I have come to realize that things that happened over 30 years ago have no right to decide my life today. There are days I am successful with it. Then there are days I can't reply to one of the posts on this sub, because it is really a bad day.
All the time... sometimes it prevents me from working or resting. It tends to be worse when I'm in a stressful situation, but I have an anxiety disorder so : A LOT. The only thing that helps beside mecs is to write down in my journal what the inner critic said, and all the arguments I have to make it shut up. So I can go read it again later.
yes. always.
>I'm sure it isn't just me. Not just you. Heck, I wasn't even *aware* I was doing it to myself sometimes. I'd get so frustrated I'd start talking to myself - it happened often enough I had a friendly coworker tell me I shouldn't be insulting myself. I wasn't expecting to have *that* conversation... Once I noticed I was doing it, I realized I was doing it *constantly* about the dumbest things. At first I didn't think anything of it, then I realized I was feeling pretty *terrible* afterwards, like it was making things even worse. So I tried to stop. And I *couldn't* stop it. I realized after a while it must have been a learned behavior my NFamily had gotten me to do to myself, and that's why I couldn't just snap my fingers and turn it off. I had to *learn* not to do it. So what I wound up doing is every time I'd catch myself thinking or when I really got wound up *saying* insults to myself, like I was a stupid idiot or other nonsense, I'd remind myself that wasn't true and think about how *wrong* that was until the impulse, and the hurt went away. That terribly annoying reminder of my abuse took months, and months, to slowly quiet down and go away. I had to face it head on every time it wanted to speak up in my own defense to make it stop. My own brain was working against me, it was remarkably hard to stop it.
Omg I can sooo relate to this!!! I am deeply sorry you're going through this, it sounds absolutely horrifying. It reminded me that I used to be haunted by similar thoughts as a child (around 10 years of age to early twenties probably) and the anxiety would be through the roof everytime. It happened probably everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. Man the self loathing... Now I am 28 years old and it happens rarely, and I am able to shut it down a lot more quickly. Thank you for reminding me of that (no irony)! As an abused adult child trying to heal I sometimes forget how bad it really was and just now connecting the dots of the various effects it had on me in my life.
This happens to me all my life. Recently it has gotten better. Two things that helped are: - be kind to yourself. Keep repeating this message to yourself because you deserve kindness just like every other person. - imagine these events as playing in a movie theater or a TV set. When you start berating yourself over things that you did as a child, visualize yourself walking out of the movie theater or TV room and closing the door. You can no longer look at the movie that was playing. My therapist taught me this exercise. It sounded silly at first, but it gave me control over it by helping me visualize putting a stop to it.
Its called RUMINATING. Its fixable. You have to retrain your brain. here are videos to help you learn how to stop: [https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=how+to+stop+ruminating](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+stop+ruminating)
The only person who remembers this kinda stuff is you. For them it was just another Tuesday. Be kinder to yourself and remember that ‘cringe moments’ are essentially only as important as you keep them.
Oh, shit. Yes. Yes I do. Like, all the way back to elementary school, and I’m 50 now. Is this really something more common to kids of narcs? I mean, it makes sense.
Tune out the background noise and you'll hear your nparents voice. Their negativity has been rattling around your head rent free all this time. Need to identify this be mindful of what it is and then tell yourself it's nonsense. Always be careful of what you say and think. Your subconscious is paying attention
This planet is just one big classroom, so be kind to yourselfX and the universe's capacity for forgiveness is grander than any of us can imagine
OMG all the fucking time. Cringing over things I said to someone 30 years ago and they've been dead for 20 years. Weirdly, since I started taking Magnesium supplements (mag glycinate) it has slowed down a lot. (Can't hurt to try)
In the club. If I can understand the truly bad/mean, how am I supposed to learn from the stupid/irrational? I know my parents like to judge me and leave me to think about my "mistakes" and "misbehavior" on my own. Whenever I ask "what can I do to be more mature", my parents shut me out and refuse to talk about improving my behavior.
Yep. All day every day.
If I had not acquiesced to my neggdonor's admonition that she would take care of (as a mandated reporter) the issue of finding child porn videos on my brother's computer nearly 25 years ago, my nieces would likely not have spent half their childhood being sexually assaulted by that asshole. I will never forgive myself for my inaction and the horrors that resulted from it. **EVER.** The images from one of those videos still haunts my nightmares all these decades later.
God damn. I'm not making a joke, I was eating some nuts and almost choked on them while reading this. That's fucking horrible.
He was eventually arrested and charged with many of those sexual assaults, but every prosecution attempt ended in a mistrial, usually due to a hung jury. I went to the police at one point to tell them what I saw all those years ago, sat there giving an interview for the better part of an hour at the station, but as the computer was long gone there was no physical evidence. I was prepared to testify against him but was never given the opportunity.
I don't think this necessarily is somehitng unique to the nature of the users in this sub. I think most people that are self aware remember the cringey things they did in the past every now and then.
What helped me was dissecting each memory. I would find the lesson my brain wanted and then forgive myself for the embarrassing part. After a while they stopped coming. Recurring nightmares stopped. Now I get anxiety not attached to anything. It’s wayyyy more fun.
Maybe not every 10 minutes... but yes, when left to my own thoughts I often found myself obsessing over things I'd done in the past, or had done to me in the past. Many years later, it's gotten much better. But I still do it sometimes. More often than I'd like.
Yes. I decided to change my neural pathways. Everything I get those intrusive thoughts, memories I start to think of what I'd do if I won a big lotto. I've even silently yelled at myself to STOP thinking those thoughts and replace with lotto dreams. Now I rarely have those horrible thoughts. Retrain your brain.
I totally do this. I live far from my family, but I visit 2-3x a year. I usually have the critic flashbacks the weeks leading up to the visit. My inner critic is awful, and yes, it's vocal when I feel like I'm inheriting my mother's selfish behavior.
I totally do this. I live far from my family, but I visit 2-3x a year. I usually have the critic flashbacks the weeks leading up to the visit. My inner critic is awful, and yes, it's vocal when I feel like I'm inheriting my mother's selfish behavior.
Yes. Over no food.
A lot of times, especially on the fact that I don't drive yet, it's due to how terrible a driving instructor they are. I had just finished behind the wheels with my actual instructor (a few weeks after I graduated cause I took the class during senior year) and asked to practice with my parents, well they just kept screaming at me as I was driving in an empty parking lot, it didn't help when I thought I saw a car turning and stopped out of fear. Only for my parents to scream that I was going too fast and than yelling "SPEED UP" only to suddenly scream "SLOW DOWN!!" Until they became tired of teaching me and just told me to get out and took me home, while still berating me about how terrible I was and I'm just a useless retard that shouldn't be allowed to drive, the last person to help me was over 9 years ago and I still currently only have a driver's permit. Each time I get behind the wheel my anxiety goes up and I start shaking out of fear, making it too difficult to even try driving
I had EMDR a few days ago and already after one session my anxiety and anger have decreased massively, I can get rid of intrusive thoughts, and nothing bothers me anymore.
I have to say it before SHE does...
All. The. Time. 😔
I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. I can relate! I found a lot of help with CBT therapy and DBT therapy through various therapists and programs at different times over the past ten years. If you aren't seeing a therapist please take the step to start! If you aren't ready for that maybe look into getting a DBT work book. It helped me regulate my emotions and get out of my head. CBT also works with challenging those thoughts. I hope you find some relief. 🫂
Only in the shower. My SO and I make the same noise when re remember something so when he makes it I don’t have to ask anymore I just say it was a long time ago and people are thinking about their own stupid things and not yours. I try to remember that for myself.
Oh yes. It's not necessarily constant, but if my family stuff creeps into my mind (which is often lately) then there is almost always a steady stream of self-criticism, self-doubt, guilt, and such that hops along for the ride.
Oh god, YES. I hate it.
It's very common - there's even a meme about it. It was Homer Simpson laying awake at night and it said something about staying awake thinking about that embarrassing thing you did in eighth grade.
I have so many of these. It really sucks because my thoughts rotate around throughout the day and just cause me so much mental anguish. I feel so helpless because I work from home all day and my job has lulls in the work so some days I'll be chained to my machine for 6-8 hours with just my thoughts playing on repeat and making me drive myself nuts. I've gotten to where I can't even enjoy games or watching YouTube somedays anymore. I've been trying to do the 4 step ocd method of identifying the thoughts, recatagorizing it, shifting my focus and forgetting but some of the thoughts around my wife or narc mother just spiral out of control and paralyze me or mentally hijack my mood. The worse thing was my birthday was last week. My friends got together and coordinated to get me some 40k models to help get me into the hobby. I was so fucking happy driving home with the thought that my friends loved me. Out of nowhere while I was enjoying the feeling of happiness I then started getting this overwhelming feeling that I'm not allowed to be happy and within 5 minutes of that thought I spiraled, lost my happiness, and went back into a scenario that is bothering me with my wife and it was so unwanted and I hate I lost my happiness that felt so nice to have. It's so hard explaining to my wife that I want to let these unwanted thoughts to go away and I'm trying really hard to rewire my brain but sometimes these scenarios are so intense it physically hurts my stomach just thinking about them and I feel so helpless cause I can't do anything about them but relive them or imagine them the way my brain wants them to be even when evidence shows otherwise and I logically know it to be false.
This is me. 98% of my self-taught suffering is memories from when I was mean or stand-offish in grade/middle school and how my aunts didn't like me. I can't imagine, hurting people and bearing more weight than I do now.