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ARTICLE: Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking
By Dr. David Burns, From The Feeling Good Handbook (Plume Publishers, 1999)
Companion article with bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56200.0 (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56200.0)

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How we often mislead ourselves... .

1. All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, "I've blown my diet completely." This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream.

2. Overgeneralization - You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as "always" or "never" when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the window of his car. He told himself, "Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!"

3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.

4. Discounting the positive - You reject positive experiences by insisting that they "don't count." If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn't good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positives takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

5. Jumping to conclusions - You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion.

Mind Reading : Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

Fortune-telling : You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, "I'm really going to blow it. What if I flunk?" If you're depressed you may tell yourself, "I'll never get better."

6. Magnification - You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional Reasoning - You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly." Or, "I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person." Or, "I feel angry. This proves that I'm being treated unfairly." Or, "I feel so inferior. This means I'm a second rate person." Or, "I feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless."

8. "Should" statements - You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After playing a difficult piece on the piano, a gifted pianist told herself, "I shouldn't have made so many mistakes." This made her feel so disgusted that she quit practicing for several days. "Musts," "oughts" and "have tos" are similar offenders.

"Should statements" that are directed against yourself lead to guilt and frustration. Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general, lead to anger and frustration: "He shouldn't be so stubborn and argumentative!"

Many people try to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if they were delinquents who had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything. "I shouldn't eat that doughnut." This usually doesn't work because all these shoulds and musts make you feel rebellious and you get the urge to do just the opposite. Dr. Albert Ellis has called this " must erbation." I call it the "shouldy" approach to life.

9. Labeling - Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." You might also label yourself "a fool" or "a failure" or "a jerk." Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but "fools," "losers" and "jerks" do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the wrong way, you may tell yourself: "He's an S.O.B." Then you feel that the problem is with that person's "character" or "essence" instead of with their thinking or behavior. You see them as totally bad. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves very little room for constructive communication.

10. Personalization and Blame - Personalization comes when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn't entirely under your control. When a woman received a note that her child was having difficulty in school, she told herself, "This shows what a bad mother I am," instead of trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem so that she could be helpful to her child. When another woman's husband beat her, she told herself, "If only I was better in bed, he wouldn't beat me." Personalization leads to guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy.

Some people do the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems, and they overlook ways they might be contributing to the problem: "The reason my marriage is so lousy is because my spouse is totally unreasonable." Blame usually doesn't work very well because other people will resent being scapegoated and they will just toss the blame right back in your lap. It's like the game of hot potato--no one wants to get stuck with it.

AUTHOR: Dr. Burns graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College, received his M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed his psychiatry residency at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has served as Acting Chief of Psychiatry at the Presbyterian / University of Pennsylvania Medical Center (1988) and Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Medical School (1998) and  is certified by the National Board of Psychiatry and Neurology

Having someone with BPD in your life can be quite challenging. That’s probably a bit of an understatement. Whether it’s your parents, siblings, in-laws or anyone else, interactions with a person with BPD or BPD traits can be difficult to handle. It's important to keep telling yourself that no matter what your BPD relatives might say or do to you, their behavior is most likely not a reflection of who you really. It's more likely that their words and actions are only a reflection of their own inner negativity or turmoil which is being projected onto you. Not taking their behavior personally is very important to protect your own emotional and mental well-being. Easier said than done of course, I fully realize that  In some cases you may experience yourself being affected to the point that you start to question yourself or start to get anxious more and more.

Questions These kinds of thinking patterns can really negatively affect your mood and also cause you to feel anxious. To explore this subject further, I’d be very interested to hear your answers to the following questions:
 
1.   When you look at your own situation would you say that you sometimes find yourself struggling with a overly negative or self-critical inner voice?
 
2.   If you do, where do you think this inner voice/critic comes from? Is it really yourself talking or could it perhaps be that you've internalized the negative or critical voice of your parents, siblings, in-laws etc.?
 
3.   Can you identify any of the listed forms of distorted or warped thinking in your own thinking patterns?
 
4.   How do you deal with your negative inner voice? Have you found ways to effectively talk back to your inner critic?
 
Thanks in advance for anything you can share here!

I must work harder to correct these imperfections, now that I'm aware of them.  What a "catch 22" I have accepted/demanded of myself.  Sad, sad, sad.   Never am I as some neurotic authority figure or institution would have me to be ... .legacies of BPD.  Being emotionally mature is often threatening to those individuals & institutions that do not accept a different way of being!

Scary,I have some of these imperfections.

That's about $5,000 worth of therapy! I'm a master at the "binocular trick."

turtle

That's a useful list. I think I take more than my share of blame (not all) and sometimes magnify and use a mental filter. I do not do black and white thinking--if anything I tend to see too many shades of gray. :) This list is not static. Some of these behaviors would be and are exacerbated during stressful times.

Diotima

Great article.  I really need to work on my Emotional Reasoning!

As the adult child of a PD mother, I struggle with quite a few things on this list, so I've been using this along with the "Ten Ways to Untwist Your Thinking" for months now. As with anything, it's a process, but one that is becoming slightly easier with practice.  :)

I think this is a wonderful list. I do many of these things. My future ex did too.

Is it specifically for those that came from a bad personal relationship?

These are common patterns in people suffering from depression.  A recent poll (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=79772.0)suggests that 77% of our members struggle with depression.



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I have to do a lot of "self correcting" and my friends point out the inaccuracies in statements that I often make. I am trying to leave this sort of thinking behind.

Its certainly an accurate list of some of the items that frustrate me in interacting with my wife.

So much so, that certain things I will just avoid doing with her.

A big one that is particularly frustrating to me is 'catastrophizing'.  That is, interpreting one small item in a way that is a gross over reaction.  Im guessing it falls into one of the categories as a subset.

For example, when my son was about 1 year old I gave him a very small piece of pepperoni to eat (enough for him to taste it).  My wife melted down since it had chemicals and preservatives in it, and since he was young: 'he could die'.  (it wasnt about wanting to be organic, it was that she equaled it to feeding him poison)

It could be part of all or nothing, or part of over generalization... .

I just thought of an addition to evil #8:      "you need to"... .  

You need to (do this) or you need to (do that)... .     This phrase is something that drives my dBPDs around the bend.  While it is meant to be a suggestion, just like "could and should", it ends up sounding like a command.

Not good.

is there a line somewhere between being self critical and self reflecting and self aware?

what about a line between being accountable and accepting and guilty?

ooh these 10 twisted thinking forms and the 15 cognitive distortions... .  so familiar, so sad.

I am so glad I am leaving these ways behind, but yes, it's hard to break old habits. At least I have stopped 'should'ing myself. I am now working on the black and white thinking at times of emotional distress.

Vivek  

ooh i'm very bad with this one

It's good know where you might be hurting yourself.  The companion article link at the top has ways to untwist thinking.  Pretty simple exercises. :)

ARTICLE: Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking By Dr. David Burns Companion article with bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56200.0 (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56200.0) From The Feeling Good Handbook (Plume Publishers, 1999)

Must be something weird about me as I don't do any of those ten. Guess therapy worked for me.

Always being right!   Gonna have to work on that one.

This is awesome. And timely.
 
last night I was doing this exercise about draining off emotions as advised by this incredibly insightful person I know   and I struggled with it! Over and over again!
 
I talk about flashbulb moments - this was like the sky was on FIRE! I just. Couldn't. Do. It.
 

All of this.
 
ALL of it over and over. In relation to 2 or 3 related events.
 
I must say I did not deal with the critical negative voice very well at all but and it is a huge but I heard it more clearly and I was able to separate from it once or twice.
 
Talking myself down off the ledge wasn't working so i tried the drain.
 
In the end I confess I went into fallback position which is withdrawal. I am not happy that I didn't succeed in resolving my feelings but I did congratulate myself for trying, I encouraged myself to try again when stronger and I did allow myself the luxury of a few tears which i don't usually do.
 
So thanks for this.

The "inner critic" is really the voice of someone else (or elses) that we've internalized as our own.

From my uBDx: "a woman of character deserves a man of character. In that, you failed." Message:  you lack character. She's the only person in my life, besides my mom (whom I have an ok r/s with now) who's even come close to telling me that. Leaving aside the schoolyard bullies... .forgot about them for a moment.

From my BPD mom several times when I was a child, "sometimes, I wish I'd never adopted you!" Message: you're worthless and you cause me pain. I wish you didn't exist.

Painful stuff, and we've seen stories here that are far worse.

Being invalidated as a child, when our identities are still forming, is extremely damaging. That punitive parent becomes the inner critic. How do we take back that which was stolen from us, the chance to form our own identities apart from the abuse from those who themselves lack identities?

Very good questions.
 
It's good for me to pause and think about them and attempt some answers. Helps me to keep growing!
 
I would say for myself that the entire list applies at times, but the following are probably my greatest struggles at the moment. To answer your first question: Yes, my inner critic stays very much employed. One of these days I should fire her.
 

#2: where does this voice come from?  
 
I've always thought it came from myself, from criticizing me or the need to criticize myself. After reading some thoughts posted here recently, do you think it really is possible that the voice we hear is really that of our BPDparent but we've adopted it in our own voice? If I'm just mentally repeating what my mom always said, then it tells me what I've blocked and don't remember... .her words. While I remember some, I don't have a lot of specifics.
 
I'm not too successful at #3 and #4 yet, but I can see where I have sometimes been able to identify some of what I've done as regards #3.
 
I am also able to identify that a lot of what has been established as a pattern in me from long ago has certainly carried over into my marriage. I'm constantly using these warped patterns of thinking in my marriage relationship. While DH is not BPD, he is controlling and triggers these behaviors in me almost every day.
 
Woolspinner

Wonderful post! This is something that plagued me for many years!

1.   When you look at your own situation would you say that you sometimes find yourself struggling with a overly negative or self-critical inner voice?

2.   If you do, where do you think this inner voice/critic comes from? Is it really yourself talking or could it perhaps be that you've internalized the negative or critical voice of your parents, siblings, in-laws etc.?

3.   Can you identify any of the listed forms of distorted or warped thinking in your own thinking patterns?

4.   How do you deal with your negative inner voice? Have you found ways to effectively talk back to your inner critic?][/quote]
The inner negative voice was mostly my mom, but mingled in there were the voices of my siblings ridiculing me as well.

I do have some fleeting moments of the negative inner voice, but it is quickly dispelled. I learned through CBT how to get rid of the negative messages by replacing them with positive or normalizing statements. I spent many years telling myself that I was a good person and that I had many good qualities. Can't say that I believed myself at first, or even the hundredth time I made these statements to myself, but over time, it did replace the negative thoughts. My favorite statement to myself is "Everyone does thing like this. I am the same as everyone else. I am not perfect and they are not either." This was the most freeing of all statements as I always felt isolated and separate from the group. I thought that everyone else was so much better than me and didn't have the kinds of experiences or thoughts that I did. I think time and experience proved me wrong on this.

Really enjoyed examining this issue again. It is worthwhile to evaluate where we are at in our healing process. :)

Thanks for all your wonderful responses! I myself have also struggled with automatic negative thoughts. After learning about Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), things started to change for me. I started applying the techniques and this has really helped me talk back and to a degree even silence the negative internalized voice. In my case I internalized the overly critical voice of my uBPD mom and sis and not to forget that of my brother, a person with huge narcissistic traits  This weakened me and I took this internalized voice, in fact multiple internalized voices, with me wherever I went and thatalso  made me an easy target at school so I can relate to you Turkish when you mention the schoolyard bullies.


When I started applying cognitive behavior techniques I was clearly able to identify all the various forms of distorted thinking in my own thinking patterns. Except for one, emotional reasoning: thinking that emotional states legitimately reflect reality. The 'funny' thing is that of all the forms of distorted thinking, emotional reasoning was one of the ones I did most of all. However, at first I just couldn't see it or believe that you could actually be so strongly influenced by your emotions that this would totally determine or alter your perception of reality. It just didn't seem possible to me, but boy was I wrong

I found out just how powerful emotional reasoning was after a day that I had been really working hard on learning more a bout CBT. At the end of the day I was disappointed that I didn't feel better and told myself that CBT wasn't helpful at all to me, i would never feel better and all sorts of other stuff too. However the next day, I felt a whole lot better and started to connect the dots that I hadn't been able to do the day before, probably because I was very tired. I was absolutely amazed that they way I felt about everything was so different from how I felt the night before and that's when I realized just how powerful emotional reasoning is.

Something I really like about cognitive behavior techniques is their relative simplicity, yet their positive effects can be very powerful in lifting your mood and reducing anxiety. The basic idea is just that you write down any (automatic) negative thoughts you might have and try to counteract or combat them by writing a positive or rational response next to them. This is something you can do by yourself even without a therapist. Events lead to thoughts which lead to feelings which lead to behaviors  By changing our thinking we can change our feelings and as a result our behavior. And also changing your behavior directly, even if you we still have negative thoughts, will have a direct influence on how you think and feel.

The mind is a magical place! :)

1 - Yes.

2 - Honestly, I don't think my inner critic is anyone elses voice - other than "little beefree", so to speak. I think "little beefree" was so scared of the unpredictable storms of wrath, that she would try to do everything as perfectly as possible, so as not to cause the storms inside uBPD mom to explode - not realizing that the storms really didn't have anything at all to do with her performance, but with the storms going on inside of her mom.

3 - probably mental filter/magnification. For example, this morning I sang lead on three challenging songs, and objectively have to say I did very well. My focus wasn't on wow, that was a great morning, I got to sing three songs and did really well, but I didn't exactly quote the text I spoke, people probably think much less of me.

4. Right now I'm just starting to work on identifying when it is happening.  Reading Healing Your Emotional Self by Engel.

Yes.  It has gotten better but it is still a struggle and a problem for me especially when i am tired.


I think it is a combination of both me and my mother.  When I started thinking about this, I realized it is like they are fused.  The negative, self-defeating and demoralizing beliefs I have about myself are definitely from my mother, but I internalized those projections to the point where they were/are beliefs that I have.  It goes beyond just the projections.  Is this where projective Identification comes into play?  I think so, but I am no expert.


I think I have done almost all of them at one point in time.  Just yesterday I found out that I had been feeling anxious and like I had diverted something from it's intended course only to find out that I was the only one who saw it that way.  So I was doing the old Jumping to conclusions/mind reading/fortune telling distortion along with emotional reasoning!  Those two seem to be my more common ones.


Well, I haven't been successful yet but there are a few things that seem to work/help.  I do know not to rely on the internal dialogue/voice when i am tired, so I will step back and wait before making any decisions.  I also try to stay aware of the fact that sometimes my perceptions are a bit off, especially when i am doing some deep emotional work, and so I try to slow down my response to the voice(s) and think things through rather than just go with what my feelings are dictating.  Sometimes though, when the voices are really crazy and just ridiculous, I tell it to shut up.  :) Surprisingly, it does work for a bit but maybe it is because I usually end up laughing at myself.  Some things are really just that ridiculous!   

Another thing I do is use the list of 10 ways to untwist my thoughts, also by David Burns, MD.  One of his ways to untwist is to use the survey method where you ask (trusted) people if your thoughts or attitudes are realistic.  I try not to use this too often as one, I want to figure it out on my own and two, I don't want to wear out my welcome with my friends!  But once I get some feedback I can then tell myself that voice does not know what it is talking about. 

As a side note, I was bullied in school too.  I was waaaayyy too sensitive and cried easily (annoyingly so) on top of having poor self-esteem and taking everything people/kids did and said personally so of course I was a prime target for bullying.  That did not help at all in terms of developing a good self image.       so I guess those experiences also added to the voices.

What do you think was the difference those one or two times that you were able to separate from that negative voice? Is there a lesson there that might also work in other situations?


I think talking back to that negative inner voice is very important to try and get our identity back. The negative voice basically only tells us lies, so if we believe what it's telling us, we're living in a world of fantasy. Applying cognitive behavior techniques has worked for me. Nowadays I combine it with mindfulness and tell myself to be mindful of my own thoughts so I'll be able to notice any distorted thinking patterns that might be going on.


I really think you should Wools! No one needs someone working for them who has such a bad attitude


I think it is possible to have internalized the negative voice of someone, but there are also other scenarios of course. Some people might have had wonderful parents who never were critical at all, yet still end up with a negative critical inner voice.

In my case it isn't necessarily that I repeat the exact same things that were told to me as a child and young adult, but more that the theme is the same. Like you better not try anything new because I wasn't allowed to do anything as a kid. Or I must be a bad person otherwise they wouldn't have treated me like that when I was younger. Not only the words of our parents can get internalized but also the messages they silently express through their actions. Do you feel like this might be something that also happened to you?


For me too and I was shocked when I discovered that I did so much emotional reasoning. When I read the ten forms of distorted thinking it just didn't seem possible to me that my own feelings could have such a great influence on how I perceived everything around me. I am very glad that CBT has worked for you and has helped you effectively talk back to that negative inner voice |iiii


Thanks for sharing this wonderful statement!


Thanks for answering these questions beefree! When I look at what you say here it seems that perfectionism or feeling forced to be perfect is something you've struggled with. This could be tied in to all or none thinking which basically means that everything is either totally fantastic or totally rotten, there's nothing in between. When you look at it like this, would you say that all or nothing thinking might also be a factor in how you view yourself and the things you do?


I totally relate to this! When I'm tired is when I seem to be the most susceptible to emotional reasoning. And now that I'm aware just how powerful emotional reasoning can be, I too just take a step back so I can rest and get my energy level back up.


I find this very interesting Harri. What happens to a person when you've been listening to that internalized negative for so long? Is is still possible to separate from it then or has it become your new identity? Regardless of the answer to these questions, the techniques you mention can be used to effectively untwist any negative thoughts you might have.

Your comments are definitely food for thought... .projective identification... .I think we can start a whole new thread about that!  You feel like your own voice is completely fused with your mother's voice. How long have you been applying cognitive behavior techniques? In my case I noticed I went through stages. The negative voice was so loud it was hard to recognize my own voice in there but after applying the techniques for 2 to 3 years, the volume of my negative inner voice had been reduced to the point that I started to feel another shift inside of me. Just like something was switched on again, perhaps that's what it feels like when you start to extract your own voice from the negative internalized voice. Talking back to this negative inner voice is still very much a struggle for me though and I'm still very mindful of any distorted thinking patterns that might be going on in my mind.

Thank you all for sharing! :)

The list Harri mentions here can be very helpful when trying to talk back to you negative inner voice. Just the other day Harri posted the entire list on here and because it's so helpful I've re-posted it here:

Hi again! 


I don't know the answers to those questions.  It was so easy to just blame my mother, but in answering here, I discovered her voice and mine are all twisted together.  So I am very happy to read the bolded part.  I agree that the actual source does not matter when it comes to silencing or quieting the voices.  Thanks for the moment of self-discovery Kwamina... .and the hope!


Not long enough and not consistently enough.  I first learned about some of them several years ago.  I used them for a while and did very well at changing things.  Some of the lessons stuck, but so many i seem to forget.  And then i got busy with life stuff and I let it all get away from me, forgetting, or maybe not realizing, that this is going to be a life long process for me (so now I take every opportunity I get to remind myself of that fact.  LOL)  I do know based on previous work that things will get easier and some will become more automatic as I practice but healing/recovery will be a daily choice for me  (and I keep reminding myself of that too... .it is what it is <--- I hate that phrase!)  Oh yeah, I also signed up for Mood Gym (it is good and it is free!) but I have not done a whole lot of work there yet.  I plan to though. 


Thank you for sharing that.  It helps to see the progress you have made and once again, it gives me hope.  Your experience is a perfect illustration of how this is a process.  Well done Kwamina!  Do you have mantras you tell yourself like clljhns mentioned (love it BTW and plan to borrow it)?

I'm glad you posted the list of ways to untwist... .I did not want to hi-jack or divert this thread!  :)

Harri,

You are welcome to borrow anything that I post! I think that is the intent and purpose of this site. We need to support each other and if what I said helps you, please feel free to use!

Wishing you all the best! :)

This is a great conversation, and very on-target for what I've been working on in my own world lately.

A therapist told me once that I have a "brutal superego," and the more I dig into the issue, the more I realize just how extensive its reach can be -- much deeper and farther than I previously imagined.

A great deal of that deep-rootedness has to do with the emotional reasoning thing, which was among the last of that David Burns list of thinking patterns that I was able to detect at work in my own mind.  Until I could sense when and how emotional reasoning was occurring in my thoughts (still working on that, too), I was bound to just accept it, as well as a lot of other stuff that issued from it (i.e., other thoughts and feelings, viewpoints, etc.), as aspects of reality, not something my mind was coloring or even generating.

Pete Walker's notion of the "emotional flashback" has helped me immensely, especially when it comes to emotional reasoning and other thought tendencies from Burns' list.

I wanted to chime in here and add that, along with some forms of 'stinking thinking' I inherited directly from my family of origin by absorbing or imitating how I saw them respond, in their own worlds, to various situations and to life in general (e.g., "Mom acts perfectionistic in this situation, so that must be how I should respond when I encounter it, too," etc.), I know there are other forms I took on based on how they treated me in particular: projection, splitting, name-calling and other tendencies (e.g., "Mom calls me spoiled, so I should take that to heart," etc.).

But there is even another component as well, which happened on the level of inference or interpretation, even without my really being aware of it -- kind of like the cumulative effect of years of exposure to all the different behaviors and crises and emotions and reactions that I watched and in which I participated.

To be more specific, what I mean is that there were ways in which I think my inner critic was partly formed that had to do with what I thought I could or should expect from life and from myself based on all of those factors I just mentioned -- e.g., "My mom is an adult and can't manage her life, so life must be too scary -- I think I'll avoid having too many positive expectations for my own life."

I see that sort of thing as somewhat different from impressions I got from imitation or from direct interactions with my family, if that makes sense. My inner critic at times seems to kick in in an attempt to manage down my expectations so I don't get disappointed again, which has meant in the past that I have sold myself short and missed various opportunities because of a nagging feeling that I wasn't "safe" somehow if I took them or that I didn't deserve them.

So, some part of my inner critic's function seems to be to keep me from trying things so I don't get hurt, which sounds reasonable enough, but what it bases that impulse on is often warped ideas about my abilities and my worth.

My $.02 -- thanks!  :)

I've also used MoodGym and I found it very helpful. For those who might not be familiar with MoodGym, it's a free online cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) program:


You can read more about MoodGym here:

MoodGym: Free On-Line Cognitive Therapy Program (https://bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a111.htm)


Thanks for joining the discussion matilda17! The concept of emotional flashback and how it relates to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is yet another fascinating subject to explore:


Could you perhaps tell us a bit more about how Pete Walker's notion of the "emotional flashback" has helped you better deal with distorted thinking patterns? How were you able to deal with your emotional reasoning?


I think this really makes sense. You and many of us here were basically raised in a 'fantasy' world in which we were taught rules of how the world supposedly worked that don't apply to the real world. They only applied to the fantasy world created by the BPD adults in our lives. Now that we are adults ourselves, we find ourselves in the situation that we gotta unlearn those fantasy rules and start to learn about how the world really works.

Sure -- I'll use the example of procrastination and self-sabotaging behavior to illustrate.

With my parents acting as they did when I was a little kid, I grew up with a general feeling of unease and a sense that the other shoe could drop at random. My dad had an explosive temper, so my brother and I were already walking on eggshells as a general rule, and on top of that my uBPD mom increasingly acted erratically and inconsistently toward me (she treated my brother differently), particularly into my teenage years.

So while my dad's temper, while no party in itself, followed relatively predictable patterns in some senses, I experienced my mom's behavior as very confusing and crazy-making, all the more so because it was often quite subtle.

The upshot is that, without knowing it, by the time I left home for college, I had generalized their behavior and projected it so that it became the atmosphere of life in general for me -- like that was just how life was: unpredictable, punishing, random and to be feared. Unsurprisingly, I developed an overactive inner critic that was hypervigilant and pretty ruthless.

Getting to the Pete Walker aspect, what I didn't realize until pretty recently is that some of my long-standing struggles were the product of my emotional reasoning in that I didn't see that I was making life into something menacing and had inadvertently come to behave as though I should keep myself invisible, not try to make good things happen, and that I felt like "putting myself out there" in any significant way made me extra-vulnerable to ... .some unknown malevolent force that I was not even conscious I believed in.

So, my distorted thinking patterns around attempting tasks, shooting for goals, etc. that led me to procrastinate had to do with my feeling that life was too dangerous and random and the best I could do was to do enough to get by and then go hide again. Logically this made no sense, as I've always been quite capable and was an overachiever in high school, etc., so the gulf between what I knew I could do and what I was actually doing has been a source of major confusion and consternation for me.

Once I could see that I was unconsciously projecting the qualities of "life at my parents' house when I was little" onto "life in general" -- there was the hidden emotional reasoning (i.e., "I feel like life is scary, so it must be scary" that couldn't help but affect my performance. I had a prevailing sense of "what's the use?" when I would think about hunkering down to do difficult and daunting tasks, even if I logically knew that the payoff would be worth it.

The emotional reasoning I've described here was thus operating under my radar until I really got the concept of the emotional flashback, and only then did I start to see how far it extended -- even into my sense of what life in general is like. Without that piece, I couldn't understand why I balked repeatedly at doing things I technically knew I could do, and why it was like getting too close to kryptonite whenever I would try to do them. (Answer: it wasn't safe to try; I'd end up annihilated anyway, so why go through the trouble?)

That's just one of many connections I've been able to better flesh out with the help of the notion of the emotional flashback. Nothing would be wrong in my world as such and I could still feel like I was on the brink of disaster when I would be triggered, and I didn't know why.


I've found this to be really true so far, and I'm at times inclined to have a mini-tantrum   because I feel like, well geez, I had all that stuff happen to me as a kid, and now I see it -- shoudn't that be enough? I get impatient and want to have everything just right itself magically in my world (there's that fantasy element again!) now that I know what happened.

Hi again matilda17

Thanks for elaborating!


I know what you mean! Growing up and as an adult too I've often felt like  and  and also a lot of  and  :'( unfortunately.

Emotional reasoning can be very powerful and yet I've found it very hard to become aware of it. I found the other forms of distorted thinking way easier to detect. I am very happy though that I've become a lot better at detecting any emotional reasoning I might be doing.


You've come a long way matilda17 |iiii Being able to recognize what's going on is the first step. Then you can start on doing something about it. This can indeed take some time but through commitment and hard work I do believe it's possible to make progress. It might not happen magically but then again, who needs magic when you got cognitive behavior techniques to do the trick :)

They are magical in their own way. :)


Agreed! I think that for me, that's because emotional reasoning is so deeply buried and often manifests as "atmospheric" in terms of how it affects my outlook and my take on reality. It can be very subtle and kind of like background noise that you learn to incorporate into your sense of normalcy so much that you don't hear it anymore unless you remember to tune in (therein lies the work for me).

The effects of ER show up in ways in which I find myself putting myself down, even in the guise of "self-help," while justifying doing that by thinking that this is just how life is. Ultimately, it's my responsibility to root out all the ways my sense of reality is distorted, even unintentionally, and to do what I can to put it right.

Hoping to find a good T in the near future to help with some of that task, because my breakthrough crisis is still pretty new, and much of the work I've done in therapy previously, while enlightening, didn't fully get at the heart of the matter as I now understand it.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories.

I think there’s much to explore in my case as I struggle with feelings of guilt and shame. It gets worse when I'm tired so I suppose that’s when my inner optimist is too tired to talk back :)


1. Yes, certainly. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when I am triggered I find it hard to silence or ignore that voice. It says things like: that’s all your fault, you can’t do this, you’re not good enough, you don’t try hard enough, and the like.

Besides that there’s a bonus version that says things like: you’re not supposed to feel hungry/thirsty/tired, you’re weak when you have physical needs, you’re weak when you’re upset, you’re not supposed to be sad/stressed/depressed…

2. It was only last week or so that I realised that these voices (it seems like there are two of them) stem from the treatment my mother gave me. The first one is from my teenage years. The second one is from when I was a little kid and is the hardest one to ignore. It is speaking to me right now, saying that I don’t deserve to get myself a snack while typing this. So I’m going to be nice to myself and get myself some chocolate right now :P

The thing is that my MIL (who was raised by a uBPD/uNPD dad) has some BPD traits including the fact that she imposes her view of “work is God” upon those close to her. This makes the first voice louder in my mind, though it is the easier one to recognise.

3. Yes, all of them.

4. When that voice is yelling at me, I try to see how it is actually my mother and I mentally tell her to shut up and that I’m going to do something different than she’d want me to. This issue is on my mind quite a lot and it fuels my nightmares as well (last week or so I dreamed that she was actually saying those negative things to me and I was shouting back at her that they were all lies).

When the voice is my MIL I try to remind myself that it doesn’t really matter what she thinks and while she is a difficult person sometimes, she doesn’t mean harm to anyone. I try to remind myself that my partner and I are grown up and we can make our own decisions.

I’d like to reply to everyone’s responses but I don’t have the time or energy today…  I’ll come back here soon though :)

I thought I should pop in here and attempt to answer the questions asked of me:


While there is still so much I don't remember, there are snippets here and there that I have been able to recall. Mostly though I would tend to agree with you, that many of the messages I absorbed as a child were silently expressed through their actions. The 'silent treatment' was so common in my mom towards me or anyone else she happened to be angry with. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of angry shameful words directed at me and at my siblings. I suppose I not only absorbed those directed at me but also those directed towards my dad, siblings, and even towards the relatives that my uBPDm hated viciously. Come to think of it, like Matilda17 said,


 

There are times when I wonder what things I learned/absorbed when my mom would threaten to jump out of the car while we were driving, or when my dad would load the pistol and tell me he was going out to kill himself. Geez those things are still painful.

I think in general it would be helpful to me to start paying closer attention to what my inner critic is saying. It's easy to hear the typical comments of "you're stupid, too slow, why haven't you learned this yet, I'll never get it right," etc. It's much harder to sort out those that we absorbed without hearing the words.

I've been heading back in time in my memory, back to those early childhood years this past week or two, not just remembering, but feeling strongly the need to allow myself to experience some of the memories. As I do so, I think that I will also be hearing more. I've been much more aware of my mom's voice lately, recalling what it sounded like, that she was very vocal and loud. Interesting points for me to observe. Just last night Little Wools took me on a journey of sharing some of the things that hurt her in those early years. She finally feels safe enough to share those things with me which is really good.

This post is a good one to get us all thinking. Thank you!

Wools

Totally agree with this, Wools.

Following on that point, I also think it's harder to hear the messages my inner critic tells me that aren't 'word-based' in terms of how I experience them in my mind and body. Through feelings, or reactions, or lack of reaction, etc. They can be very subtle messages.

Chocolate! Very good polly87 |iiii Being nice and loving to yourself is very important and also a very good way of (indirectly) talking back to that negative inner voice. You eating chocolate is like you saying "Well inner critic, I actually believe I am deserving of a snack so you must be wrong!"


I find this very interesting. Has this happened before that you started talking back to your mother in your dreams?


I am very sorry you experienced these things Wools. It's indeed acts such as these that can relay a powerful silent message of how unsafe and dangerous the world is. When you grow up like this you might also believe that this is 'normal' behavior and also expect other people outside of your family to behave like this. My uBPD sis has threatened to commit suicide several times, often to get away with things or to get others to do what she wants, yet you never know for sure what's going on. I always found this behavior very unpleasant and quite disturbing, but I had also become so used to it that after a while I wasn't shocked anymore when she said something like this. A few years ago I all of a sudden realized how totally not 'normal' it is to make suicide threats and how used I had gotten to this type of behavior. In a sense I had gotten desensitized to her threats.


And I totally agree with what the both of you are saying here!  I think mindfulness might (also) help us become more aware of these silently conveyed messages that we have internalized.

Kwamina, no it’s only recently that I started to talk back to my mother in dreams. Before that, I often had dreams in which I’d bite her lips off, which I suppose would stand for both disabling her ability to talk and stopping her from sexually abusing me.

Woolspinner, I’m sorry those terrible things happened in your youth. (I hope you're not having to deal with this alone... ?) I agree with Kwamina – such incidents teach us that the world is unsafe, and that people who love us might leave anytime. We have to unlearn that lesson now that we escaped the circumstances of our youths but that’s not an easy task. I’ve quoted this line before but as the Buddha said, all conditioned things are impermanent. 

At the moment I’m reading Surviving a Borderline Parent and I am struck by the realisation that my MIL’s BPD traits might be more serious than I thought they were. When my partner goes to the pub for some beers with his brother V., who is in his late twenties, she calls them before midnight to ask whether V. is coming home yet, as he is still obliged to sleep there during weekends.

I recently found a job as a freelance tutor and I noticed that I took on pupil after pupil until I got more than my MIL (who is also a tutor) so that she wouldn’t be able to ever say that I’m lazy. For various reasons, this is not a good idea. But the point is that she influences my decisions by her high expectations. For instance, when my partner is ill, she’s sorry for him, because he can’t go to work. When I told my MIL a couple of weeks before that I was having trouble with nightmares, she wondered what the problem was, because I didn't have a job anyway or did I? Now that I have a job, she suddenly is worried about me, because the job is all-important. I mentally know how this stuff works in her mind and it makes me sick. Yet, I comply to her expectations and I’m worried that she’ll judge me for my choices. Of course, the fact that my uBPD mother always told me I did not count as a person until I had a job does not really help. Why do people think work is so important? Man, I have to eat and pay the rent but it’s not like it’s who I AM or something…. However, I am actually quite a mess at the time, so maybe I’d rather be a tutor anyway  :)

It could be that your MIL as a result of her BPD traits also has some distorted thinking patterns of her own. Perhaps she identifies with her work to such an extent that her work has become her identity. Not working would for her then mean not having an identity and she could be projecting this line of thinking onto you. You ask why people think work is so important. Dr. David Burns also lists seven areas of personal vulnerability and I think some might be related to the emphasis your MIL places on work. He lists these areas of vulnerability to help determine why people have distorted thinking patterns in the first place:

• The need for approval (you are very sensitive to criticism and the good opinions of others, you feel the need to keep others happy).
• The need to be loved (you feel happiest when others approve and love you, without it you feel worthless and rejected, if someone you like doesn’t like you, you feel unlovable).
• The need to succeed (you feel you must be outstanding in one area at least, you feel inferior and a failure if you do not succeed).
• The need to be perfect (if it can’t be done excellently, then there is no point in doing it at all, falling short of perfection is pathetic and B (even C) grade, making a mistake is devastating.
• The sense of feeling deserving (if you can’t get what you are entitled to, then it’s not fair, it’s unjust, unreasonable and frustrating; if you are kind and thoughtful then others should be kind back).
• The sense of being able to influence all things (if something happens, somebody gets upset then it is your fault and you are responsible).
• The sense that happiness is contingent upon external things (you feel you have no control over your emotions, your feelings, that happiness is dependent on external factors).

When you look at this list, would you say that certain areas of personal vulnerability might also apply to your MIL? Perhaps the need to succeed and/or the sense that happiness is contingent upon external things? Would you say that your MIL finds the approval of others important and might think that they will only approve of her if she works? Perhaps work's a part of your MIL's 'perfect picture' and fulfills her need to be perfect... .

You both came up with the same likely message received in the circumstances I mentioned in my post:

Kwamina said


I don't think I ever stopped to ponder on the fact that this might be what I picked up. I know I've become desensitized, very much so. It never ceases to amaze me when I observe the expression on a face when they hear about my parent's suicide threats, not just from one parent but both. I think I'm still quite in that mode of  thinking, "it wasn't that bad, was it?" But I have come a long way on the path to healing, and Polly, I'm not going it alone. I have a wonderful T who is helping me so much. I don't think I'd be making it without him.

This week I identified 2 different things my inner critic was saying. One was when I thought I looked nicer as I was getting ready for work. "Wait a minute!" I thought to myself. "Why would I look nicer now than any other time?" and I immediately recognized the fact that I was still hearing the voice of my mom when I was 12, "You'd be prettier if you lost weight." I tucked those literal words away, brought them silently out nearly everyday of my life. And I'm not very much overweight, but that inner critic stays busy reminding me.

The other identification was from a book I'm reading. Here is a small quote:

"It is important to know that being speechless from trauma is not the same as withholding. Withholding is a purposeful refusal to respond appropriately and is designed to punish the [person] by threatening withdrawal from the relationship."

This would be one of those times of absorbing without hearing the words. My uBPDm would be quiet, but her message was loud and clear, that unless I conformed or apologized or whatever, she would threaten to never speak to me again or to kill herself or... .  Even up to the time she died, my siblings and I knew that she would disown us in a moment if she felt like she wanted to because of something we'd done or not done.

I'll keep listening with open ears to hear what more I can discover.  :)

Wools

I think there certainly are a couple of areas that apply to my MIL.
 

• The need for approval. Besides her job as a tutor she does volunteer work as a remedial teacher, and I have never ever heard her say she liked it. (I also do volunteer work, as a translator, but that’s because I really like it.) Apart from that, she is obsessed with “caring” for my BIL. She buys his groceries and she does his laundry. I never heard him say a word about it but she often says that he needs her to run his life because he’s too busy with his job and his hobbies.

• The need to be loved. I think the above examples apply to this aspect as well. Besides that, she always goes on about her pupils and how they confide in her and how they need her as a mother figure. I already told about how she wants my BIL close to her to an unhealthy extent.

• The need to succeed. To my MIL, work is God. It is what she lives for and it is what she thinks others ought to live for. When my partner and I visit my in-laws, my MIL goes on and on about how things are at my partner’s job at that moment. She rarely asked me any questions….until I got a job about two weeks ago. Question time (as we jokingly call those job updates) has literally doubled. This gives us the message that it doesn’t matter who you are outside of your job.

• The sense of being able to influence all things. My MIL wants to influence the truth above all other things. When someone close to her is ill, she makes up her own truth about it, ignoring however they actually feel. I think this is related to an experience that was very hurtful to her. As a kid, she was sent to school despite the fact that she had an appendicitis. Her father had uBPD/uNPD and he was very controlling. My MIL used to see a T for depression and the T diagnosed some serious PD traits that needed full time treatment. She refused to leave her family though, so she quit T and has remained at the same point ever since. She doesn’t even acknowledge that she was emotionally abused though this is clear from the stories she tells.

Since I realised that my MIL has some treats that overlap with my uBPDm’s treats, I’ve been thinking about how she influences my partner and me. For myself, the need to be loved is relevant, as I didn't experience unconditional love from my uBPDm as a kid (my dad was absent as my parents divorced when I was one year old and I wasn't allowed to see him).
 
Woolspinner, I’m glad you are seeing a T and that he’s of such good help to you.
 

I so know what you mean. My uBPDm would give me the silent treatment to punish me as a kid. A couple of years ago, when I still saw her, she would not literally say what was wrong but she’d stop eating, simply because I went to live with my partner. When I saw her again after some time she was as thin as a stick and this was supposed to make me feel guilty.
 
Sometimes she’d say what was wrong but in such a vague way that I’d wonder how much of it was true, but then the message would somehow still stick in my mind, sadly. She’d say that I was disrespectful to her (because I loved my partner), she’d say that I was rude (because I moved out of her home), she’d say that my problems were all my own fault (I was distressed because she picked fights with me all the time). I struggle with feelings of guilt and I wonder how much of it is related to these experiences. Besides that, I am tempted to punish myself when I'm feeling angry, because I got punished for that as a kid.
 
Wools, do you think your mother hated her own body and that she’d project that feeling onto you when you were a girl? Or do you think she simply disliked the way you looked? Either way it’s not something people ought to say to a kid and I'm sorry she did.
 
As for the suicide threats – that’s a sure way of making a kid feel unimportant. My uBPDm used to tell me she was going to kill my stepfather, which didn’t give me a positive worldview either... I’m not trying to say that my situation was as bad as yours but I just wanted to say that my view of the world was (and is) not exactly that of a safe place. It’s good that we’re both working on healing and I hope we’ll both manage to create a safe place for ourselves.

A lot of interesting material here so I've decided to revisit this thread.


I think this is probably a weak spot of nearly all children raised by abusive parents that were withholding of love or only gave conditional love. Now that we are adults we must learn to give ourselves the love we never got as children. You could say this means that the adults we have become must learn to act in a loving and compassionate way towards the child that still lives inside of us. Our inner child so to speak. How does treating yourself with a little love and compassion sound to you?  :)


How did it make you feel when your mother gave you the silent treatment? What message did this treatment send to you?

You're mother was starving herself in what you believe was an attempt to make you feel guilty. How did you feel when you saw your mother as thin as she had become? Did you indeed feel guilty or responsible for the condition she was in? When you look back at this episode now, how do you now perceive your mother's behavior? Starving yourself to make someone feel guilty is a dangerous game to play. Do you feel like this was just another way of her trying to manipulate you or perhaps also a clear sign that there's something seriously wrong with her and that she clearly lacks certain essential life skills? A lot of questions again I know


I'd say probably a lot of this is related to your past experiences. A lot of adults who were abused and shamed as children, find themselves struggling in their adult lives with feelings of shame and guilt. What kind of things do you feel guilty about? Do you perhaps feel like you're responsible for other people's feelings and happiness in life?

Thank you, Kwahamina for starting this thread. Thank you to the others who’ve shared their stories and contributed to it. You have all helped me feel far less alone in all this. I know this is a little late, but at the risk of my inner negative voices scolding me for it, I’m posting here anyway.

1.   When you look at your own situation would you say that you sometimes find yourself struggling with a overly negative or self-critical inner voice?

Sometimes? It is a near constant battle. Sometimes I recognize it, sometimes I don’t.

2.   If you do, where do you think this inner voice/critic comes from? Is it really yourself talking or could it perhaps be that you've internalized the negative or critical voice of your parents, siblings, in-laws etc.?

It’s a combination. It’s mostly my mother, unless it involves my appearance - then it’s mother and sister, and unless it involves my intelligence, then it’s mother and father and sister.

3.   Can you identify any of the listed forms of distorted or warped thinking in your own thinking patterns?

Let’s see:

All or none thinking: absolutely, but only really in regards to myself, my identity. I’m either smart or I’m stupid. I’m either selfish or I’m selfless. I’m either tough or over-sensitive.

Overgeneralization: absolutely, again only really in regards to myself and my identity.

Mental filter: YES, but this one I’ve been working on with some success, I think. I lost my mother’s approval and her and my sisters’ presence in my life, but I gained contact with almost my entire (very large) extended family whom she cut off from our family.

Disqualifying the positive: Yes, primarily with myself and my identity.

Jumping to conclusions: Mind reading especially. A very mild example: Someone rolled their eyes when I smiled at them. They must hate me/think I’m an idiot/etc. (Unless you can count eye-rolling as evidence, which, um, no, probably not). Not so much the fortune teller error, I think.

Magnification or minimization: YES. I should have saved my sisters, regardless of the circumstances (the circumstances being minimized).

Emotional reasoning: YES.

Should statements: YES, see Magnification or minimization.

Labelling and mislabelling: YES, see Jumping to conclusions.

Personalization: YES. Absolutely everything is a reflection on who I am

My mother reinforced these thought patterns by sometimes showing approval when I verbalized them, but sometimes not because then I’m selfish and begging for attention. So I feel weirdly better about myself when I beat myself up, but then I have to beat myself up because I felt good about beating myself up, and apparently I can’t even beat myself up properly.

4.   How do you deal with your negative inner voice? Have you found ways to effectively talk back to your inner critic?

   As a kid in a very religious household, I latched onto the idea of God, a loving Heavenly Father. I was taught, God loves everybody, no matter what, even if you’ve sinned. So, even though my parents love was conditional, I believed that God loved me always. Whatever I did. There was an additional voice in my head, besides the negative inner family voices, and that was the voice I called God. At this point I don’t know if it was really God, or just myself, it doesn’t really matter. Regardless, I was not allowed to think well of myself at all. If I did, then I was narcissistic, prideful, full of myself, selfish, and on and on. But, if I called the nice voice in my head “God,” then it was OK. Because of course God loves everybody. It wasn’t even really a voice, because that was another teaching, God doesn’t speak in words, he speaks in feelings. So, I would pray every day, often many times during the day, and I would open myself up to ‘God,’ to my ideal, fantasy, loving, parent. He would say all the nice things nobody else ever said to me, and I wasn’t allowed to say to myself. He would tell me he loved me, and yeah, I might have made a mistake, but he loved me anyway. He trusted me to try to put it right (He can’t put it right himself, because that would take away from the free agency of humans). He would say I was just the way he made me, that he was there for me whenever I needed him, that I could trust him. I did not tell anybody about what God told me, they just knew that I prayed a lot, which my parents were actually proud of. It was only when I was getting married that the dissonance between what I believed God told me and what my Mom believed God would say (to me or to her) came to light. With our falling out and in light of that dissonance, it became hard for me to ‘reach’ God.

   Now, I’ve moved away from that religion. I’ve read many books on recovering from an abusive childhood. I think every book has included something on giving yourself the affirmation, validation, and love that you never got from your parents. Thinking back on it, I now think that I managed to do that through the idea of God. I have been working on getting back to that praying/meditating/whatever, but it has been extremely difficult to do when I think it’s myself. Because I’m not supposed to think well of myself or love myself. It’s hard to believe the good things when it’s myself saying them. And it’s hard to envision ‘God’ when I no longer believe that my family’s religion is the truth. It’s even harder when I was criticized as a kid for my overactive imagination, which they now all say is clearly why my reality, what I remember from childhood, is so different from theirs. The ‘God’ in my head at this moment feels rather like proof that nothing was really wrong, I made every last thing up, I wasn’t really abused, I’m just crazy.

   Anyway, that’s what I’m working with right now.

I mentally know that love and compassion towards the self and towards the inner child are the only way to healing. I find this difficult to put into practice though. When I am tired or stressed, it becomes even more difficult. Even on the rare occasions when I am not tired, such as today, I find it hard to free some time for myself and do something that is not *useful* but *nice*. What about if I promise you right now that I will do some mandala colouring after dinner  


 It made me feel that I was unworthy of being loved, that I was a piece of sh-t, that I did not matter. It made me feel like I should have paid better attention to her needs. It made me feel like she was angry with me and I could not make it up, ever. Now I remember: she actually refused to accept my apologies when she was angry. She was often very mean.

<br/>:)on’t worry about asking a lot of questions, it’s okay!  :)

When I saw my mother had become so thin, I did not feel anything like guilt. I felt that it was her own fault. She had failed to take care of herself as an adult person while I had been away. I thought (and still think) it was a very childish way of seeking attention if she indeed starved herself to make me feel guilty – I cannot know for sure of course. She gave me a couple of hints however: she said that she could not eat when I was away from her and she accused me of abandoning her. This, IMHO, was meant to make me stay with her and leave my partner.

Besides that, yes, I think her starving herself was also a sign that there was and is something seriously wrong with her. She has always denied that there is anything the matter and has always claimed that I needed to seek psychological help. She even went so far as to tell my partner (while I was in the bathroom) that it was not too bad that I had been without a job for years; it was all about my way of looking at things. My partner remembers this as one of the most mean things he ever heard about me. To me this was just peanuts however and I am glad that he did not hear the worse accusations.

Oh and yes, I believe my mother lacks essential life skills. Ironically, I also tend  to skip eating when I am stressed, and in some strange way, this makes me understand what she went through and is still going through. You are unhappy and you do not like yourself so why would you feed yourself? I do not want to sound dramatic or something but I think I might have more eating issues than I admitted to myself. Well I did not expect to come to this realisation when I started typing this! Thank you Kwamina.


YES, I do feel totally and unappropriately and debilitatingly and exhaustingly responsible for other people’s feelings and wellbeing and happiness, especially when it comes to my partner but also in friendships. My twisted idea that I am responsible for my partner’s wellbeing is the main cause of my peaks of guilt and therefore the main reason why I resort to self-harm when it becomes too much. However, I also ‘use’ guilt to cover up feelings that I am too scared to show. I am ashamed to admit that I seek the validation that I never got from my mother in my partner. I feel like I need him to say over and over: “it’s okay polly if you feel [insert random emotion here]. You don’t have to be afraid that I’ll be angry or leave you when you feel something or when you need me. You don’t have to be afraid that you’re taking up too much of my time and energy.”

Of course, since this is about the past, it does not help if my partner tells me this in the present. It is so sad. I do not know how to get out of this groove. What do other people tell themselves when they feel an emotion? How do they know if they are safe to experience that emotion? What do they do if they are not safe?

The feeling of responsibility might have been caused by my mother’s need for me like a cat needs a mouse to play with. At the age of seven, I felt like I was her relationship therapist, her best friend, and her pastime. In a strange way, I was everything to her. She never thanked me for my efforts. Rather, she scolded me for being ungrateful. I did not know what to be grateful for. I just wanted to be left alone to do things *I* liked and wanted.

Thank you for asking these provoking questions |iiii. I think it is very helpful for me to consider these issues.


Forever to Roam, I would like to respond to your post as well (especially the part about religion) but I have to leave off now... .I will be back here one of these days. Wishing you strength  

Hi Forever to Roam and thanks for your response


Don't worry about it, this is a timeless thread so you can respond whenever you want to. And if the negative voices are scolding you just tell them the big blue bird says: "It's alright!"


I find what you say about the voice of God very interesting. When you grow up in a dysfunctional household with a BPD parent, you often develop all sorts of coping mechanisms to help you get through this difficult situation. Do you feel like this voice of God, this positive inner voice, might have been your coping mechanism? Something you could cling to so you could survive your difficult childhood?

Awesome post.  I just had a flashback that a therapist told me over 15 years ago that my negative self criticism was 30% me, 70% my mom.  This was years before BPD came into my consciousness.  All these years later, and I'm just now learning to recognize what is legitimate self-evaluation and what is ingrained patterns of negativity.  Thanks for sharing.

Thank you! I will send some back to you, too. Goodness knows, we all could use it.


I certainly think the voice of God was one of my primary coping mechanisms.

I had another coping mechanism, where I would use the negative feelings to fuel a purge of personal belongings and cleaning of my bedroom. It helped me imagine that when I was 'ready' (read: 16 and could hold down a job) I could throw my few belongings in a car and leave and never look back. (Though that was less of a mechanism against negative inner voices, more coping with the every day abuses.) I didn't realize that when I left the criticisms would follow anyway in my own head.

But the voices are still present. One of these days I'll manage to evict them, they're not paying rent anyways (wording taken from one of the Lessons that I read today).

1.   When you look at your own situation would you say that you sometimes find yourself struggling with a overly negative or self-critical inner voice?

Absolutely. I feel like a little kid when given constructive feedback by my partner sometimes. I overreact and start to spin out internally. Sometimes I even punish myself by hitting myself. This happens especially around cleaning. When my partner wants more help around the house it's hard not to hear my uBPDm's voice yelling at me. "Why do I have to do everything around here? Why are you so lazy? I tried to teach you to be helpful, but clearly I don't matter to you!" Thanks, Mom. My inner self-critic really sounds like my childhood. It's easy for me to get stuck there.

2.   If you do, where do you think this inner voice/critic comes from? Is it really yourself talking or could it perhaps be that you've internalized the negative or critical voice of your parents, siblings, in-laws etc.?

Ha! I answered this before even getting to the question. Yeah, it's clealry my uBPDm, but I don't know how to shake it.

3.   Can you identify any of the listed forms of distorted or warped thinking in your own thinking patterns?

Most of the time I'm a pretty good communicator, but yes, I do have distorted thinking. It feels so unproductive. I get stuck. Angry that I'm angry or ashamed that I'm ashamed.

4.   How do you deal with your negative inner voice?

In this moment I'm not sure, but that's probably because I'm a little stuck right now in personalization and disqualifying the positive. I know I have built some good tools, but they feel so far away right now.

Hi YepSheWould

Welcome back here  Thanks for answering my questions.


Would you say that hitting yourself is a way for you to deal with the negative emotions you're experiencing at the time? When did you start hitting yourself and how do you feel after you've hit yourself?

You say you start to spin out of control internally. Is your partner aware of these thoughts and feelings you have when given constructive feedback? Have you discussed these things with your partner?


Talking back to the internalized negative voice of a BPD parent can be difficult but there are certain techniques that might help you. Identifying the distorted thinking patterns and writing them down is the first step. Have you ever tried writing your negative self-talk down and right next to it writing a positive rational response to combat the negativity?


Why do you think that you're angered by your own anger and ashamed of feeling ashamed? When you were a child, were you allowed to have and express negative feelings such as anger or shame?


What are those good tools that you have? Could you tell us some more about them? It can help to practice these things when you're feeling good, so you can fall back on them at moments like this when you're struggling with negative thoughts and emotions.

I love Burns' writings. they are the best. highly recommended from this corner.  |iiii

Yeah I really liked this article a lot too

Hi everyone

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself”. - Jane Eyre

Pete Walker has written about ways to shrink the inner critic and in his work he uses the above quote. It helps reminds us to be gentle with ourselves and have self-compassion especially at those times that we are struggling the most.

I have found the discussion in this thread very interesting and insightful. I am wondering if there are any more members who have found themselves dealing with so-called automatic negative thoughts as a result of their inner critic. To help explore this further I'm very interested in hearing your answers to the following questions:

1.   When you look at your own situation would you say that you sometimes find yourself struggling with a overly negative or self-critical inner voice?

2.   If you do, where do you think this inner voice/critic comes from? Is it really yourself talking or could it perhaps be that you've internalized the negative or critical voice of your parents, siblings, in-laws etc.?

3.   Can you identify any forms of distorted or warped thinking in your own thinking patterns?

4.   How do you deal with your negative inner voice? Have you found ways to effectively talk back to your inner critic?

I think it can often be very helpful to read about the experiences of others and how they might have managed to cope and heal. Thanks in advance for anything you are able to share here

Hi,


Trying to deal with negative inner voice or inner critic is a daily struggle for me. It is often speaking to me without me noticing. Small things like "you must clean the kitchen before you are allowed to listen to some music". When I am triggered by things that remind me of my past, the negative inner voice becomes big and all-consuming in my head. Then, it says things like "you do not deserve the love of your partner because you are anxious".


This voice comes from my mother. She would hit me when I was upset. She would hurt me so deeply with the meanest words you can think of when I was stressed out or sad. She would actually ask me to act and look cheerful while I was suffering from depression. She always wanted me to be different than I was. to fit in with her ideal picture of me.

Interestingly, though I find my MIL very triggering, it seems as if the negative inner voice stems mainly from my own mother.


I tend to believe what the inner critic says. This has gotten me into serious trouble. Self-harm, thoughts of suicide and a number of attempts... .

I find it hard to cultivate a more positive voice. I never got encouraged as a kid so I have no idea what to tell myself.


When I notice the inner voice is actually my mother talking, I try to feel compassion for both her and myself. This makes it easier to think of more positive things.

Hi polly87


That's often how it goes, that negative inner voice can really sneak up on as and go unnoticed while still damaging us. Mindfulness is something that might also help you start noticing the inner critic early on:


We have an article about mindfulness that you can find here: Triggering and Mindfulness and Wise Mind (https://bpdfamily.com/content/triggering-and-mindfulness-and-wise-mind)


I am very sorry that your mother hurt you so. It's difficult when the people that are supposed to care for us and keep us save, actually turn out to be the ones that hurt us the most. It's quite tough never being allowed to be yourself and always being forced to basically be someone else. Do you feel like you have been able to start the process of removing yourself from your mother's 'ideal' yet totally imaginary picture of you?


Could it perhaps be that though the negative inner voice stems mainly from your mother, that your MIL through her behavior triggers this negative voice in you?


It's clear that the inner critic has caused you a lot of pain. Dealing with such difficult thoughts, thoughts of suicide even, isn't easy at all. You've also posted about this in your own thread.

In general when dealing with negative thoughts, what might help is writing down the negative things your inner critic says and subsequently try to identify any forms of distorted thinking in them and then write down a rational more positive response to them. Seeing these thoughts written out on paper often makes it a lot easier to analyze them and identify the distortions.


Being able to develop self-compassion is very important to allow yourself to heal. Your mother was cruel to you and that can make it hard to feel compassion for her. It's also clear that she is a very disorderd and troubled individual. This doesn't excuse her behavior but realizing and accepting the reality of who she is and her disorder, can help you see that it wasn't about you at all and that all those negative things the inner critic says are nothing more but lies.

Hi Kwamina and thanks for your reply 

I am trying mindfulness and meditation each day now. It helps me see when I am having negative thoughts again. Simply noticing that process often makes it easier for me to feel compassion for myself. Today, when I found my mind was focussing on negative and irrealistic thoughts, I was able to say to myself: calm down, you'll be okay. That was a first for me. I suppose this is how it's done - parenting the self. I never had a loving parent so that's why it took me nearly 28 years to be able to comfort myself in this way for the first time.


I feel like I am just starting this process now. The other day, I was taking a walk with a friend and I was overcome by grief and fatigue. We sat down on a tree trunk and she said: just let the sadness come. There's no need for us to hurry now.

I was so afraid to allow myself to feel, yet I did it. At first there seemed no end to it but after a while I felt myself calm down. It was amazing. So this is what it is like to be comforted and this is what it is like to allow feelings to come and go. I never knew. I feel like I am discovering who I am now instead of trying to fit my mother's picture of me. That picture is becoming less relevant now.


That is well found Kwamina. I think you are right. My MIL reminds me of my mother and this puts me in an emotional flashback of feeling worthless and little. This feeling triggers the negative inner voice with thoughts like: I should not protest; if I say something she will reject me; if I disagree with her she will pick a fight again; if I do not do what she wants she will make a mean remark again... .and so on. These thoughts are linked to both MIL and my mother though they actually stem from my mother.

I have not tried writing down the negative thoughts yet, but I will try to do so when they come up again.


Thank you for reminding me of this    I agree with you that I will benefit from accepting the reality of who she is and what she has done to me. Each time I try to accept these facts, I feel a bit more self-compassion.

Hi Kwamina,

I certainly have some FOO issues.  However, part of me feels disconnected from it all, therefore I do not feel connected to this board so much.  Mostly I think this is because many of them are now deceased and the others I am NC with.  I'm going to try to participate a bit, in case it is because I am numb, but need to face some things... .to see how that goes... .since I cannot tell the difference.

1.   When you look at your own situation would you say that you sometimes find yourself struggling with a overly negative or self-critical inner voice?

Yes, especially lately.  The odd thing is though, that I am not conscious of the negative thoughts. I have to stop myself when I realize my posture and body is communicating negativity, then I have to look for the thoughts that I am missing.  I really am usually very aware of this, but this week... .disconnected.



2.   If you do, where do you think this inner voice/critic comes from? Is it really yourself talking or could it perhaps be that you've internalized the negative or critical voice of your parents, siblings, in-laws etc.?

I know that I have internalized my mom.

3.   Can you identify any of the listed forms of distorted or warped thinking in your own thinking patterns?

I find my mind accidentally using "Should statements"  Lol, I know I shouldn't... so in my speech, I don't... .but in my head, they are happening unconsciously all the time... .punishing myself.

Personalisation - I take responsibility for things, especially at work and try to rescue people, even when it is not my job at all to do so.  I tend to think, "Well, someone needs to do this, then I will."

4.   How do you deal with your negative inner voice? Have you found ways to effectively talk back to your inner critic?

I have found some fun ways to deal with this.   :)

--I have an imaginary me that I created in therapy once.  I imagine her and what she looks like. She is young.  When I catch myself using a criticle voice, I imagine how my little me feels, then I parent her with the words I want her to hear until she is soothed. 

--If I have less time... .not enough to get all mentally visual... .then I imagine the thought, stick it in a bubble, then try to get it to float far away from me.  If it returns, I keep encircling it in a bubble and try again. Then I try to refocus my thoughts on something intentionally positive that is not in harmony with the negative thought.

--Or, I allow myself to feel where I feel the pain of the criticism I just unleashed on myself, and I focus on breathing out the pain of it until it fades, then I try to embrace and glow in the feelings of peace that I am left with. Then I try to remind myself to be mindful again.

Hi Sunfl0wer

Thanks for joining this discussion!


When you analyze what's going on, can you identify any specific triggers in the present that might be causing you negative thoughts? Did anything happen this week that might have caused this sense of disconnect you're experiencing? Perhaps a seemingly innocent or insignificant event that in some way reminded you of or triggered something from your past?


What kind of negative or critical things did your mother say to you?


Do you perhaps deep down feel that you 'should' or deserve to be punished? Is this perhaps how you're mother made you feel? Did she punish you for stuff you had no control over but were still made to feel responsible for?


Was taking responsibility for everything and being the rescuer and everyone's caretaker also the role that you were forced to fulfill when you were a child?


Thanks for sharing your ways of coping! :) This imaginary me you've created really reminds me of the concept of the 'inner child'. That inner child might still feel abandoned and what you're doing here sounds just like finally giving the little you the parent she always needed, deserved and longed for, yet unfortunately never got. I am glad you've find this helpful Sunfl0wer. Being able to generate self-compassion after a difficult and abusive childhood, is significant progress |iiii


This reminds me of something from mindfulness practice when they say to focus your attention but not what you see. Accept all thoughts that come into your head, both the pleasant and the unpleasant ones, without judging them or trying to push them away. Thanks for sharing this!

Thank you bunches for having me Kwamina!


A couple things:

1st -My son has left town.  I am in the home alone for the first time in a while.  When I am not in contact with others, I tend to get so deep in thought and become disconnected, that I no longer feel as though me or my surroundings are real.  I struggle to feel real and to interact with "real" when the structure is not there to "force" it. Is there any resource for this? Mindfulness doesn't seem to be a strong enough a tool for this... .I feel partly dead.

2nd -My ex is on "our family vacation" without me.  Also, last year we were on the vacation "as a family." This is a trigger for me, as it was both a wonderful vacation, (a loss of the r/s I miss) but then awful, as it signified for me the first real nail in the coffin of the r/s. (The anniversary of my realization things were coming to an end.)


I cannot recall specific things she said.  The general message that she conveyed, that I repeat to myself is: I'm worthless.  My worth is only tied into what I can give of myself to another.  It’s never enough!


Yes.  I have been conditioned to expect/anticipate a certain amount of suffering and guilt to be the norm.


Yes, and no.  It changed to caretaker in my later teen years. 

As a small child, I was too worthless even for a role as a scapegoat or caretaker.  I was just considered insignificant.  I created for myself the safest role that I saw possible under these conditions: The Invisible Child. I remained mostly mute and overly passive throughout childhood.  My abilities, as a child, to attempt to rescue my older sister from the wrath of mom, mostly proved futile, therefore I did not take on a caretaker role towards anyone.  Much safer for all involved, that I instead remain a silent observer. 

I escaped the pain of my external world by retreating into my mind of analysis and introspection…by myself.  I played out fantasies of escape in my mind and the possibilities of love in which to soothe myself.  I distracted myself by focusing on the most mundane things for hours on end, such as tracing the vein in a leaf, just to remain quietly hidden. 

As I grew into my teen years, things began to change around me, and being invisible was no longer a safe cloak in which I could shroud myself.  The comfort of my power of invisibility, somehow, became a curse.  I observed in those around me, to react, and now behave insecure, suspicious, and threatened by my silence.  As a teen, it appeared that my long held mutism and aloofness, was now being mistaken for haughty.  It put people in a sense of unease around me, and it elicited within them, a desire to provoke me.  I was becoming a target of abuse again now, due to the very thing that once before, had shielded me.  Therefore, as frightened I was, I somehow “learned” to find the courage within me, and I began speaking. When previously in my silence, I had often wondered so long if I ever would really speak the rest of my life, I was now shocked by myself to begin to realize a voice that I could hear and could be heard.

With the disintegration of my selective mutism, I needed a new found role that would protect me.  The safest one I discovered, I’ll call: “Contributing through acts of the self.”  I learned that others were less inclined to harass me if I was doing something that they saw as meaningful and helpful to them.  So at times when I was uncertain or anxious, getting up and giving a hand or inventing a chore could mostly remove me from being a target.  Depending on who was in front of me, I could contribute by giving of myself in different ways. (ie: conversation, favors, etc.) _{(It was different than a parent expecting emotional soothing…not that at all)}

Sometime in my late teens, my parents’ health declined.  I did take on a caretaker role to them both at this point.  I was taught, “for all they did for me,” that it was my duty.  I did not question this new role much, and I just did what needed doing.  I was raised feeling indebted to them, as though I had to earn my worth, earn my presence on this planet in some way, …being the insignificant thing I was. Adjusting to this new role of caretaker, felt natural to me at this point.  It gave me a visible role with a purpose that I understood as making sense; I felt useful.  I then began to maintain my purpose by extending this caretaker role to others, through work, and through my relationships.

--------------------------

So to connect the dots and get to the “me” of today, I have been aware and done much work and consider myself free of much of my past in many occasions in life.  However, in trying times, or moments of weakness the following resurfaces…

-This week, I am disconnected, I can see why, it is my default place to go into my head and leave the world behind. 

-I still at times find myself judging my self worth based on how much of myself I can give to another, over extending both my time and emotional resources. 

-When I’m angry, I sometimes clean feverously.  When I’m in new company, I sometimes love to give a hand with chores and such, until I’m stopped.

-I have moments, where words do not come easily to me, translating my thoughts into words can be a laborious challenge, sometimes I have moments where social situations cause me to be extremely anxious and I speak jumbled and excuse myself to change the topic. _{(I'm sure my brain did not get the needed practice of translating thoughts into words.)}

BTW:

I find that a huge part of my healing/self discovery is tied into my ability to continue to cultivate and give power to a voice that is “me” and as clear as possible, be “seen.”  Thank you all who read this and who help me become visible!  This format/forum is so wonderful in facilitating this all in a safe way!  Endless gratitude for your work Kwamina!  It must be the blue bird thing!  

Hi again Sunfl0wer


Also based on other things in your post, this sounds like a possible coping mechanism you developed as a child, quite possibly to numb yourself to allow you to survive. Would you say this is an accurate assessment? Especially the following part of your post seems to be linked to what you say here:


Something that helps me feel 'alive' and connected to the present moment and reality, is intense physical exercise such as running. If you aren't doing this already, perhaps physical exercise can help you too. I find that it can also be used in combination with mindfulness when you try to focus your mind on the physical activity and truly try to become one with what you're doing.


I can understand how tough this must be for you and how this could trigger you. It is a huge loss indeed, I hope you'll be able to continue your process of letting go and mourning the live you had and had envisioned for the future


Do you feel that some part of you still believes there is some validity in this message conveyed to you by your mother? Or is it more that it's become somewhat of a habit of repeating this to yourself and that when you notice it you are easily able to dismiss this negative thought?


How do you feel having these negative expectations has affected your behavior? Do you feel like you make different choices because of the suffering you fear will occur?


I find this very interesting! In a way it seems that the 'you' shown to the world then always depended on who was in front of you. Do you feel like you've also been able to find and show the real you? If so, in what circumstances were you able to do so?


It's clear from what you say here that you were taught to believe your self-worth was solely determined by what you could do for others. When you consider other people, do you feel like they also only have worth to the extent that they do things for others? Or do you feel like this 'earning of your worth' only applies to you?


I am glad you have made such significant progress :) Though you still might have some areas to work on (like most of us here!), being able to recognize this is already the first step in being able to better manage your remaining issues |iiii Sometimes things will remain triggers even after we work on them, important thing then is to notice early on that we are getting triggered and talk ourselves down from that heightened state of emotions. It can also help to take preventive action when you know that you might find yourself in triggering situations.


And thank you for showing us who you are! :)


Thanks :) Parrots love interacting with talking sunflowers you know :)

Hi Kwamina,

Thank you for giving me much to think of. 

Ok, I fully intended to get back to this to see what I come up with…


Yes, this is true.


This is excellent advice!  Yes, I need to be reminded, physical activity certainly helps loads!


It feels more like an ingrained default way of interacting with the world most times.  More like a role I’ve assumed and have to be aware to not fall into.


It causes me to procrastinate often.  I wait for the intense feeling of fear before acting on certain things.  I busy myself and am often “behind” as a way to work and feel motivated to do so, or else, I take on more than I can manage.  This sets me up to never feel like I’m “on top” of things and comfy.  I deny myself free/recreation time as there is always something else I must do.  Any free time I do take, I “steal” from myself by myself finally reaching a mental/physical limit and feel ill…and I get a “sick” day to stay in bed after working 4weeks 7days a week.


I actually do feel that I show the real me.  I am being me, just being me and cleaning something or offering to be useful in some way.


I really appreciate you posing this question to me.  I would never ever want anyone to feel they have to earn their worth around me.  Actually, I am pretty adamant when others appear to act this way, I set them straight and I am quick to do so.  I will think on this more, why it is “ok” for me, but not others?




  |iiii Thanks!

SF, I'm also a procrastinator. I don't know if I fail fear, per se, but sometime fear of failure? Some of it has to do with social anxiety, or anxiety in general. I've pretty much kicked booty in my career for two decades, but there is a really big project I've let slide the past two years. Part of it is fear that I can't deliver (the whole BPD thing the past two years hasn't helped!).

At home... .its fear I can't do simple things. I'm7 a freaking engineer. I fix stuff at work. Trouble shoot. Yet for sometimes simple home repairs, I'm impotent or neglectful.

I think crises drives me to get stuff done. I used to replace components on my Ex's car. When the washer hose blew, I turned it over, got tubing from the local box store. When it didn't work, I sought out a small shop so I could order the OEM hose, the only one which would fit, and replaced it, easy peasy. But we couldn't do laundry, so it was a crisis. However, when I bought the house, I had trouble doing something as simple as drillng holes properly to hang new curtain rods. This sounds pathetic, but my Ex and I even argued, and thought about hiring the guys who remodled the bathroom to come do it. She loved me for not being what was in her view the typical man from her culture (a cheater and beater), yet shamed me for not being capable of home remodeling like those guys tend to be. I froze.

I hung the stupid curtain rods (afterwards finding out that you need anchors to hold screws in sheetrock if you weren't drilling into studs... .my uBPDx lacked mercy and patience). So maybe I passively play The Waif? This is simple stuff. Youtube, home depot. There are people who can tell you this stuff.

The celing fan, only a few years old, shorted the other night. The light portion, not the fan portion. Part of me wants to call someone to fix it. Yet it is only 4 screws to pull ff the housing. I know how to use a volt meter (I even taught my 5 yo how to use it to check the voltage in the batteries for his toys). If its a shorted wire, I can deal with that. I do this at work, wiring, soldering. I can run million dollar electron and ion microscopes to find nanometer sized defects. Yet here?

My stupid inner voice tells me:

I'm not a man.

My inner Waif tells me:

I'm not a man because I never had a father thanks to my addict birth parents, and my BPD mom who used to tell me "I'm your Father and your Mother," Thus, I have an excuse to play Waif.

The reality:

Having been abandoned (again), I'm a single father slightly more than half the time. I'm responsible for both what works in my life and what doesn't.

The conundrum:

So what's the block?

I can blame the inner critic on others, maybe like "beware the monsters of the Id," and there is a little truth to that. However, as an adult, I know that I'm fully responsible for myself. No me is responsible for my feelings but me.

Hi again!
Kwamina, thanks for reminding me of this thread. It's interesting to revisit this. I've been having trouble to stop negative thoughts lately. They really like it up in my brain late at night.

Yeah, especially when I'm tired. It says things to me like: "Hey Polly, what are you going to do when this nice new bf leaves you? How are you going to deal with that? I know he said today that he wants the r/s to last, but what about your shortcomings? What do you think he's going to do when you cry or get stressed out too often? And what about money? I'm sure you don't think you'll ever be able to buy a new car when this one breaks down? And where are you going to live when your landlord sells your anti-squatting house that you like so much? Speaking of bad luck, when do you think your dad's going to die? And you still haven't said to him you'd want him to quit the chain-smoking. Oh and speaking of death, fat chance you're going to die alone if you continue like this... ." The list goes on... .you get the idea.

My mother used to say about my r/s with my ex that it wouldn't last three years. And it lasted two years and seven months. Just saying.
She used to torture me emotionally when I had strong feelings. As a kid I was punished phyisically when I was angry and later on she'd give me hell emotionally, exhausting me through the night when I had to get up early just to punish me for feeling something. She'd give out the message that she was better than me because she had control of her feelings. This stuff made me believe that I will be hated when I have strong (negative) emotions. It still affects me a lot.

All or none thinking: Thoughts like "I'll never be able to hold down a r/s"
Mental filter and disqualifying the positive: the fact that my bf said he wants to stay with me is overshadowed by the fear that he'll leave me because I can't deal with emotions.
Mind reading: I believe my bf thinks negatively about me showing emotions.
The fortune teller error: Thoughts like: "He'll break up with me... .I'll end up alone with a dozen cats"
Emotional reasoning: I feel upset and I think that makes bad things happen. It's a circle.
Should statements: I feel like I should not get upset about things.

I have learned that things seem better in the morning. I remind myself that I'll look at the issue again in the morning and almost always it seems clearer and not so bad. I also remind myself that my mother doesn't even live in Europe anymore, so there's no need for her to live in my mind either.
Besides that, I pray and I let God talk back to my inner critic, and He always says: "I forgive everything" which is one of the best replies to one who is upset.

And thank you for coming back here polly :)


Yes that has been my experience too, late at night when you are all alone and have time to think definitely seems to be a time when the inner critic loves to go on the attack. Fortunately we can try to explore techniques such as CBT to start pouncing back :) It is difficult though but you make a very good point about how things might seem better in the morning. I sometimes say if it's a good idea today, it will be a good idea tomorrow. Something similar can be said here, if it doesn't seem as bad in the morning as it did last night, it probably never was that bad at all.


I also find it very important what you mention here about particularly struggling with an overly negative or critical inner voice when you are tired. This reminds me of something that is said in mindfulness practice about Wise Mind:
"Emotion(al) Mind can be aggravated by: Illness, Lack Of Sleep, Tiredness, Drugs, Alcohol, Hungry, Bloating, Overeating, Poor nutrition and/or lack of exercise, Environmental stress and threats".

Tiredness and the other things mentioned are all factors that can make us particularly vulnerable to the inner critic. It can greatly help us then not only to identify the specific automatic negative thoughts, but also to identify the potential factors such as tiredness that can make us more susceptible to these thoughts and try to take pro-active steps to fortify our inner defenses.


This is very significant indeed that she does not live in Europe anymore. How did it make you feel when she left?


I am glad your faith has helped and comforted you :)

Yes.  All of it sounds familiar, and honestly, it's probably why I am where I am today.   

Hi mssalty :hi:

A slightly belated response to your post.

Dr. Burns' ten forms of distorted thinking sounded very familiar to you and at the time you said it was probably why you were at where you were.

How are things now?

Looking back at where you were two years ago, do you see any positive changes in your way of thinking an handling things?

The Board Parrot