I don't know of any other way than observe, tell yourself they are just thoughts, and watch them go by.
It's your inner critic, that which Freud calls the superb. It's too strong, probably installed in childhood.
One trick I pull, (mine was 'installed' by WH based on my childhood part I call funny bunny) is to say to my critic in response to its remarks 'stop that right now' and 'I am not listening, you are wasting your breath'. I also convert the voice into a helium balloon voice and I slow it down. I also play the tune Slow by Rumour, I have it on my phone, laptop and tablet as a quick clip.
Another of my tricks is to let the critic get so obnoxious and outrageous it is no longer believable. As in "you are the worst person in the world ever, even more horrible than Hitler and Pol Pot combined. Clearly baloney.
The voices of my inner critic are weakening, I got the tricks from the Tao of fully feeling by Pete Walker
This is his thinking:
“Tuning in(ward) and turning up the volume,” as I once heard someone describe it, is a process of bringing the critic into earshot. We can tune in and turn up the volume by carefully listening to our self-talk and fully focusing on our inner experience whenever we feel toxic shame. Most of the students in my reparenting classes are shocked when they first discover the viciousness of their critic’s voice. At the end of the turning-up-the-volume meditation that I use to highlight internal reactions to innocuous mistakes, many are astounded by how merciless they respond to themselves.
Those who practice this exercise during the subsequent week report great dismay about how much their critic’s voice dominates and spoils their moment-to-moment experience. When I first began turning up the volume and tuning into the content of my mind’s inner chatter, I also experienced great consternation. I heard endless variations of these angry condemnations: “Let’s see how you can screw this up, dumbo!?”“Who cares what you think, stupid?”“Nice going, klutz!”“Why don’t you see what else you can do to embarrass yourself?”“Can’t you ever get anything right?”“Why don’t you just shut up and get it that nobody gives a damn about you or your ridiculous opinions!”
The toxic shame that accompanied these messages was viscerally painful. I experienced it as an intensely anxious but curiously dead feeling in my abdomen. At times it felt as if the pandemonium of a crowded mall, the tiredness of the night shift, and the emptiness of a nursing home had formed some awful emotional amalgam deep inside me. This shame not only robbed me of my words, but also took away my will to get them back. When toxic shame was upon me, anything and everything I thought to say sounded like the worst drivel imaginable. How could I dare contribute when even I found all my thoughts eminently deserving of ridicule and censure?
Over time, the critical parent enlists the creative imagination in the service of toxic shame and invents new degrading epithets.
My critic enforced the muteness my parents shamed me into and then further demeaned me for my diffidence.
When I was at a loss for words I would often spiral further down into toxic shame as my critic prickled me with a host of insults: “Social cripple, hopeless introvert, boring dullard, full-time loser, zombie incommunicado.”Tuning in and observing my inner critic led me to understand why I had needed to censor myself so unmercifully. As a child, my only choice was to “identify with the aggressors” and join the winning side in the war against my self-expression.
Silence allowed me to be a less noticeable target for my parents’random attacks. By not opening my mouth I refrained from giving them more ammunition (namely, my words and ideas) to use for further humiliation. Moreover, by berating myself, I beat them to the punch and softened the impact of their verbal blows. I eventually became so habituated to this process that it didn’t matter whether they were present or not.
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For me that told me, firstly many of us do this and secondly I need have no shame for it, most of it is nonsense. For parents in my case substitute WH.
V
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose. V 64, WAW
