S1 EP21 – Why You Judge Yourself and How to Stop

Transcript

Hi everyone. This is dr. Margaret Paul with the Inner Bonding podcast. And today I want to talk about why do you judge yourself and how to stop judging yourself? So I’m wondering if you’re aware of how much you judge yourself and how often you’re Judge yourself is maybe being bad or wrong or inadequate. Do you, do you know how Yourself judgements are making you feel? You know, why you judge yourself?

So Self judgment is a major form of self abandonment that may be keeping you stuck and feeling anxious or depressed or stressed out. So many painful feelings that come about as a result of self judgment. So some of the things that you might say to yourself, things that are, that you’re actually saying to the inner child, too, your soul or, or things that are, that you would never say to an actual child.

So do you say things like I’ll never be good enough? I’ll never do it, right? I’m such a jerk. How could I have said that I’m a loser I’ll never get anywhere. I’m so stupid. I’m so dumb. I should have learned this by now. I just don’t fit in. I don’t belong with these people. I’m permanently, emotionally damaged. I’ll never be okay. No one could love me. No one’s ever gonna love me. I’m just not lovable. I’m not worthy. I’m flawed. I’m not important. I’m bad.

I’m a failure. I’m just not enough. I’ll never be enough. And on and on. And you would likely, never say these things to an actual child, at least I hope not. But however you say it to yourself, it’s saying the same thing. It’s a profound judgment against who you truly are, who you are in your beautiful soul essence.

So the moment we judge ourselves, we’re telling ourselves that we have no good reasons for our feelings, for our behavior. That we’re just not good enough. And yet I hope, you know, by now that are feelings and behavior often come from a belief system, a false belief system when we’re feeling badly and behaving in unloving ways towards ourselves and towards others. It’s because we’re operating from false beliefs about ourselves and about others.

So in my Inner Bonding work with people. I find that self judgment is one of the major causes of a fear of anger, anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, aloneness, emptiness, and jealousy, and many other painful feelings. But most people don’t realize that these painful feelings or the result of their own thoughts and often their own Self judgments. Most of the time when I ask a client who’s anxious or why they’re feeling anxious, or they tell me is because something happened to them.

They usually believe that an event or a person caused their anxiety. But when I ask them what they’re thinking that might be causing their anxiety, they’ll tell me a self judgment, such as I’m not good enough, or they’re projecting their own self judgment onto me and telling themselves Margaret doesn’t like me or Margaret is getting impatient with me when they judge themselves or makeup that I’m judging them, they get anxious.

There’s naturally there is nothing actually happening that’s causing their anxiety other than their own thoughts, pointing out to them that they’re causing their anxiety with their self judgment doesn’t necessarily stop there’s self judgement. This is because self judgment is often an addiction. An addiction is a habitual behavior that is intended to protect against pain.

So what’s the pain that self judgment is intended to avoid. Generally the hope of self judgment is to protect ourselves against rejection and failure. We fall asleep. Believe that if I judge myself, then others won’t judge me or reject me. I can be safe from others judgments by judging myself first. Or if I judge myself, I can motivate myself to do things right, and succeed.

Then all feel safe. And then I’ll be loved and accepted by others. But just as a child is far better in school with encouragement then with criticism. So do we, as adults, criticism tends to scare and mobilize us, instead of motivating us, it often creates so much anxiety that we freeze and become unable to take the appropriate actions for ourselves.

More Self judgment follows this lack of action, which then results in more anxiety and more immobilization until we create a situation. We where we are completely stuck and very miserable, but many of the very successful people I work with firmly believe that they’re successful because of their Self judgements. They often say to me, if I didn’t judge myself, if I just sit on a couch all day and do nothing, I would, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t get anywhere.

I wouldn’t be successful and that’s what’s going to happen. If I don’t Judge myself or I’ll just sit on the couch all day and do nothing. I have to judge myself to motivate myself. The reason they believe this is that they believe that they are their wound itself. The part of them that is doing the judging. And when we operate from our wound itself, we are often unmotivated and might sit on the couch all day. If we didn’t judge ourselves, but your not your wounded self you’re wounded self is a fabrication that you created as part of your survival mechanism.

If you’ve ever seen little kids, Vincent, the toddlers, you know that the last thing they want to do is sit on the couch and do nothing. They’re constantly active. They’re constantly learning and creating. They’re constantly motivated to explore new things, unless they’ve already been programmed by their parents to sit in front of a screen all day, they’re going to be very motivated to get off that couch. So I don’t judge myself anymore. I used to, but I learned not to.

And I’m a highly productive person because I want to be not because I have to be. And that’s because our essence, our true soul self, our inner child is highly motivated to express ourselves in the world. This is a big reason that we’re here on this planet, along with learning to evolve ourselves in our ability to love ourselves and others. So many of these very successful people I work with are anxious and unhappy because of their so they’re Self judgments.

And what you need to realize from that is that they’re success is not bringing them joy. So other people I work with seek my help because they’re just stuck in their lives. So I’m going to give you an example. My client I’ll call her. Maryann was stuck, even though she was trying hard to change some things in her behavior, especially her anger and her clutter. She found herself doing these things over and over. Then she’d get upset with herself telling herself she was dumb and stupid and incompetent.

So most of us are taught from the time we’re very little that we cause other people to feel and behave the way they do. We’re taught by our parents and teachers and other care and other caregivers that we cause ourselves to feel angry, scared, hurt, reject, excuse me, that we cause others to feel angry, scared, hurt, and rejected, or we cause them to be loving and accepting in the case of Mary. And she was taught that if she did poorly in school, she’d caused her parents to be angry.

Their anger was her fault, according to her parents. So then she came to believe that she was in control of her parents’ feelings and reactions, because she was taught that her behavior caused their feelings and reactions, her bad, bad behavior caused them to be angry and to reject her. So now, as an adult, Mary, and still believes that she causes others to accept or reject her or to feel happy or unhappy with her or with themselves, she believes that if she can just do things right enough, then she can be in control of others, being happy with her and accepting her.

So we explored this and one of our Skype sessions. So I asked her Maryanne, do you think others are in control of how you feel about them? So she thought for a moment, she says, no, I don’t think so. Some days when I’m in a good mood, I seem to like everyone. And other days when I’m really tired or upset about something, people can really bug me. So how do you feel about other’s and how you treat others has more to do with you then with them?

Is that right? Yeah, I think that’s right. I never thought about it that way before. What or somebody that was really trying hard to get you to like them, like giving you a lot of compliments. Would that make you like them? Well, actually she said, I don’t like it when people butter me up, I just feel manipulated by them. So the things they do to control how you feel about them don’t necessarily work. Is that right? Right. She said, so what makes you think that doing things right will have control over others, liking you, don’t you think other people are like you, that they decide for themselves to be accepting or rejecting.

And then it’s often based on how they’re feeling rather than on anything about You. Huh? Oh my God. She said so now I wonder why I’m trying so hard to do everything right? It’s a waste of time and energy, isn’t it? Yes, it is. I said, it’s not that we can’t influence people, but ultimately we have no control over them. Each of us decides in any given moment to be loving or unloving accepting or rejecting open or closed, no one decides for us who we’re going to be.

And we don’t decide that for others, when you really accept that, you’re going to stop trying so hard and just let yourself be yourself. And if you’re not trying to do everything right, you might find yourself being more accepting of yourself. So then she asked, well, what does all this have to do with my anger and clutter? How it relates is you are trying to change yourself in order to do things right.

And one way you think you can change Yourself is to judge yourself, your trying to control yourself just as you try to control others. And what happens when you judge yourself, how do you feel? I feel awful, just awful with a big black hole inside and is judging yourself working to get you to stop being angry and clean up the clutter. No it’s not working at all. Right? So when you judge yourself, you create an inner resistance.

The way through this resistance is to move out of judgment and into compassion for yourself. Compassion opens the door to awareness and choice. It gives you a safe Inner arena to see what you’re doing. So just getting angry or creating the clutter and to decide what you really want to do differently. Compassion for yourself is essential to moving out of you’re stuck place.

Remember what you Judge won’t budge. Self judgment is also a form of control to cover up and avoid the deep pain of life. It’s just loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others, or a wound itself would rather be the cause of the painful feelings of anxiety and depression and guilt and shame and emptiness and aloneness of anger and so on rather than feel the deep, painful feelings of life.

So here’s another example in a zoom session with my client, I’ll call him Randy. He said, I don’t understand why bad things keep happening to me. It’s just one thing after another, I had been working with Randy for just a few weeks and he seemed to understand Inner Bonding, but I wasn’t sure he was actually practicing it. Randy, what are you feeling right now? Anxious. I’m always anxious. Randy, are you willing to take responsibility for what you’re telling yourself? That’s causing your anxiety?

Yeah, I am. Well, at least I think I am asked her little boy what your telling him right now or what you’re doing. That’s making him anxious. So Randy said, I think I’m always telling him that he’s never good enough that he hasn’t accomplished enough. That he is unconscious enough that he’ll never get this. I’ll never get Inner. Bonding seems to me like this is background noise for me, that I’m always telling him things like this. Why I asked him Randy thought for a moment.

I’m not sure. Think it has something to do with being okay. Only when I accomplish things, there’s always things that to get done. So I said, is your worst tied up and getting things done and accomplishing things? Well, yeah, it is. And you believe that you need to judge yourself to get yourself, to get things done. Yes. I think that’s exactly what’s happening. So I said, according to your wound itself, you have no intrinsic worth your worth and identity is in your accomplishments.

Is that right? Randy said, I don’t know anything about my intrinsic worth. How do I know about that? I had Randy connect with his source of spiritual guidance, which he had opened to and a previous session. He calls his guidance. Luke, Randy asks Luke to show you what he sees when he looks at you as a little boy, when he looks at who you really are. Oh, Randy said I was a sweet and a happy little boy kind and caring with other people all the time.

As you look at this little boy through the eyes of Luc, is there anything wrong with him? Anything about them that isn’t okay. That isn’t a lovable and worthy know. Randy said he is absolutely wonderful Randi. This is your essence who you really are. This is your intrinsic worth. And this a little boy. He is letting you know by being anxious that you’re not seeing him, that you treat him and lovingly you’re abandoning him with all your Self judgments.

And then as long as you’re judging yourself and creating your ongoing anxiety, you’re keeping your frequency to low, to manifest what you want. In fact, you’re drawing to you what you don’t want since like attracts like so a judging myself and defining myself by what I accomplish rather than by intrinsic worth is keeping me anxious in a low frequency, which is drawing other low frequency things to me, Randy ask. Yes, of course.

But you know, sometimes bad things just happen because that’s life, but the kinds of bad things that are happening for you maybe related to your low frequency, coming from yourself, judgment. Why not practice becoming more aware of your addiction to self judgment as a form of control and consciously change your thinking to kindness towards yourself and see what happens. So Randy said, you know, as I’m thinking about this, I realize it’s not just me.

That I Judge, I Judge everyone it’s ongoing in my head either I’m judging myself or I’m judging others. I think I’m really addicted to judgment. What do you think the judgment is protecting you from? I asked him, Oh, he answered now that you asked, I know exactly what is protecting me from, from the deep loneliness I’ve always felt and the help us or the helplessness over the pain of my childhood.

I think I’ve always preferred the anxiety to the loneliness and heartbreak of my childhood. Randy, do you,

I think you’re ready to feel these core feelings now that you’re an adult or you ready to bring in your loving guidance to help you finally feel and heal those feelings so that you don’t need to use Self judgment to avoid them. Yes. Ranty answered. I’m more than ready. So instead of judging ourselves for our feelings and behavior, Where are we? Do you move into compassion for ourselves?

We would open the door to learning about the beliefs that are causing our pain. The way out of self judgment is to practice in our Bonding becoming aware of their feelings of anxiety and anger and depression and shame and so on. And then ask yourself, what did I just tell myself that’s causing this feeling. Once you become aware of the self judgement, then you can ask yourself, am I certain that what I’m telling myself is true?

If your not a hundred percent certain, that what you’re telling yourself is true. You can ask your higher guidance, your higher Why Self or whatever spiritual source of wisdom you turn to. What is the truth. If you are really open to learning, the truth will come into your mind and it will be very, very different than what you’ve been telling yourself. For example, if you tell yourself I’m such a jerk, how could I have said that now becomes we all mess up at times, it’s okay to make mistakes.

It’s part of being human, making a mistake. Doesn’t mean you’re a jerk. We opened to the truth. We’ll discover a kind and compassionate way of speaking to ourselves. A way that makes us feel loved and safe rather than anxious, angry, or depressed. It’s true that addictions are always challenging to resolve and an addiction to Self judgment is no exception. So it’d be easy on yourself.

And don’t judge yourself for judging yourself. It’ll take time and dedication to become aware of your self judgments and learn to be kind towards yourself. But the end result is so worth it. I had a pretty long and letting go of my self judgments years ago, I realized that so much of my anxiety, most of it was coming from how harshly I was judging myself.

And so I decided to notice my self judgment and notice the anxiety it was causing. And frankly, it took me a good year before I could stop judging myself. But I did because I realized it wasn’t getting me anywhere. It was just making me feel bad. And so for many years now I have not judged myself. And that is such a relief to no longer be judging myself. And I’ve been far more productive and able to manifest what I want in life by letting go of my Self judgments.

So I hope that you learn and practice Inner Bonding. If you don’t know it, please go to our website, download our free seven day Inner Bonding course read the mini articles, turned to the free help section that’s on the site. And if you have the funds, you can have help from me from the many trained facilitators we have. You can join my courses. I have a love Yourself of course, many other courses, many ways of learning.

Inner Bonding have a wonderful package called complete self love that will teach you how to love yourself rather than continue to Judge and abandon yourself. So I hope you take advantage of all that we offer@innerbonding.com. God bless you.