Catching your Critic Reflections

[Dutch1988]

So I have been reading Self Esteem by Matthew Mckay and Patrick Fanning(Found it on some sobriety resource). I am going to make this thread with the goal of catching our critic voice and trying to create strategies/skills to reduce it's occurrence to live happier, healthier lives. The goal is to improve our self esteem, which I know quitting alcohol did for me immediately. Unfortunately, do to my low self esteem to begin with, and the critic voice, eventually it came back down. Nothing I did was good enough to stop the onslaught it had on me. So if you are familiar with the concept please join in, by reading each others ways the critic takes away from us, we can definitely start feeling better about ourselves. I think a high self concept is very important for people in recovery. Having compassion for yourself, not trying to be a perfectionist, not comparing yourself to others, dealing with feelings of guilt, frustration, anger, fear of rejection, feeling not ok about yourself, fear of failure. Needing to be or act a certain way, these are all unhealthy ways the critic might attack us to take away from our metaphorical bucket(if anyone is familiar).

So here's what you do. Write out what happened, what the critic said/made you feel, write what it is trying to protect you from, and write what a healthy thing you can think is. Of course that is not all you can do but if you have no idea where to start, that's a good place.

For example, today I want to go to grappling, I have not been in 3 weeks, my critic is telling me I shouldn't go because it has been so long. It is trying to protect me from being embarrassed if I make a newbie mistake or something. I am telling myself mistakes are how we learn, I have to make mistakes to get better and I need to go to class to improve, I will never get better if I don't go. In the future I am going to make less of a big deal if I miss time off, not try to have a perfect schedule, and be flexible about my goals for grappling. It is supposed to be a recreational thing I do, I should not feel pressure like meeting a deadline when I am thinking about training.

[techie]

Great post

[Dutch1988]

Another day checking in on this thing.

Yesterday the biggest thing I noticed was basing my self worth on how big my 4-6 year old class was, during vacation week at near by schools. I am giving myself a hard time, making me teach a more angry class and creating my own vicious circle of losing students. The next thing was when I was walking around seeing kids not trying which really bothered me. Again, never realized I was attacking myself for these little kids, most of them not going to be there in 2 years, and them not looking amazing. There is a difference between wanting your students to succeed and basing your self worth on them not looking good, which is what I am going to work on today. Today is a testing day so that will be interesting, I have to remember just because some kids do not look good dfoes not mean that I am not good. Or rather my self worth is not represented by what I can do, or am doing, I can love myself just for who I am, I don't need a certain level of success for my kids or my business. The struggle continues...

[Dutch1988]

So yesterday I had testing for my martial arts students. Already I am impressed with how much paying attention to my inner critic changes my mood. I usually don't enjoy testing because there always seems to be something the students are missing/not living up to what I expect. With a higher level of detachment from the process, it was much easier to honestly look at what the kids need to improve. It also motivated me as a teacher again because I wasn't taking everything I saw so personally leaving me to want to help my students instead of improving them to make myself look better.

Biggest critic moment of the day, I have a personal training lesson with a woman and her 5 year old son, the son mostly working on kickboxing. The father came today to watch his progress, its been about 3 months since the kid starting. He is moving well, but that critic voice starting talking to me making me worry about what the father was thinking, again, me trying to be perfect when I am teaching a FIVE YEAR OLD! I was able to shut it off and remind myself that I dont have to be perfect to love myself anymore, and that I am teaching this child to the best of my ability, even if the father does not like his progress, I can always get feedback and improve what he is doing. Even if he stops him from taking class, that is his decision and should not change how I feel about myself. If this sounds like common sense to anyone reading I applaud your sense of self-worth, for me it's rocket science haha

[Sunbeam]

Sounds like you have found a system that can work for you. That is great, it is not easy figuring this out.

[Dutch1988]

So yesterday I am finishing up a birthday party, 11 hours in to my day, all on my feet and grown out my back about 2 hours in. I forgot to tell everyone the promotion, and I don't feel like stopping the party to do it. My inner critic is having a field day, this is why your not successful, your not trying hard enough, if you just do a party with enrolling someone your a clown, you get the idea. I finally realize it's going on and shut it down. Yes, I need to work on my fear of rejection, it's. Main thing I want to work on with this whole building self esteem thing. But going about it this way has not worked, I have already tried the pain of beating myself up to sell, and it hasn't been working. I am going to remember to do the promotion today, and I am going to plan something to give to parents when they walk in so they know there is a deal. I'll pick two kids who seem into martial arts and talk to their parents. That's it, I am not going to beat myself up anymore. Whether it's my personality or from my youth, I can't keep doing this in selling situations. I am hoping this works, I have never tried it before.

[Dutch1988]

So yesterday it was a birthday party, today it was an email. Getting easier to identify but not easier to turn off the negative emotions yet.

[Dutch1988]

So yesterday I am training my only personal training client. I say only because I have tried pretty much nil to increase that client base, probably because of my own insecurities in my abilities. I have been working with her for about 5 months, she has increased her muscle tone and strength in her legs, her MO by a huge amount, barely able to do body weight squats and now doing them with a buck twenty five on her back.

Que to today, she has been working on deadlifting for about 2 weeks, I keep correcting her form because she keeps rounding her back and keeping the weight too far from her body. What I should have done was just ditched the exercise and done some practice without any weight at the end of each workout till she got it down. Instead I figured the weight was light enough she wouldn't hurt herself, and sure enough she did. Deadlift back injuries are super common, even for someone with experience who isn't paying attention one day. Still, my critic just ripped me a new one, I don't think I enjoyed the rest of the day. Everything from your a fraud/prepare to be sued(this cracks me up, she walked out of there just fine, and just couldn't use her low back muscles very well because she hurt them). I am still dealing with this, 2 days later.

This is a perfect example of something that makes me want to drink. I feel completely responsible when I am truly partially responsible. I worry about long term damage to her, I have a bulging disc and hurt my lower back muscles a few days ago and am fine now, even with the disc problem. I feel like a fraud because I didn't do enough research into form for the deadlift to convey the knowledge to her better, I didn't explain it as well as I could have maybe, but she understood the form. I didn't remind her to keep her core tight, well I have told her numerous times before.

The worst thing that could happen is I lose the client, and then I get attacked in my head for losing 380 for my family when moneys already tight. So what do I do, I ruminate on it, ruin a day off I have with my wife and daughter, go to sleep early and not enjoy an evening with my wife, ignore my daughter for the most of today trying to distract myself with facebook/articles so I can get out of my head.

hat I need to do is show some compassion for myself, I made a mistake, I should have taken it back a step, I thought she was ready and understood the form well enough. I need to accept she hurt her back and may be out for a week, tops. I can make up a week's worth of personal training over the course of the month. I did the best I could with what I knew at the time, and spent a lot of time researching the form since then. I forgive myself for making this mistake, and don't base my whole self worth on someone pulling a muscle. There are far worse injuries she could have done to herself.

I have a should rule where I should never be responsible for someone getting injured/hurt. Well injuries are going to happen, that is the nature of exercise, I need to change it to I will do my best to not have anyone get injured on my watch, but some injuries can't be avoided. I also need to remember injuries TEACH you things, and that can be a great learning experience. I am yet to have an injury that did not teach me something. So I am going to stop beating myself up about the situation, whenever my brain bounces back I am going to tell it to stop that shit. I will continue to try and learn as much as I can about every exercise for every person.

[lex]

Dutch- you are on the right track nipping those thoughts in the bud. Looking at it objectively, those thoughts are bullcrap! Your actions are right on, and that is what counts. What you are doing is a great service to others- you are helping and serving them as best as you can and it is plenty good enough! Your clients need you to stay strong, for their sake.

[actiongirl46]

Hey Dutch - just reading this thread - thanks so much for starting it. I struggle with this too. I have some thoughts:

Look back at your last post (2.23) . . . as a fellow educator, its just the nature of the job that you don't always get it right. But re-read your post carefully. Notice at how RICH your learning was as you reflected on that experience. You could easily write out a checklist to help you think of everything the next time (e.g. start smaller, teach form first and to mastery before adding weight, etc.)

Learning anything is a process. Mistakes are a GIFT as they are our best tools to help us improve (I'm not necessarily talking about AL here, ha ha). I'm thinking about learning something new. In some cultures, classrooms encourage mistakes (not silly ones, they encourage kids to just try and make it very ok make sincere mistakes). Trust me, they are kicking our @#$ in international test scores.

Congrats on getting a huge gift from your client. Also congrat's on being such an insightful reflective thinker to be able to glean such a wealth of learning for the next round. Write it out and move on!!

Take care - AG

P.S. You probably can't reflect very well if you are impaired with AL, then there's no learning . . . hmm.
P.S. 2 - I just reread my own post and want to apologize if it sounds preachy. That was not my intent but you just touched on one of areas where I've been doing a lot of reading. Of course, this is SO MUCH easier to say to someone else than apply to yourself!!

[Dutch1988]

Hey actiongirl, you are definitely right about how reflecting on previous mistakes can greatly improve learning. I mean I make mistakes all the time, in different areas. I just don't want my mistakes to take away from my self worth, as was the case above. Being able to accept my mistakes as something that happens to everyone, all but in varying not degrees depending on the experience and activity, is just something my critic doesn't consider. I am working on accepting I can't be perfect all the time, and that mistakes are a given. But that doesn't mean I don't want to learn from them, I am hoping that I will be able to get more out of them instead of spending so much time kicking myself in the nuts.

My knee jerk reaction reading your response was defensive, and I don't even know why haha. I am assuming my ego thinks it's protecting me from something, and appreciate you giving me something new to consider. I think what I really fear is someone on the outside teaming up with the critical voice I have on the inside to tear me down. Because my opinion of myself can be so skewed in this area, almost anything you responding with could be taken the wrong way in my mind. Thanks again for responding, it gives me something else to work on in itself, remembering we all see what we want to in every situation, and to be cautious of what my kind jumps to without me knowing it.

[Dutch1988]

Been feeling much better about myself, I think this self talk therapy is working. I noticed I don't have to keep telling my mind to cut that shit out as much, the things I was making myself think are becoming automatic. It's funny I always heard you are what you think but I never realized how automatic our brains work and the degree to which we can change them.

[actiongirl46]

Hey there, just reading your response to my post. I probably did say too much, I'm really good at that!! That thinking was a mind shift for me too. There is a really good book about it called "Mindset" by Carol Dweck. Great read, especially as a parent.

I actually popped over here to congratulate you on your 1 year AF anniversary!! GREAT JOB!! What an awesome accomplishment. I hope you had an extra special pint of ice cream or slurpee or both today. Enjoy!

[Dutch1988]

Haha thanks actiongirl! I am pretty pleased with myself I must say. The only downside is it's hard to treat myself when I am enjoying a pint of ice cream/slurped everyday! I'll hafts figure something out.

I am really surprised at how much less I am critiquing myself in my head. I used to knock myself almost all day long, now I can count them on one hand. Plus self talk specifically against my critique has made it much easier to build on my successes at work. Making it easier to accomplish things because I am less worried about how I am perceived/trying to be perfect. Good times.