Dear Patrick:

Like in your other thread, I read you as a very intelligent person, articulate, creative, engaging.

This is my input: you have a hateful “inner critic”, the part of you that is telling you hateful things about yourself, raining on your parade, using every opportunity to drill in the message (that is well drilled and doesn’t need any more drilling, of course) that you are those things it tells you that you are.

Your childhood is not an excuse (it tells you that, not true). You were formed during your childhood, and that very inner critic is the mental representative of real people in your formative years, those years in childhood.

It tells you that you are selfish because you are motivated to feel  good. Every single living thing with enough nerve cells to be capable of feeling good… is motivated to feel good.

I am still living with a hateful inner critic myself, takes a whole lot of time and a whole lot of patience to turn down its volume, to disengage from it.

anita