Dear Lara:

The message from your mother was  “The world is bad”, suggesting to you that other people meant to hurt your feelings, “always assumed the worst of people”. She would  get angry at other people who interacted with you, and she “would automatically be angry and say ‘how could she say something like that to you!”, for example.

But then, she assumed the worst of you too, this is why you had to defend yourself against her (“It was always a struggle to defend my view against hers”). When you said something she disagreed with, there was that “disgusted look she gave  me, like I was the worst person on the planet”.

I will focus on your mother at this point because she was the one with the anger, and a parent’s anger is very powerful in a child’s experience. Your father’s input was harmful but not close to the extent of your mother’s harm done to you, because he was not angry, she was.

Let’s look at the sentences you have voiced out loud, the “you” means Lara: “I hate you”. “You are a bad person” “When will you finally end it?” “Why can’t I be better?”

There  is a concept of the “inner critic” a well known mental entity, the mental representative of the parent that keeps criticizing us in the absence of the parent. Everyone has an inner critic. Yours voices itself out loud at times to no one in particular.

When your inner critic says “I hate you”, that is the  mental representative  of your mother saying that, because when she looked at you in real life with disgust, that is what she was saying without words. Same with “You are a bad person”, this is what her disgust said without words. And  it fit with what she  did say about others and you, everyone is a bad person. Then a part of you is looking for a solution: change from bad to good (“Why can’t I get better?”) ,or get  rid of the bad person (“When will you finally end it?”)

Your inner critic, like everyone’s, is automatic and we can stop its input if we notice it and concentrate,  and its tone of voice, inaudible, does change  (It’s automatic  in that I am not aware when I start talking, but with concentration I can stop midsentence and not finish. Tone of voice depends on my stress level… when I am really angry with myself over something I might actually shout”).

Most of us live with an inner critic that sometimes.. silently shouts at us.

anita

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