Dear benjamin:

You asked: “How can I be myself around people when I don’t like who I am? When ‘myself’ is so much worse than who people think I am?”

By understanding first that most people you come across, they too don’t like who they are, they too think that who they really are is much worse than what people think.

Let’s look at what happened when you were 14: “I started experiencing huge manic episodes- irritability, horrible self-attacking thoughts that would drive me practically crazy, huge amounts of energy that would result in me throwing things in my house.. And much more”.

This is how I see it: we all have that inner critic, a voice in our brain that criticizes us. It is the mental representative of a critical parent or one or more adults in your childhood home.

At 14, that inner critic became very loud and it overwhelmed you. Its criticism must have been vicious and persistent, attacking you repeatedly. As a result of these attacks you felt great fear, a fear that caused you to be filled with energy aimed at preparing you to either run away or fight (the Fight/ fight response to perceived danger).

You didn’t understand what was happening, so you figured that what was happening was that there is something very abnormal and wrong about you. That misunderstanding and belief gave that inner critic more fuel in its criticism of you.

You took medications, calming that inner critic and your fear of it, quieting down that Flight/Fight response and now you are left with an … almost manageable inner critic.

Other people you come across, they have their own inner critics, just like you do. They are afraid too. Their reaction to their inner critic and its attacks are varied: some turn to drugs and alcohol, others engage in compulsive behaviors such as in OCD, and yet others run marathons.

Pay attention to others’ inner critics, communicate with others about that shared human challenge, the overactive, self abusive inner critic.

anita