Dear Ginn:

“Recently, I’ve been having some problems at work. When the emotions hit me, I felt stupid and helpless. I started subconsciously slapping myself as a punishment. I wanted to know what was wrong with me” –

– you experienced some difficulty at work, next a part of you criticized the rest of you, telling you: you are stupid and helpless! What’s wrong with you???  Another part of you felt that you deserved the criticism and you punished yourself.

“Because when I was a kid, my parents used to punish me whenever I did something wrong” – the part of you that criticized you is the mental representative of your parents (aka inner critic). The other part of you is the child that you used to be, the child who believed, and still believes, that her parents are always right (aka inner child).

“So, I slapped myself to make myself feel better when I did something wrong?” – you punished the part of you that allegedly did wrong, so that from now on, she will do right!

Problem is that the criticism was wrong, not you!

“I thought I was getting better mentally, but it actually seemed to be getting worse” – to get better, you need to understand that much of the time, your parents criticized you unfairly, that they were wrong, not you! For as long as you believe that their criticism was always right and you were always wrong, their mental representative will keep criticizing you and you will keep punishing yourself.

This “repeated pattern” of unfair criticism and punishment is what’s keeping you “stuck” (words taken from the title of your thread).

Earlier in your thread, you wrote: “I always thought that if my parents or someone else spoke to me in a gentle voice it would make me weaker… And that my father was right and that he should be strict with me to make me stronger” – you need a gentle inner critic. A strict inner critic is making you weak and stuck. A gentle inner critic will make you strong and free!

When I say that your parents unfairly criticized you, I mean that they claimed you made mistakes when you did not make mistakes. For example, you wrote earlier: “When I cried because I was stressed about small things, he would criticise me that why I was being so weak” – crying was not a mistake, it was simply an expression of emotion.

Let’s look at an example where you criticized yourself unfairly: “I ran away from piano exam when I was twelve because I don’t want to fail it and be embarrassed of myself. So, I lied to my parents that I wanted to focus on my school… I hate myself because I wasn’t honest with my parents” – when a child lies to her parents, it is not a good situation, but it is not a mistake on the part of the child when the parents are in the habit of punishing the child for telling the truth, truth that they don’t want to hear. When parents punish a child for telling the truth, it is not a mistake to lie to them. It is instead, a way to avoid unfair punishment.

I am not saying that you never make mistakes, I am sure that you do, but you need to (1) Be able to tell the difference between a real mistake, and what is NOT a mistake, (2) Stop punishing yourself and instead, correct the real mistakes that you do.

anita