Dear Jack:

Is this him on the video? Maybe will watch later, probably, yes. In his website, his writings are about the Internal Critic, I later remember. He didn’t call it Internal Bully. Makes no difference to me, same meaning. Well, did you get any ideas?

By the way, it occurred to me last night that I have an Inner Self I wasn’t aware of as such, let me introduce her: Ruminating Ramona. Similar to you know who. She does ruminate about what I did wrong, or maybe wrong, and as the appropriate bully of the moment is beating me up with a whip, she, Ramona keeps me in the position of being beaten, while she is trying to resolve the situation using other Inner Selves. You-ate-too-much Tammy is beating me up while Ruminating Ramona is engaging Calorie-counting-Caroline for “help” and there is Running-around-Renee to the “rescue” and Ramona keeps thinking and thinking.

A better dynamic is: the sensible, healing, evolving me saying to the one or ones with the whip: PUT THE WHIP DOWN. Focus on that alone. Put the whip down, stop the beating.

Ramona is like a person entering a home where a young child is being beaten by a crazed adult. What she does is, she starts talking to the crazed adult: “Maybe the child didn’t do the wrong thing you think he did… let’s …examine this, analyze it.” And Ramona is telling the in-progress beaten child: “Now let’s see, did you do something wrong?” And an Renee jumps in with her input: Take an extra long walk. And Fran jumps in and says: the child is fat! And so on.

While the only sensible intervention would be: PUT THE WHIP DOWN.

Then we’ll talk. No whipping. No beating.

anita