Dear Rebecca:

I agree with you, that you being in the spotlight when receiving the award, is the reason for your distress: your “inner critic”, projected into other people, is bullying you, coming up with all the reasons why your reward needs to be “balanced” with some heavy duty bullying.

I am very familiar with that inner critic which I also call inner bully. It has rained on my parade many a time. To heal from it, which I am in the process of, it takes, I believe, confronting the real bullies in your life, the one or ones who … sort of, gave birth to your inner bully. It starts there.

You wrote in previous posts that you were bullied as a kid and teenager: was it by peers in school- or was there bullying at home as well?

anita

Dear Rebecca:

I think everyone likes to be liked and no one wants to be disliked. For many, being disliked is not only unpleasant but threatening. It feels dangerous. I think it is so because in the past, having been disliked involved with having been bullied/ abused. This is why I think it is important to confront past bullies/ abusers somehow, in some form.

If you stood up to that person on Facebook, the one who bullied you in Middle School by responding to his message with: Do you not remember how awful you were to me??? How you bullied me (and you can give him an example)? Then wait for an answer.

It can help some, standing up to past aggressors. That may very well make you feel stronger and so, less scared of being disliked.

How was your mother critical of you, if I may ask, and how did you manage to let it go?

anita

Dear Rebecca:

The fact that your mother suffered before she severely criticized you does not make the damage she has caused you any less than if she has not suffered.

As a matter of fact, people do not harm others unless they suffered before. Who is the person who has had a safe loving childhood, then to proceed to be severely critical of others, harming others…

This is why reminding yourself that your mother suffered may very well continue to keep down anger toward her, but it doesn’t promote your own well being. Your well being, I believe, is about holding people responsible for what they do and so that you stop holding yourself responsible for what you are not responsible for, and in so doing, you stop hating yourself (in the title of your thread).

anita

Dear Rebecca:

You wrote about your mother: “my mom has always been critical of my weight and appearance. She was also critical of my grades in school and just my personality in general. She has something negative to say about everything I do… She has always found a way to guilt trip me or make me feel sorry for her…She has never validated my feelings about anything.”-

Your mother is your real life, original bully. Your Inner Bully is the mental representative of your mother. The other bullies came later into your life, in and out, while the only real life bully that has been persistently bullying you from the beginning to this very day is your mother.

If you had an accepting, loving mother, you wouldn’t have an Inner Bully. There wouldn’t be a “reason (you) hate yourself.

Take the empathy you have for your mother and direct it at yourself. As long as your empathy is directed at your real-life, original (and ongoing) bully, you cannot heal.

The reason you hate yourself is because you believe you deserve her criticism, that you are unacceptable. Consider the possibility (and reality, I believe), that she criticized you not because you were unacceptable, that there was something wrong with you, but because there is something wrong with her.

Post anytime.

anita

I have the same problem. If I receive any positive recognition, I brush it off. I can’t feel any joy or sense of accomplishment from it. But I whip myself into fretting and insomnia if I perceive that I did something wrong.

I never thought that I was recreating the conditions of my critical parents. So my need for love is tied in with feeling as if I need to bully myself.

This was manageable until I had a very, very bad year last year. I had just struggled to move to a new city for family reasons, the most expensive city in the country. During my first month there, my (separated) husband was arrested with my children present, he spent the next three months in jail, I started a new job and another part time teaching job, I had to move again in order to keep my dog, my mother found out she had terminal cancer, and I was hired onto the project from hell at work…the kind of project that unbeknownst to me the two previous people in the position had walked off of.

I managed to pull through it, with some memory loss and difficulty processing thoughts which lasted for an additional year and a half. But another side effect I struggle with is a profound deepening of this feeling insecure in a very, very fundamental way.

Dear Rebecca:

If you would like to answer, please do: what is the nature of your current relationship with our mother, how often, what kind of conversations, how does she criticize you currently (what does she say and how), how does she dismiss your feelings, make it all about her, etc. And how do you feel when in contact with her?

anita