Silence your Inner Critic and Live a More Fulfilling Life: the ‘Good-Enough’ Principle and 5 Strengths Exercise.
We are learning, as Highly Sensitive People (HSPs), to heal the ‘not good enough’ and grow into ‘good enough.’ Once the ‘not good enough’ program is downloaded into a developing human being, this dynamic touches an absurd amount of our life. It can affect nearly every waking and sleeping moment of our lives.
The inner bully or the inner critic has a powerful ability to chime in on nearly everything. If you're cooking a delicious meal, it’s not good enough--there’s not enough spice or too much spice. If you dress up for a wedding, none of it--the hair, makeup, outfit, dancing, socializing--is good enough. If you show up on time to a job interview and answer every question, you leave rehashing and torturing yourself with coulda, woulda, shoulda’s. It’s so absurdly easy to do.
If we grew up in any amount of unsafety, if our parents were immature, or if there was a lot of chaos and struggle, then we had to do a lot of self-raising without a lot of healthy guidance. In this space, the human ego seems to develop an inner bully. In this modern world, it is absurd to allow so much of our precious energy to continue ripping ourselves an internal, emotional new one. It is absurd not to wrangle this energy, shut down the inner bully, and give all that energy to the ‘good enough’--to lifting ourselves up and learning to own our mistakes without dinging our self-esteem, hurting our self-worth, and digging a hole of depression. We learn how to put our energy into righting our mistakes to the best of our abilities when we can. This is a self-worth builder compared to that inner bully that just tears us down again and again.
Emotionally, many of us are going to therapy, reading books, and listening to podcasts constantly, while still allowing our inner bully to pick us apart, make us doubt every single positive move we make, and emotionally abuse ourselves. This is the emotional equivalent of going to a therapist to talk about getting out of an abusive relationship while going home and getting hit daily. The physical situation needs to change--the person needs to be physically away from the abuser, at a minimum. No therapist or coach in the world can help us in this dynamic unless we are truly ready and willing to own the inner bully and work to silence him or her.
This is maybe more important than ever because suicide is skyrocketing. Who do you think suggests suicide to a struggling heart, mind, and body? It's certainly not our spiritual part, our wisest parts. It’s the inner bully who suggests that everyone else's life would be so much better if we were to take our own life. This is the number one thought that leads someone to suicide. This is wrong. When we’re living with an inner bully, the only offered escape route from the one bullying us is death because we can’t escape the internal bullying. This is why almost all suicide happens alone. We know that if someone reaches out, they don’t complete the act of self-death because in the moment they stop listening to the inner bully. They get their consciousness outside of that cruel voice and they connect with reality.
We cannot allow our inner bully to go on. As HSPs, we can use our stubbornness to disallow messages from the inner bully. We must learn to decipher, with discernment, these different voices in our heads--dialing down the critical voice while dialing up the voice of wisdom, the ‘wise man’ or ‘wise woman’ that is available to grow inside of all of us. Our self-worth language is anti-bullying language.
The Five Strengths Exercise:
Write down in a journal five things that you like and love about yourself. These can be things that you are good at or quirks that belong to you and make you unique and special. One of the reasons why this is so important is because most of us can fill up a notebook with what we don’t like about ourselves. We could write this list so fast. If your mind goes blank when you’re asked to acknowledge your goodness and gifts, this exercise can help you take your positive power back from the inner bully. This exercise will help you grow and strengthen the muscles of ‘good enough.’
Listen to the episode ‘Good Enough, the Inner Bully, and Five Strengths as an Exercise,’ to hear me share the five things that I like and love about myself as a coach and therapist.
Episode Tags
- ADD 1
- Abuse 14
- Alcohol 3
- Anger 8
- Bullying 4
- Childhood 35
- Codependency 6
- Covid 4
- Crystal Catalina 7
- Depression 15
- Detachment 2
- Disassociation 4
- Emotions 70
- Existentialism 1
- Faith 1
- Family 24
- Fatigue 4
- Focus 3
- Gratitude 11
- Grief 8
- Guilt 2
- Healers 7
- Healing 52
- High Sensation 4
- Hope 1
- Hypervigilance 7
- Introverts 6
- Lonliness 7
- Love 3
- Manifesting 5
- Manipulation 16
- Men 1
- Mindfulness 37
- Money 10
- Music 3
- Nutrition 3
- Overthinking 8
- PTSD 11
- Parenting 12
- People Pleasing 6
- Perfectionism 6
- Pets 4
- Relationships 11
- Resiliency 11
- Sadness 1
- Self Esteem 15
- Self Love 11
- Self-Care 24
- Sex 1
- Shame 4
Episode Tags
- ADD 1
- Abuse 14
- Alcohol 3
- Anger 8
- Bullying 4
- Childhood 35
- Codependency 6
- Covid 4
- Crystal Catalina 7
- Depression 15
- Detachment 2
- Disassociation 4
- Emotions 70
- Existentialism 1
- Faith 1
- Family 24
- Fatigue 4
- Focus 3
- Gratitude 11
- Grief 8
- Guilt 2
- Healers 7
- Healing 52
- High Sensation 4
- Hope 1
- Hypervigilance 7
- Introverts 6
- Lonliness 7
- Love 3
- Manifesting 5
- Manipulation 16
- Men 1
- Mindfulness 37
- Money 10
- Music 3
- Nutrition 3
- Overthinking 8
- PTSD 11
- Parenting 12
- People Pleasing 6
- Perfectionism 6
- Pets 4
- Relationships 11
- Resiliency 11
- Sadness 1
- Self Esteem 15
- Self Love 11
- Self-Care 24
- Sex 1
- Shame 4
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