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Belongs to: Therapist scared to react to Slipknot - Psychosocial
I didn’t realize that the self deprecation was harmful until it was too late, I honestly don’t remember how to be nice to myself
Yes, it is so hard when self deprecation has just become a habit, something that seems to be profoundly ingrained in your life, to the point of not having to think about it anymore to be present. It just is. It’s part of the picture and somehow it feels familiar now, almost comfortable. If it wasn’t there anymore, it would feel like something would be odd/missing/not functioning correctly. It just sticks to your skin, follows you like a shadow, overtake your very own thoughts and shapes the way you see yourself more and more. The more you get into this spiral, the harder it feels to get out of it, but while you are in it it also doesn’t say its name - it’s hard to foresee the consequences. It feels like digging, digging and digging only to realize at some point that there is no ladder anymore to help climb back up againn which feels discouraging, if not hopeless.
The way you describe your own experience with self-deprecation is something I deeply relate with. If there was a degree in self-sabotage, I would probably have had a distinction when graduating. When you come to the point of realizing the patterns at play, it’s deeply frightening at first. It’s tempting to feel like you’d be already lost somehow, that it would be too late. It’s as if you were wakingup after a long nap, only to realize that you are in the middle of a battlefield, surrounded by landmines. And when you’re standing there the first impression you get is a deep sense of overwhelm. How to find a way back to your home - to yourself - when you have to start to walk again from the center of a desolated, potentially harmful land? It’s a discouraging vision to have. It makes sense to feel like being nice to yourself would be just a distant memory - if not an illusion - after spending a significant time of your life doing the opposite.
Thankfully though, this desolation is the first impression it leaves, but it’s not indicative of your future. For a long time you’ve been undervaluing yourself without realizing the cost of it. It was certainly motivated by a need to survive even if practically it was done at your own expense. What is powerful in your statement here though, is that you’re not in this denial anymore. You know what is right to your heart or not. You see things not just from the midst of the battlefield, but also from the border of it. You are both the adventurer trying to find their way back home, and the acolyte trying to guide them along the way. Because you have learned, you have grown, and you have come to a point of realizing what is actually hurtful - which isn’t necessarily taking risks and forging your path, but the outlook you have on it and whether you’ll be willing to plant flowers or mines along the way.
You have known a habit of self-deprecation because it made sense at the time, and it has become a way to navigate into this world. But you know now that there are other ways, even if it means learning all over again how to treat yourself. What you have experienced through repeated self-deprecation is a compass that gives the direction you don’t want to take - which is HUGE. Because it means you know how it works, you know what are the red flags, you know how to identify it, and you know that trying differently - at the opposite of it, through small steps -, will be better than this.
It’s never too late to unlearn the things that don’t serve us, and to lean towards what would support us the most. Especially when it comes to the way we see ourselves. “What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”, to quote Thoreau. There is POWER and strength in being being at this crossroad that you are, because for a significant time you were only on a one way street. That is not the case anymore, and paving the way from now on could be made of very small actions at first. A good start could be to practice doing things as if you were treating a friend or someone you love - just because we’re often more kind to others than we are with ourselves, while we deserve as much care and support. How would you respond to a friend when they are sad, hurt, angry, grieving, upset, happy, scared, anxious…? Whenever you feel a certain way, you can practice pausing for a little bit and reframing the negative thoughts to something that will serve you in the long run.
There is freedom in learning to be a friend to yourself. The journey is worth it. I wholeheartedly believe in you.