“Folks, there are other ways of calling yourself out if you’ve done something wrong than calling yourself nasty names!”

I can’t count how many times I have had this conversation with my clients:

Me: It seems that you are constantly calling yourself mean names – telling yourself you are stupid, unworthy, a bad person, a slob… Why is that?

Client: You psychologists always talk about being nice to yourself. But what about the higher values of not doing wrong, not harming others, not being a burden on others – what about those things? If I was constantly “nice” to myself and only used the sweetest language to talk to myself, how would I keep from being a dishonorable and useless burden on society?

First of all – Good God! Wouldn’t you think that a few extra steps would be required to go from getting some negative feedback at work to becoming a “useless burden”. But let’s put that aside – that one demands its own separate blog entry. The main point I am trying to make here is this:

Who says that being nice to yourself and being permissive with yourself are the same thing? Think for example of a school teacher (think of a good one). If a child comes to school without their homework, of course a teacher would not be happy about this. Of course, they are likely to have a talk with that child and impress upon them that they should do their homework in future. But could you imagine a good teacher telling this child that they are a “useless, lazy, hopeless idiot”, or that they do not deserve the teacher’s attention? Absolutely not!

So why is it that so many people seem to struggle even imagining any way to call themselves out for bad behavior without using extremely critical and damaging epithets? And yes – I said bad behavior. It is absolutely okay to live in the real world and be okay with the fact that some of our behavior sometimes is not great. However, why does it have to be:

“I am a horrible person and a terrible friend and I don’t even deserve to have friends”.

What’s wrong with saying something like:

“I regret that I behaved in this way. I am a good person and a good friend and this thing I did is not how a good friend behaves. I feel sorry that I behaved this way and I will apologize and behave better next time”.

This last example of self-talk is not permissive, in the sense that it does not absolve you of responsibility. But it is nice and compassionate. Some people believe that they would be more likely to remain good people if they treat themselves as harshly as possible for any wrongdoing. Unfortunately, some people have come to believe this because that is how they were raised and disciplined as kids (not everyone had good teachers). But the reality is quite the opposite. The more someone berates and shames themselves the higher the probability that this person will react with retracting. It is much harder to apologize to your friend, for example, if you have convinced yourself that you are unworthy of forgiveness, and in fact, many people might choose not to apologize and rather to withdraw from the friendship. On the other hand, if someone is in the habit of emphasizing not the bad in themselves but the good – their previous record of good behavior, their solid higher values (like being a good friend and an honest person), it might be easier for them to approach another and ask for forgiveness. Also, this is actually a very strong motivator for future behavior: If you believe that you are a good person you might think twice before acting in a way that you don’t think a good person would behave because that action might actually seem incongruous to you.

In short, I recommend that you consider how you talk to yourself when you have done something wrong and, if you struggle to come up with a nice way to call yourself out, imagine how a good teacher might do. At the absolute minimum – if a teacher would get fired for saying or doing what you are about to say or do to yourself, then you definitely should not be saying or doing it!

11/02/2024