Our Empathy Brain with Sarah Peyton

Often, if we reveal the negative ways we think or speak to ourselves, people respond by saying “You just have to be nicer to yourself.”


This sounds simple, but our friendly advice-giver is not providing any helpful hints about how we actually DO this – how do we actually go about being kinder to ourselves?


Hearing some one telling us to "just be nicer," we might feel a little embarrassed, and we might be stuck promising ourselves yet again not to reveal how much we struggle with self-criticism, self-scorn or even self-loathing.


I am certainly well-acquainted with this pattern.


I lived with it for years, torn between the need for honest expression, the hope for some sort of support, and the recurring embarrassment of being told what to do without any information on how to do it.


Over the years of traveling the world teaching about the brain science of relationships, I have also met a lot of other folks who have heard similar comments, even from their therapists, telling them to be nicer to themselves, without any discussion of how to go about it.


What skills and knowledge can help us be kinder?

(1.) Realize that the critical or cruel internal voice might be trying to serve us.


One way it may try to help is by criticizing us for NOT being the things we "SHOULD" be -- it may tell us we need to be faster, smarter, more graceful, or more good-looking so that people will like us, so that we will belong.


Can you thank you inner voice for it’s desire to support you?


(2.) Let yourself wonder what your critical inner voice wants.


Meeting ourselves with curiosity about our deep underlying longings and needs is one of the skills that is absolutely necessary for self-kindness!


Direct questions like "what do you want" usually do not yield any answers...


(3.) Start to notice that shame makes us smaller, and it may have been really important to stay small in order to survive when you were little.


Perhaps that critical voice is trying to shame us into submission, to keep a low profile so that no one will notice us or attack us, and so that we can survive.


Can you envision your shame as a protective, well-intentioned strategy to help you find belonging or safety?


Gently ask your critical inner voice whether it might be trying to shame you, to make you small. Be gentle and curious, and see what answers you discover.


Why is it essential to learn our patterns of self-criticism?


Because as we begin to take a bird’s eye view of the self, we start to take ourselves less seriously.


We start to understand that our critical inner voice is not actually telling us the truth, as we believed for so many years.


Instead, we start to see that self-criticism is always a strategy for self-management. We just need to learn what the pattern is!


If this has started to engage your curiosity, and you haven’t already ordered a copy of my book Your Resonant Self, it is for you.


Spend the next week in this new kind of dialogue with your inner critic, listening for what it really wants for you, rather than hearing the desire for compliance with insane standards that you have always thought you wanted for yourself.


“Our critical inner voice is not actually telling us the truth – it’s trying to keep us safe.”