Meeting My Self Critical Voice

Yesterday I was finally able to meet my self critical voice. The one that yells at me when I make the smallest mistake and makes me terrified to make decisions.  The one that won't let me get rid of this weight because she thinks it keeps her safe.

She's a little girl that was born to fail. Her parents were train wrecks for each other, but didn't see it.  A little over a year into their marriage, things rocky, so they had a baby to fix it. Surely that would bring them together.

I first grade she had a chance to be in the gifted program at school, but then her grade started slipping. All through grade school she wanted to be in "smart kids" class, but was always put in the "average kids" class.

She continued to grow up watching her parents fight and being manipulated my her mother. There was screaming, name calling, police, etc.  Her mother wanted her to hate her father. But deep down she couldn't.  She was called all sorts of names and told she deserved to be hit by a a person with family services.

Then she became a teenager. She had the "wrong" kind of friends, smoked, and stole for her friends' drug money.  They weren't good for her, but they accepted her. Even though she had to pay them.

Later in her teen years she developed sever pain in her back and couldn't go to school for two years. She was in the hospital for countless tests, but nothing was found. Her parents psychiatrist said it was all from my head.   Her psychiatrist also saved her. He convinced her parents to put her in a mental institution for two years.

It was the best two years of her life. She went to school, had friends messed up like she was, had a boyfriend and even went to prom. It was a safe place, a place where she wasn't responsible for keeping her parents marriage together.  In her senior year of school, she had to go home because the insurance stopped paying.

She somehow managed to graduate high school and went to college. Her mom shot down almost every school she wanted to go to.  But, in the end she was finally free of her parents.

After college, she moved back to her parents house and did everything she could to stay away. She worked two jobs, went back to school for her masters degree and spent time with her new boyfriend.

She later married that boyfriend and has had an incredible ten years of marriage and two thriving happy children.

But she doesn't see how much she has overcome and how successful she has been.   She doesn't understand why her husband loves her.  All she sees is the mistakes she's made.  All the times she had failed.

And now that she has met her self critical voice, she understands on a deeper level why she struggles. Why she won't be loved, why she can't lose weight, why she can't truly live.

Through all this crap, she has had another voice. A voice that won't let her quit. A voice her self critical voice screams at. But, that other voice is getting stronger and it will get louder.