When we say nasty mean things to ourselves, it's called self-criticism. We are harshly self-critical when we fail, make mistakes or feel like we're not good enough. We are cold and judgmental when challenges and difficulty arise in our lives.
Everyone has a hard time sometimes. But when we're in a hard place, it feels impossible that anyone else in the history of the world has ever felt this bad. It feels lonely and isolating, like no one would understand how difficult this moment is for us or how alone we feel. On top of feeling terrible, how we respond can be different. Sometimes we are very hard on ourselves. We criticize ourselves for having the struggle in the first place and judge ourselves harshly for how we are coping. We may even go as far as punishing ourselves for the struggle or adversity, hoping that if we discipline ourselves, we might prevent this problem from ever happening again. Being self-critical falls in the Negative Coping wheel, but we counteract this with reframing. |
We, as humans, are creatures of habit. Habits allow us to go through life with little or no conscious thought.
Have you ever tried to go through even one day making conscious decisions about everything that you’re doing!?! Imagine if you didn't have habits. You would literally take all day to do basic things like eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, or get dressed. Habits are an absolute must-have in the grand scheme of human behavior & development. |