Feelings vs. thoughts

[TTC18]

My inner critic MUST exist - but I don't hear it. I *think* very positive things about myself for the most part. I may joke about being a failure etc but I don't really THINK it. I think I'm doing pretty well considering... The issue is my FEELINGS. I don't feel like I'm doing well. I feel like I'm a failure.
Does that distinction even make sense? I don't have an inner narrative about being awful - I have an inner narrative that answers as though awful things are being said. My inner narrative sounds like no, it's ok, you tried, that's not so bad, look how hard you tried, it's not all your fault, etc. That's what I hear in my head, and have for years. It's not deliberate, it's just there.
But what that narrative is answering is just the nebulous feeling that things are not right and it's my fault. How do you combat FEELINGS vs. thoughts?

 

[Teamwork]

What you are saying is interesting to me because I don’t have the negative soft talk either that I see listed in the charts on inner critic self talk, but I did find the ones on shame more applicable to me. Maybe try looking up shame based thinking and see if that is where it stems from?

 

[Deleted member 47099]

I do tons of that "positive self-talk" too, but there's so much of it that I realise I must be "answering" to a whole pile of negative self-talk...

Often I can hear both - the negative self-talk and me answering back to it with positive stuff...

I wonder whether maybe the negative stuff in your childhood wasn't so much verbal, but was a threatening atmosphere/ violence? Then it would make sense that you have that sense of doom/ dread in a more non-verbal form...?

I think sometimes we need to find/ give "words" to that vague sense of dread. That can be part of the work we need to do. If you were to put the dread in words, what exactly would it be "saying"?

For example, that saying "looks can kill" - someone can communicate a thousand things with one bad look - no "words" needed.
Or if someone looks at you like you're a failure or with a look of disdain - no "words" needed there either, to make you deeply understand/ know/ feel what they "think".

So sometimes something as "vague" as a look or a threatening atmosphere needs to be translated into "words" so you can grasp it better.

Often, when you find the right words for it, it becomes apparent how crazy that stuff is.

For example, my perp would not actually vocalise this directly - only indirectly in really weird ways - but essentially one of the things she would say to me was "Sophy, don't ever let the neighbours know what we are really like - if they ever, ever, ever find out who we really are they will reject us and chase us out of town and hound us and destroy us and we will be destitute and helpless and no-one will ever talk to us again and we will be left to die."

Now, she never would have verbalised that in a thousand years.

And yet is was a deep-rooted fear of hers and it was the reason she was horrified when I started doing therapy at 21.

So those kind of feelings/ atmospheres can be intensely powerful but "word-less" at the same time. And as you say, that word-less-ness can make them hard to fight.

Maybe start with a couple of feelings you are familiar with, that you usually respond to with positive self-talk...?

If you have trouble finding the right words for them, it may be cos you're not using ridiculous enough words... These intense fears and crazy punishments that are like a curse in toxic familes are often totally ridiculous/ loopy/ insane, so if you're looking for "sane" words for it, you may never find them... :rolleyes:

:hug:

 

[Friday]

Here’s a possibly mind blowing question for you....

...What if feelings ARE thoughts? :sneaky:

 

[TTC18]

Here’s a possibly mind blowing question for you....

...What if feelings ARE thoughts? :sneaky:

Well, they are - but not in words, if that makes any sense. LOL :)

"Sophy, don't ever let the neighbours know what we are really like - if they ever, ever, ever find out who we really are they will reject us and chase us out of town and hound us and destroy us and we will be destitute and helpless and no-one will ever talk to us again and we will be left to die."

It sort of worries me that I think I feel this way too.

I wonder whether maybe the negative stuff in your childhood wasn't so much verbal, but was a threatening atmosphere/ violence? Then it would make sense that you have that sense of doom/ dread in a more non-verbal form...?

I had both, really. Lots and lots of verbal stuff though. I wonder if maybe I just hated it so much that I stuffed it way down deep where I can't 'hear' it anymore - but my brain hears it and feels like I need to respond, which is why I say 'no, it's Ok, I can just fix it, see, it's fine, I fixed it' I never ever ever tell myself I'm dumb or useless or a waste of air or any of the stuff my parents said to me. Never ever ever. My conscious thought process looks something like this, 'oh crap I forgot to pay the power bill! I'm forgetting things too often - I need a new system to keep me from forgetting!" and then "Oh crap I forgot to put oil in the car. And I forgot to make a system to help me remember things. Argh! Self! Remember!" and then "Oh crap I forgot my phone. What on earth is wrong with my memory, and why can't I remember to try to set up some kind of system?" and so on.

 

[grit]

Over the thanksgiving weekend a family member (older lady) was talking about her father. Every story was about how he controlled her. How he humiliated her. How he beat her brother. How horrible the father was. But the interesting part was every really horrific story (if you look from a child's perspective), she will garnish it with but I love my father. he was so wonderful again he one time came to my boyfriend when I was 18 and threatened me but hahaahahhahah I loved my father he was sooooooooooooooo good.

Listening to her was so triggering, I had to take a long nap after the visit. I was thinking ooh no I hope she does not go to therapy because she will breakdown big time without thinking she will. because her memory of her past was so distorted I thought wow! I was like that too until I got a nudge to see a therapist. It is scary thing when you have a beautiful image of you but the reality is you are struggling deeply and hard. So it is not possible you are good to yourself. You just do not see how you cripple yourself.

You are struggling tryingtocope 18. You are really struggling some real based life experience full of fear, terror and paranoia from a long term of being watched. These are all serious issues and probably also stuff from your childhood that exacerbated your adult experience. In order to survive, you created a persona that you are a good person that only bad things happened to. In reality though, no one is good all the time. No one is bad all the time too. Even Hitler was probably good to his dogs and one or two people he loved...just throwing one of the devilish people out there.

It is good you have good sense of yourself but what you do not have is FULL sense of yourself. So what is causing a lot of mental anguish is not you are a good person, that is given, but you do not want to accept some of your real bad things too. you are defending them too hard and too far.
Your feelings are disjointed. Your cognition is disjointed. I had similar issues too where I was highly functional and even managed a good life as an adult and minimised the exacerbation of childhood issues (so I could keep childhood issues in denial). So I was opposite in a way I believed my badness was more real than my goodness even though logically my goodness was what I used in my work and in my volunteer and in my relationships, I did not believe in it or feel it. my badness was real feeling and cognition to me.

and yet I broke down in therapy cause I could not and did not want to break down to see I was not all that bad. It will be very hard for you to also go there and eventually realize, you have some bad feelings but you are dissociating from them often so often you just do not want to know. by doing this so often, you are mentally exhausted now.

Start to apologise more often to people. STart to ask others you trust to tell you who you are when you are bad. In MOST SAFE SPACES you have in therapy or in friendships, in adult child.

Start to slowly in your head and your heart believe and think what are your real bad qualities and good qualities.

try to balance your view of you in your head. in your fantasies. In your conversations. No one is all bad or all good.

 

[TTC18]

@grit I agree with a whole lot of what you're saying here.. But oh gosh, I apologize allll the time. I am so chock full of awareness of every bad thing I've ever done - and have apologized for everything it was possible to apologize for. I even found someone on Facebook I was mean to on the playground in gradeschool -and apologized to them. I have asked friends and my daughter's counselor to tell me if they ever see me doing anything that even has a WHIFF of bad parenting, because that's my biggest and most important 'must-not-screw-this-up' thing but most stuff, I know I when I did something wrong. When I realize I did something wrong that happened in the past, I think - well, I did this thing. It happened years ago, and I was in a bad place when it happened - and it was a horrible mess. It was a bad thing. I need to apologize if possible, and make sure nothing like that happens again. I can think - I did a bad thing - and not think that it makes me a bad person. All of the conscious thinking seems to be on the level. (I think that 'bad person' comes into play when you're deliberately or carelessly hurting others. That's my measure of what it takes to be a bad person - and by that measure, i don't consciously consider myself to be a bad person)

Bad feelings, that's a whole nother thing. I don't *think* that I'm a bad person - I sure do FEEL that I'm a bad person. The "it's ok, you tried, that's not so bad, look how hard you tried, it's not all your fault" I was mentioning above - that's in reference to, say, spilling a glass of water, or breaking a dish, or forgetting to knock mud off my shoes before I came in the house. When I do anything like that, I immediately start self-comforting.
Doing really bad stuff - like hurting someone else's feelings(inconsiderate/thoughtless), or being late and making someone else wait(selfish/inconsiderate/thoughtless), or breaking something that belongs to someone else - anything that hurts another person -leaves me in tears, and apologizing profusely.

I backed over someone's lawn ornament a few weeks ago when leaving their house. I was in agony over it for weeks & apologized so many times they probably thought I was 'tetched. I felt terrible about it. But my focus was on them and their ornament, not me being a bad person. My thought process was more like, 'Oh NO! What if they really LIKED that ornament? I wonder where I can find one to replace it. I need to apologize. And they're not here to apologize to. So I need to get their phone number and apologize.' and on and on - a 'FIX IT' response. I *felt* terrible but didn't *think* terrible.

I don't even know if any of this made any sense. Maybe it's a war between my consciously-controlled thoughts and my subconscious thoughts - there's been a conflict there as far back as I can remember. I *think* I'm smart, but automatically defer to anyone who says they're smarter because I *feel* like I'm dumb. When I was younger - I *thought* I was pretty, but would go with anyone who asked me out because I *felt* like I was ugly. So it's like my positive thinking is only skin-deep, so to speak.

 

[TTC18]

Still trying to figure out how to combat subconscious feelings. Mostly I think the worst core belief I have is that I'm just deeply bad - not like evil, but like a rotten piece of fruit that you'd want to throw away before it ruins everything.

I don't *THINK* this about myself. But I feel it. And I don't know how to get past it. I listen to affirmations every night before bed (and while sleeping for the first half hour or so, since I always fall asleep during), hoping to dig into that subconscious stuff, but - no dice.

 

[somerandomguy]

Fixing feeling like you're a horrible person will require feeling like you're not. You can think that you're not, but that only gets you halfway there. To really know you're not a horrible person will require feeling it.

I fixed it for myself by doing some significant work with my inner child. Soothing him, telling him he wasn't bad, hugging him, saying that I loved him and promising to protect him. And then proving it to him by doing some things that scared him (yoga, in my case) and showing him that nothing bad actually happened.

At the same time, I thought about my cat. My cat is a GOOD cat. He doesn't worry about whether he's a good cat, he just is. Then I thought about my son. My son is a good kid. He always tries his hardest and is generous and sensitive with his friends. If I recognize my cat is good and my son is good, why am somehow I not good? I recognized the answer "because I just am" wasn't adequate anymore and my brain turned upside down, tipping me over the edge. I suddenly realized that I am a good person. I felt it. I knew it. I still do.

 

[grit]

Still trying to figure out how to combat subconscious feelings. Mostly I think the worst core belief I have is that I'm just deeply bad - not like evil, but like a rotten piece of fruit that you'd want to throw away before it ruins everything.

I don't *THINK* this about myself. But I feel it. And I don't know how to get past it. I listen to affirmations every night before bed (and while sleeping for the first half hour or so, since I always fall asleep during), hoping to dig into that subconscious stuff, but - no dice.

A really bad therapist told me one time, I will never get better without therapist. I laughed at her face and finally kicked her to the curb.
she was bad in many other ways including her delivery of the above statement, but she was right about the content.

If you reached certain age and you are still struggling with a pervasive core issues such as fundamentally being bad, only a trusted therapist can help. No marriage, no having children, no going to india in Yoga retreat, none of those can help if you have almost 50yrs of core belief that has been persistent and advanced over the years.

How long will it take to at least break this particular core down and process in therapy, that depends on you! and no matter what you read online. Everybody is the same but yet different. You have your own way of healing.

So my advise to you, and I hope I deliver better than my old therapist, is I hope you find a great therapist to work with.

 

[TTC18]

I fixed it for myself by doing some significant work with my inner child. Soothing him, telling him he wasn't bad, hugging him, saying that I loved him and promising to protect him. And then proving it to him by doing some things that scared him (yoga, in my case) and showing him that nothing bad actually happened.

I've just gotten a book from Amazon about inner child work - I'm willing to try anything. Thank you for sharing - I think you and I are a lot alike in many ways. I hope that's not offensive.

If you reached certain age and you are still struggling with a pervasive core issues such as fundamentally being bad, only a trusted therapist can help.

I have only been seeing my therapist for a few months, but I like her. When I see that she's left me a voicemail, I don't panic like I do when I see voicemails from 90% of the rest of the world, lol. That's not to say I rush to call her back, but I don't panic at the idea of talking to her. She's aware of this inner conflict, and we're going to work on it. Hopefully that works as well. Thanks very much for answering :)

DIY or therapy or meds - I don't care what I have to do, this is an issue that I need to fix - so it's just a matter of time. (Maybe another 40 years, but still.. just a matter of time... lol)

 

[EveHarrington]

What book did you get?