“It’s all my fault. I couldn’t make you happy. Everything I tried ended up with a ‘yes but…’. Whatever I did was never enough. It was all up to me. You wouldn’t even meet me halfway. It’s as though I was a thing and my experience didn’t matter. It was all about you and always was. I spent so much time trying to help you, I’m the one who has now ended feeling low and anxious and not good enough.”
I hope the above does not resonate with you and you have loving relationships in your life. I hope you have relationships with other people where you matter too and where mutuality and respect and boundaries exist. I hope that you have a great relationship with yourself and that you like yourself and accept the human condition and don’t expect yourself to achieve perfection endlessly.
We can be so self-critical of ourselves. Always shouldering the blame and beating ourselves up to be better and do more and try harder. Think about how you speak to yourself when you make a mistake. Do the phrases ‘I’m an idiot’, ‘I’m a loser’, ‘I always mess up’ or ‘I’m stupid’ seem familiar? If so, I wonder how you see these thoughts as helping you? How is having a cruel voice in your mind working out for you? Is this self-criticism consistent with developing resilience in your life?
If you are struggling with self-criticism or perfectionism and want to make some changes but can’t break out of the cycle you are stuck in, please get in touch.