Initially we think, “Well, it’s me. it’s my voice” but later after more introspection you may realize it’s your mother’s or your father’s or your spouse’s voice that you have internalized.

Many of the negative thoughts you have about yourself are a product of what you’ve been brought up with or have lived with.

I know for me it was completely eye-opening. I didn’t realize how much I had internalized all the negative comments, the poor treatment and the overt abuse, to the point that my inner sense of self had been radically changed. It had happened over time and was cumulative, silting layer upon layer, until my inner voice had become an extension of how the unhealthy and toxic people around me had treated me.

Unfortunately, too many people need a scapegoat, someone to blame, often for how they feel poorly about themselves. The scapegoat is someone they see as “weak”, too compliant or “soft” to give push-back, often someone with deep empathy who can then be manipulated.

We don’t realize it, but what we say and how we talk to ourselves directly contributes to our poor self image, poor metal health, our anger issues, and self-sabotage because we don’t truly believe we deserve the good thing in our life.

Changing how we speak to ourselves is vital.

We need to start small otherwise we won’t believe the efforts we’re trying to make and will abort it quickly because it feels unnatural and we feel very uncomfortable.

A very big hurdle to overcome is realizing that the person or people causing us to think negatively about ourselves is likely projecting their own inner anger and pain outwardly onto others, and their perceptions are warped and out of proportion to reality. They tend to catastrophize something and then use that to vent. It doesn’t make them feel better but in fact will just deepen their anger issues, and it certainly makes everyone around them feel crappy an possibly afraid of them.

• How people treat you is their karma… How you react is yours…
• Time to Change the Negative Tapes!

I wasn’t able to see that while I was actively trying to have a relationship with my mother, and the church we attended was only adding to my mental overload. The fact that she was a known entity in mine and my brother’s church greatly affected how my daughter and I were treated, for people wrongly assumed we were like her.

Unfortunately many churches teach victims of domestic violence to keep turning the other cheek, to forgive their abuser and allow them to continue to abuse them, and we must keep forgiving our abuser so that God will see that wee are a “good Christian”. That was exactly what I was told when I spoke up about what was happening with my mother. I was scolded spiritually and had a few women come to my home on a few occasions to read the Bible to me to prove how I needed to accept my mother’s abuse if I wanted to be seen as a good daughter and a good woman in God’s eyes. Oof, that really hit home, because all I was trying to do was to be approved by God.

The fact that I had chronic Shingles (plus sleep deprivation and exhaustion from the pain) and my daughter had severe IBS and undiagnosed Celiac disease only seemed to reinforce to the church people that God wasn’t happy with me, so he gave us those illnesses to punish me. I was given Bible verses that said the sins of the parents would be visited upon their children. The doctors at the hospital didn’t test her for Celiac but pronounced the other symptoms she was experiencing as being the fault of my parenting, and when my daughter told her youth leaders this, they grabbed hold of it to give me more in-home “corrections”. The doctors’ words supported the church’s thesis that I wasn’t a good person or a good mother, otherwise we wouldn’t be given our illnesses. My mother was happy to reiterate and reinforce what the church people were telling me, so it wasn’t long before I was crushed and broken. Living within that meritocracy was brutal, and I reached a point that I didn’t believe I deserved to breathe the air or walk on earth and had set a plan in place to unalive myself when my daughter went to Florida to visit her father.

As you can see, I was a damaged mess. Disengaging from the mental and emotional abuse was a first step and I was only able to do so because I had met a man who lived life differently. I needed to remove myself from those relationships; it was only after I had gone no contact with my mother and had left the church was I able to see how deeply damaged I was and that I needed to actively work on my healing.

Quite honestly, the shame I was carrying about not feeling like God would ever approve of me overshadowed my ability to hear how terribly I was speaking to myself. If God disapproved of me standing up for myself with my mother, who was I to think I should speak nicely to myself? It was only after I left the church that I came into contact with people who told me that God was a god of love, not anger and vengeance. The concept that God could have my back and really love and approve of me for who I was, felt like a breath of fresh air after what my daughter and I had been through.

When I opened my eyes to seeing how my mother’s treatment of me had formed how I spoke to myself I was slowly able to practice suspending judgement of myself and to try to speak gently with myself. Speaking kindly and speaking supportively came later. I had to work my way up to those, for I had so deeply internalized her abuse that it took a long time.

If you’re struggling with the very big task of separating yourself from what your abuser(s) have said to you and how you were treated, please know that healing is possible. There are many steps that need to be taken in order to heal and to re-train our brains to not speak harshly to ourselves and to be able to stop self-sabotaging. Healing from the shame and anger is vital.

It’s a difficult process, and hopefully you can get counseling and therapy to learn new life skills and approaches. My books show what I did and the steps I took to find wholeness and peace, and you might find comfort or even a little inspiration for your own journey. As always, I include links to other posts where I talk about these steps, see below.

• As we practice being gentle and kind with ourselves, we actually help to speed the process of helping our lives become more positive!
• Be kind to past versions of yourself that didn’t know the things you now know.
• Let your past make you better not bitter.
• Love is NOT all you need!
• Loving Ourselves… means we don’t always put ourselves LAST!
• Making a change… “How do I take that first step?”
• Never lower your standards just because you are lonely. It is better to be by yourself than to be with the wrong person.
• No matter how long you’ve traveled in the wrong direction, you can always turn around
• Choices, Chances, Changes. You must make a Choice to take a Chance or your life will never Change.
• Do you only accept yourself if you look a certain way?
• Emotions and where they intersect with each other
• Forget the pain but never the lessons you gained.
• God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know… it’s me.
• Everyday is a new beginning. Take a deep breath, smile, and START AGAIN.
• How DOES anger affect our health?
• How to trigger your Narcissist (not that you should), and what you can do to live a sane and healthy life
• The power of stepping away!
• What is the purpose of an Anger Journal, and why you need one!
• Why venting anger just makes us angrier, and ways to deal with it.

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for liking, sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts Main page divided up into 3 sub-pages: Mental Health and Rewiring the Brain || Healing and Developing Ourselves || Positive thoughts and Affirmations to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
https://tamarakulish.com/

My books: Developing Happiness When You Can’t Find It and How to Heal Your Life on a Deep Heart Level are available in paperback and Kindle. Audiobooks are available for the busy person!

Guided Journals help you work on a particular issue by answering questions to help see patterns and to find solutions:

Removing Inner Blocks ||  Anger Journal || Guided Anxiety Journal  ||  Joy & Mindfulness Journal   ||  My Boundaries Journal  || My Inner Thoughts Journal   

Thanks for buying my books on Amazon!

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