From self-gaslighting to self-compassion
On learning to "remother" myself when I'm engaging in negative self-talk
On the Sunday evening after Thanksgiving, I wandered around the living room uneasy and unhappy. I’m not usually prone to the Sunday scaries, but the relentless arrival of Monday morning was feeling deeply unfair.
“Unfair?!” My brain replied. “Nothing about your situation is ‘unfair’. You have a job! You have a home! You have a family! You should be grateful.”
Back and forth it went like this, with one part of me feeling dread and the other part telling me I should stop whining.
Fortunately, I opened Instagram at just the right moment. At the top of my feed was a post from The Remothering Coach, which quickly put me at ease, like some sort of magic potion. It addressed “post-holiday-weekend depletion in facing the workweek-to-come.”
If that is too tiny to read, it says:
From me, to me
Oh sweetie, I see you. Wrapping up the weekend and facing the workweek ahead feeling under-resourced. And, add on top of that, the inner dialogue pointing out that you just had the day off on Thursday, so you’re feeling like you “should” have more vitality.
How human of you.
Whoa! Exactly! So specific and so true. And, when I gave it more thought, actually a bit of an understatement. On the drive down to see my parents, our kiddo got sick with what we’d later learn was strep throat and some sort of severe cold virus. What was supposed to have been a few days of grandparent time and walks on the beach turned into confinement in our weird Airbnb (um, it had a bathtub in the hallway).
None of us had much fun—nor much sleep. On Sunday evening, the trip from hell was over, but the exhaustion was not: I was going to have to work the next day with a sick kiddo at home. And the day after that, too.
Hence, the Sunday scaries, which my brain tried to fight off with self-gaslighting, telling me that my situation wasn’t worth all the dread. Thankfully, I coped with doom scrolling, and it paid off.
Related reading
If your negative self-talk often involves what you should and shouldn’t be doing, this post will give you some starting points to examine what’s behind it. You should read it (wink wink):
Another year done gone
Last but not least, it’s my birthday. (I’m 47, perhaps the least exciting birthday in the universe.) Like many women, I’m awash in diet and beauty advertisements and influencers’ posts telling me I’m not good enough just the way I am. And like many women pushing 50, these claims focus on making me feel bad about normal aging, like gray hair, wrinkles, “crepe paper” skin, thinning lips, menopausal “spare tire” belly fat, and so on:
None of this toxic beauty culture stuff is new — it’s been in women’s magazines for decades. But now it’s just so damn pervasive, stalking me on every social media platform, with often “credible” skin doctors and others promoting the life-changing benefits of what are actually dangerous, expensive and unnecessary procedures.
So, my gift to you on my birthday: If you’re sick of being made to feel flawed all the time (or you have a lady in your life dealing with this), I highly recommend Jameela Jamil’s recent podcast with
, a former beauty journalist who’s doing the lord’s work by exposing all the lies that beauty industry tells women:
I learned a lot, but it also affirmed what a tough world we ask girls and women to navigate in the name of capitalism and sexism. It never ends — the profit, and the shame.
I love this. Self-gaslighting. I do this too! Then the inevitable self-chastizing. Be greatful! Be happy! You have x and y, stop complaining! (I'm using affirmations and a Word of the Year to help me reframe when I get like that now.)
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