Here are some reasons why you might behard on yourself or even get into someself-hate. Let's just get into it. Hereare some examples about how we tend tobe hard on ourselves. Number one is youmight start a new hobby or a new job andquickly shame yourself for not beingamazing at it right from the jump.Number two is you might feel like afailure for not solving a difficultemotion or situation for someone else.You might shame yourself and keepthinking about how you could have donebetter for them. Number three is youmight interpret making simple mistakesas being a total failure. You might evenenlist other people around you to getyou to agree with you when they don'treally want to. Number four is you mightstruggle with regret about a failedrelationship or a friendship or a worksituation or you might have these littlesurges of shame like I used to aboutsocial mistakes that you made way backin high school. Like you're justthinking about it at night and boom,there it is. like that shame. This isreplaying stuff when you were just beinghuman or weren't at your best. The otherone is you might feel like your needsare immense burdens to others and youmight hate that you actually have needs.These are just some of the examples offthe top of my head and you'll relate tosome of those or you might have your ownunique examples about how you might getinto being really hard on yourself orhaving some self-hate. So being hard onourselves is a top tier symptom ofchildhood trauma that heavily interactswith this other top tier symptom ofchildhood trauma which is our issues orour damage to our perception. All theexamples that I just gave involve havingsome damage to our perception likeexpectations on ourselves that kind oflead to things like self-hate. So let'stalk about how damage to our perceptionfuels being hard on ourselves. Allchildhood trauma involves damage to achild's perception. Like your basicneeds as a three-year-old is twistedinto you being a burden by an abusiveparent or a neglectful parent. If youwere scapegoed by your parents and yourfamily and the damage is going to bethere early, the damage to ourperception, say later when you get togrammar school after say daycare orsomething, you might interpret allsituations as a scapegoated child inschool as being a disappointment to yourteachers and to your friends like I'mbad and everyone knows it kind of anemotion. You might become conditioned tobe incredibly hard on yourself for notunlocking the key to others to have themaccept you more and have you be morelovable and likable. That early damageto our perception from things like beinga scapegoated child or not beingpowerful enough to fix your parents'problems, that damage becomes kind of anemotional meaningm making. We'll have aninternal emotional logic that explainsthe cause and events in our lives. Andthat's going to be the main point inthis video. Our emotional math is reallymessed up. Our emotional logic or mathif you like says apples plus orangesequals I'm bad. Or 1 + 1 equals I'm bad.Or in other words, for a small child, Ineed a hug plus mom's size. like a[sighs]at my request equals I'm bad. That mathmakes sense when we're so small. Andyes, I know I'm giving a very lightexample of childhood trauma there, butthe math should be my needs plus mom'ssighing equals I'm unsafe or I have anunloving adult. Do you see what I meanby the how the math kind of lines upthere? And just to be clear in thatexample, I'm not talking about a goodenough parent who has a bad day and isexhausted because that definitelyhappens. I'm talking about a parent whoconsistently has contempt for theirchild and hates being a parent. That'sgoing to create that damage to ourperception. That's what I mean. Andcheck in with yourself right now andthink about if you had that kind of mathgoing on like I did when I was a kid. Iused to interpret and perceive thepeople around school in my life as beingeither upset with me or beingdisinterested in me. And I did that allthe time. I took it as evidence to tellmyself that I wasn't a worthy kid orgood enough. But we got to allcollectively ask why though? Why were wethinking like that as kids? What mightyour version of your math be when you'rekind of checking in with yourself? likesomeone's pain plus my inability to fixit equals I'm terrible or conflict plusdisconnection from my partner equalsalways my fault. Leave a comment toplace like what might be your mathequation. What that might look like foryou. It's the math that we tellourselves that ultimately lands in thatold place from childhood. I'm bad andI'm not good enough. It might be aboutsomething that you're struggling withright now as you're watching this video.if you tend to be hard on yourself ingeneral. But wouldn't it be nice?Wouldn't it be nice if we felt in ourheart that we didn't make or breakpeople's emotions? That doesn't reallywork like that. Wouldn't it be nice ifwe felt in our heart that it's okay tohave a process and become good atsomething on our own time instead ofmastering it right when we kind of pickit up? And wouldn't it be nice if wefelt in our heart that happeningwas just evidence of our kind of goodhumanity, normal humanity, instead ofbeing evidence that we're not goodenough or that we're just simply bad,like something comes up at work. Andwouldn't it be nice if we felt in ourheart that always defaulting to beingbad wasn't actually true, but it'sactually how we survived our familysystems as kids? And we're going tostick to that last part. This stuffreally is about survival. And for therest of this video, we're going to kindof focus on that. And yes, I just paid alittle homage to the great late BrianWilson of the Beach Boys. And I'm gladyou noticed that. If you don't know thesong, check it out. But wouldn't it benice if we didn't have this kind of mathgoing on that always defaults us to thishypervigilant place about being bad? Sohow we get to the stuff around wouldn'tit be nice starts with how the math wastrue actually growing up but neverreally served us for the real world asadults. So let's start with the mainprinciples about how children developthis emotional math and interpret whathappens in their world as I'm bad incontext of surviving our families. Oneis we don't have any frame of reference.We don't have somebody to help us withthis weird math. For that child whowants a hug and the mother behaves, shesigh like it's a burden. The child onlyknows that interaction. They only knowthat math. That child consistentlyexperiences a miserable parent and thereis no help from the other parent to stopthat child's assumption that they causethe misery in the miserable parent. Ifthat makes sense. The I'm bad results inthe equation gets reinforced over andover when we have a contemptuous,miserable parent like that. And for thatchild who hates themselves for notfixing maybe a parent's problems, thereare no other adults educating that childon the problems of adults aren't evensolvable by other adults. It's really upto the adult with the problem. And askids, we say we're bad and then we justkeep trying to solve that parent'sproblems. like it's Groundhog Day. I gotto fix their marriage. I got to fixtheir feelings. I got to fix theirstress. We're so in tune with them andthe math is always like, "I'm not goodat this. I, you know, I got to keeptrying." No healthy adult is interveningfor this frame of reference thing oreducating the child around this stuffabout the emotional assumptions. So, wedon't have a perception reference aboutwhat the responsibility of the adult is.So, we default to our faulty math. Butthat math is going to be involving asurvival piece. Like I'm bad for notbeing capable enough to fix it is asurvival kind of idea because thealternative is to be fully heartbrokenabout the parents behaviors or thedisconnection from you or the parentsproblems. So for lack of healthyreference, we hate ourselves for notfixing yet we keep trying. Let me knowif you resonate that even in youradulthood. So in short, we're notgetting any help educationally oremotionally as children because we don'thave a healthy reference. So our innermath, that emotional logic is going toget reinforced over and o over. This isalso neglect by the way, which is thesecond component. So let's get into someneglect related to not having a healthyframe of reference. In short, a healthyadult helping a child correct thatemotional math. That neglect is a hugepart of being hard on ourselves. But intwo distinct ways, direct and indirectneglect. Direct neglect is that parentcriticizing you without helping. Likeyou have no common sense. Why can't yoube like so and so? Jesus, you get yourbrains from your mother. This is directcontempt. But also parents who do thatexpect children to be amazing withouthelping them or parenting them in anyway. So when you try to learn guitar orart or whatever, you start to hateyourself for not immediately being goodat it. It's because those internalizeddirect neglect messages that you'rereceiving. And it's a double whammy.Like you suck at that, but I'm not goingto help you in any way. That's lots ofpressure for a child. indirect neglect.Say a 13-year-old who doesn't have thatin-your-face contemptuous criticism, butthey're profoundly neglected and unseencan come up with that same kind offaulty math. Like, I just suck at this.Why bother if no one cares that I canplay something on guitar since no onereally is paying attention to me?Neglect results in children assumingthat they should be able to do thingsand be fine with not being seen. FYI,healthy parents actually live forwitnessing their child's growth andwitnessing the things that they'reinterested in. If you relate to that, ormaybe it hasn't quite sunk in, maybeleave a comment right now aboutsomething that your parents never reallytook interest in you about or never knewabout you that maybe you loved ourclass, that maybe you secretly likeclassical music. What I mean by that ismy own father saw me as this weird alienkid and he had zero interest in mehaving interest. I'm going to say thatagain. Did your parents have zerointerest in you having interest? That'sgoing to be a function of many otherthings but namely here neglect aroundnot being seen. So we come up with thismath. But indirectly neglected kids alsodon't have a frame of reference thatmakes learning an instrument normal asit's kind of a slow process and have theparent be loving and patient to have thechild absorb some love and patience forthemselves. As therapists we often talkabout having a process where I should beimmediately good at this is not aprocess but a process of having anencouraging parent keep having you kindof try at something in a good enough wayand love that you're growing andwitnessing it. That is kind of aprocess, right? So, who out there likeme grew up with a parent that was like,"Well, you're never going to make it toCarnegie Hall, said at your first weekof violin, or well, maybe this isn'treally your thing at your first danceclass or your karate class, or who outthere had indirect neglect where youwere really on your own and like me hadto shoot in the dark a lot and had toask teachers about violin, havingparents who were totally checked outfrom you and your interest. So beyondneglect, we also have to look at thesignificant seat you sat in at thedinner table in your family role. Thisis family roles and competition that'sgoing to contribute to self-hate andsort of being hard on yourself. In manytoxic family systems, your worth mighthave been a moving target likeconditional love. If you were thescapegoat, being hard on yourself was asurvival mechanism to beat your parentsto the punch. Like if you criticizedyourself first, it felt slightly lesspainful when they did later. It wassomething like, "See, I already know I'ma failure, Dad. You don't need to hit oryell at me again kind of a thing." Oreven kids when they're like, "I forgotto mow the lawn because like you say,dad, I have no common sense." Kids bothprotect themselves with stuff like thatin those admissions, as well as tryingto get a little sliver of attention asif the parent is going to be like,"You're right, Timmy. you have no commonsense, you know, and there's this likereally toxic little connection there,even as messed up as that sounds. And ifyou were the golden child or maybe thehero in the family, being hard onyourself was maybe out of maintenanceand survival. Like you felt the momentyou stopped being perfect, the floormight drop from under you or you mightlose points from your parents. Youweren't good because you were a lovablehuman being. you were only good relatedto your last achievement or lastsoldiering for an abusive parent if thatmakes sense. So the math here might belike my performance plus my parentsseeing me equals my only worth but notinherent and inevitable kind oflovability that you had as a kid justbecause. And in the present you might becaught up in that. You might be caughtup in very much being performance-basedwith your partner or your boss or yourfriends or with society in general thatif you don't perform and be amazing,you're nothing. That kind of stuff thatleads to self-contempt, self-hate, beinghard on ourselves. So, additionally,some heroes and golden children witnessother siblings being abused. And maybethe hero tried to ease or protect thescapegoat. Sometimes that happens andthey failed because they were growing upin an abusive family with not a lot ofcontrol. or a golden child's math can bealso me being better than my siblingsplus me being seen by my parents equalsmore attention for me because that'sanother formula that can happen there inthese roles. Sometimes it's acompetitive environment where you'reconstantly racing against an invisibleversion of yourself or another siblingthat is better. Toxic families canreally put children in gross hunger gamekind of situations where the stakes aretoo high in any way really. When thestakes are too high, we lose ourhumanity. Oh, I didn't win the thing,therefore I'm not worthwhile. Anotherversion of math. And that last phrasethere, when you are hard on yourself, doyou have the stakes too high? The workis really about stepping out of thatgame that you're stuck in in the maththat kind of keeps you in making thestakes too high. And last one here isthe self-critic as a protector. Thefinal piece of this part one in thisvideo is understanding that selfhate andbeing hard on ourselves is actually aprotective mechanism. And it soundsstrange, but for a child in a traumatichome, being hard on yourself is a way tostay small and to stay safe. Childrenwho escape horrific family dynamics andabuse by sliding down kind of this trapdoor into self-lame and being hard onthemselves in order to not hate a parentor hate their situation would be toomuch on them. I know this might sound alittle bit difficult to kind of take in,but maybe think about it like this. Ifyou're a fish that dives into a jaggedcutting kind of coral reef and scrapesthemselves up to avoid being eaten by abigger fish, it's kind of selfharmthat's necessary. But children do itbecause they can't tolerate the realitythat their parent who was supposed to beloving in their whole world is actuallythe bigger fish that's coming after themthat isn't safe. Hopefully that makessense. So this one is simple. Let meknow if you related to this and if yourmath was, I'm bad because if I asked forice cream at the wrong time. I can'tbelieve I did that. I'm such a jerk kid.Or I'm bad because I need money forshoes for school and that's why mom anddad are fighting. I hate myself. Plug inthat math from earlier. Me needing shoesplus my parents fighting equals I'm bad.Another version of how we can haveself-hate or being hard on ourselves.I'm bad because I can't make mom happy.This is actually a survival mechanism.Saying we're bad puts the pressure on usand puts the stakes on us as kidsinstead of fully feeling who the parentis or what's going on with them. Thereal math, the reality would be for achild to say, "I'm stuck with anemotionally disregulated, volatile, andviolent parent, and I'm only five." It'slike Ralphie from The Simpsons wherehe's like, "I'm in danger." You know, Iknow that that's kind of like trying tomake fun of it, but like in a way thatRalphie isn't taking the situationseriously because his nervous system inhis development can't do that. We willget into I'm bad as a way to not dealwith reality. So, it's a survivalmechanism. I'm stuck with needs thateveryone has and my needs cause violencetowards myself or I'm stuck in the mostimpossible task of making a parenthappy. All that again would be too muchon ourselves. We sidestep all of thatrightfully and blame ourselves as kidsbecause it's actually the only power wehave over the situation. So in some wayswe need to honor the fact that we kindof got into some self-hate and some sortof being really hard on ourselvesbecause that was the only and correctpower we had to use over the impossiblesituation that we were in. It's reallythat simple. Here are some finalthoughts. So, if you identify with thismath, this old math, if you see yourselfthat you self-lame or self-hate, andit's not based in reality, but it'sactually a leftover survival skill froma neglectful or abusive childhood, knowthat it's very common for childhoodtrauma. Incredibly common, top tiersymptom. And it's also the context ofthat damage to our perception again thatfuels being hard on ourselves. Likeagain, sort of like I'm bad because Ineeded shoes and that's why mom and dadare fighting. That's the damage toperception because either no one helpedus with that math or we were told thatwe were a jerk kid for asking for shoesfor school at that time. If that makessense. And a trick to work with yourinner child on this is a holistic ideathat I mentioned earlier about honoringwhy we chose to survive by blamingourselves instead of fully feeling howimpossible things were or how impossiblea parent was with you. And that parenthad all the power over your lives inreality. So fully feeling that andknowing how unsafe we were as kids abouthow unloving a parent could be wouldhave been way too much in our system. Solet's do a little bit of inner childwork in the comment section right now.I'd like you to make a statement onbehalf of your inner child about thisself-hatred and being hard on ourselves.It would sound something like littlePatrick, thank you for the math that youcame up with and thinking that you werethe problem because that was better thanfully knowing and dealing with thereality that was happening to you. If wecan honor how we survived, it helps withthe shame of how we are still too hardon ourselves. So, it's a little bit likean intervention to thank your innerchild for coming up with this math. Andthe part two is kind of like how do wecome up with some new math? You knowwhat you can do now is go back and watchthe video and really notice and trackthe kind of math that your inner childstill has as a way of explaining yourreality that you're somehow bad in allsituations which isn't true. So there isnow a part two to this video which is amasterclass video and it's availableover on my circle community. I believeyou can find it right up here where inthat I provide specific journal promptson how to work out of being hard onourselves. And the journal promptsconsist of where this stuff comes fromin childhood for you specifically. Whatdoes the math look like? How does themath kind of play out in your presentlife and how to come up with new mathexamples to deal with this kind of thingand the ways that we still get stuck inI'm bad and get into some self-hate andbe really hard on ourselves. And thesemasterclass videos are actually asubscription service that is reallyinexpensive. It's super affordable andit provides a more focused community andthey're completely adree. Again, you canfind it right up here in this bubble.So, I would love to hear from you in thecomments if you have questions. I wouldlove to hear what is your version of themath that you're struggling with rightnow that comes from childhood, like abump with your partner, a bump with afriend, something that comes up at work.I would love to hear about it. And ifyou're new, I'm Patrick. I'm a MSW. Ispecialize in childhood trauma. I'm achildhood trauma educator. You can hitthe like button and the subscribe buttonfor more videos like this. And asalways, may you be filled with lovingkindness. May you be well. May you bepeaceful and at ease and may you bejoyous and I will see you next time.
