Recovery Means Healing All Your Inner Critics

End of the Paved Road by shellorz

After 32 years of recovery, I hit my emotional bottom June 11, 2009. After 15 years of marriage, without a warning, my husband left me for another woman. AND they live down the street from me. But God and AA have healed me once again. I understand why I was in a marriage with an active alcoholic and I have taken a great 5th step about my side of the street.

I’ve included some great material from other recovery friends’ sites. Please visit them.

“A Bridge Back to Life” from Letting Go : Recovery in the Sunlight (one of my favorite blogs and a daily must read) includes this poem:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

In one of my favorite blogs, Lessons From a Recovering Doormat, Michelle Germain offers these three steps to changing your inner critics:

(1)  The first step is to just notice that you are engaging in self-critical or fear based self-talk. Most people spend 80% of their time in their minds, either thinking, thinking thinking, or talking talking talking, but not listening. The first step requires that you pause during your day and be silent, stop and listen to what you are telling yourself. Write down five negative thoughts that you are hearing yourself say.

(2)  The second step is to be compassionate with yourself, knowing that what you are hearing is the voice of your wounded inner child. Much of the time we spend putting ourselves under a microscope judging and being critical with decision, behavior, etc. Compassion is a critical step to develop and it will be easy now that you know this self-talk started with the innocent mind of the child.

(3)  The third step is where you begin to update your inner child by reprogramming and putting in positive thoughts. This is like putting your inner child on your lap and saying that what she/he thinks is not really the truth of who you are, it is bringing self-love and understanding and the positive viewpoint which is updating the old into the new thinking.