every day especially in the era of social media from the mental health perspective probably the single worst invention of modern times we are likely to face enemies people who disagree with us people who tell us we're bad people who say we should be ashamed of ourselves or even be destroyed the common sense advice from well-meaning friends is just not to listen to shrug it off to assert that no one cares that the bully is mad or mentally unwell and to suggest a change of scene it's very kind and sadly usually for many of us entirely
ineffective the question then emerges why is it that some people find it extremely hard to defend themselves either in the sense of practically answering back to an enemy or simply of not caving in internally in the face of an attack why is it that when they're being bullied at work some people are able to mount a polite calm fight back while others melt into self-loathing and despair why is it that if they're criticized unfairly in a romantic context some people are able to point out that the criticism is not right and get their side of
the story across and feel steady and solid while others descend at once into paranoia we might put it like this in order to be able to defend oneself against an external foe one has to be on one's own side and this is not for some of us as easy as it may sound without us necessarily even quite realizing the fact our entire personalities may be geared towards interpreting ourselves as bad wrong a mistake shameful and a piece of [ __ ] this may sound dramatic and we know in our intellectual adult selves that this can't
be entirely right nevertheless deep down this isn't only slightly right it's the fundamental truth about us a first step towards dealing with an external enemy is realizing that our personalities are built up in such a way that we're going to have a big problem on our hands whenever we face opposition we should expect to find this hard and we do we are and there is no pejorative association around this whatsoever a bit mentally unwell in this area we therefore need to call for help extend a lot of compassion to ourselves and devote all the critical
care we're going to need to get through the crisis we then need to take on board that unfortunately the real enemy we're harboring is not so much currently outside of us though they are there too as inside of us we need to ask ourselves why does the accusation feel so true our conscious minds give us access to only a fraction of the information about us just as we can't intuitively understand how a cell operates in our very own body so the makeup of most of our emotional brain is sunk in darkness however there will be
a history to our self-loathing we hate ourselves because somewhere along the line we were not properly loved somewhere in the past we heard a story you're a piece of [ __ ] you don't deserve to be f off and the story has stuck how could someone facing an accusation that they are an idiot but who inside has a voice saying that they're a [ __ ] ever get the strength to defend themselves they know in the adult part of the mind that they should be fighting back but they can't because inside all they hear is
you are everything your enemy is saying you are and more they identify entirely with their aggressor this can get pretty dangerous pretty fast if the external enemy is vicious enough and joins artfully enough with the internal enemy there can be suicidal thoughts and perhaps suicide itself the defenseless are the opposite of self-righteous to their enemies they are implicitly saying i want to kill myself more than you ever want to kill me the solution to all this is a large naive word we'll have heard before but which we need to grasp in its life-saving dimension love
we need to hear often enough and clearly enough from other human beings and they don't need to be romantic partners the contrary to what the internal enemy is saying we are decent enough not perfect but that isn't the criterion for deserving to exist we need to fix ourselves by absorbing properly absorbing the kindness of others the problem is that people who feel their pieces of [ __ ] aren't very good at letting others take care of them they don't know how to ask for help and when help is given they may initially push it away
accusing a kind friend of being weird or inadequate why after all would they be seeking to help a freak we know from the condition known as body dysmorphia that it's no use telling someone who feels they're disgusting that they're in fact oh very nice looking we need to help them to understand how they grew to hate themselves so much and show them via friendship that there could be another way of relating to who they are we have some hints about how our minds work from the way we acquire language children fluently pick up incredibly complex
patterns of speech from listening to those around them in the early years a parallel emotional process is going on if someone when we were little was speaking hate and shame and guilt to us we will have started to speak like that to ourselves and it won't be easy in adulthood to learn a new language let alone to come to speak it fluently to ourselves telling someone mired in self-hatred to cheer up or like themselves a bit more is going to be as impatient as telling someone from england to just speak bulgarian it's going to take
time and a lot of training nevertheless if we want to think about what an ambitious project for humanity would look like it would be a giant program of learning to replace the internalized languages of hate and enmity with those of love and compassion we've been trying to do this for a couple of millennia at least but we've done a pretty poor job of it so far and the project is more urgent than ever so we might start today by speaking a few stumbling phrases of love to the self-hating part of ourselves and then to someone
we know near us who's perhaps right now mired in shame and inadequacy at the school of life we run regular virtual classes for adults these mini life courses cover such topics as making relationships work overcoming anger and anxiety career guidance finding meaning and purpose in life and using culture as a therapeutic tool click the link on screen now to learn more
