Self-Assault

Bring the care you offer others into the way you speak to yourself.

Would you talk to someone you love the way you talk to yourself?

Most of us would never call another person the names we call ourselves. We would never say those things about their body, their mistakes, or the way they've chosen to live.

We can recognize cruelty when someone else does it. Then we go home and do it inside our own minds.

I call that self-assault. Assault means inflicting harm. I want you to consider that the emotional harm you inflict on yourself deserves your attention too.

Notice how you treat yourself

We tell stories about villains, victims, and protectors. We can quickly identify someone who's being cruel and imagine ourselves as the person who would stand up against it.

But what happens when the person being cruel is you, and the person receiving it is also you?

You may tell yourself you're fat or ugly. You may criticize every mistake. You may think being hard on yourself is simply how you improve.

I want you to look at those habits from a different perspective. Ask whether you would do the same thing to someone you loved. Most of you wouldn't even do it to someone you didn't like.

This includes your words, the way you care for your body, and the things you use to escape your emotional life. What are you allowing in your relationship with yourself?

Don't wait to love yourself before you stop

People tell me they want to get to a place where they love themselves, and then they'll stop treating themselves badly.

It can't work that way. Loving yourself and changing how you treat yourself happen together. If you love yourself, you don't keep deliberately hurting yourself.

There was a day when I decided I would never again criticize or beat myself up because of my body. It didn't matter what I weighed, what my body looked like, or how it aged. I wasn't going to permit that treatment anymore.

That decision wasn't conditional on changing my body. It was a commitment to how I would treat myself for the rest of my life.

A critical thought may still try to come in. I think of it as someone knocking on the door. I don't have to invite it inside. I can say no.

Become your own protector

You have standards for protecting yourself in many areas. You put on a seatbelt. You don't drive on the wrong side of the road. You know there are things you won't allow.

You can create a standard for your inner life too.

Imagine deciding that emotional violence against yourself is no longer acceptable in your world. You don't have to debate every cruel thought or see whether you've earned kindness that day.

You can put a boundary around the way you speak to yourself. You can decide you will no longer participate in the attack.

This is different from waiting for all the unkind thoughts to disappear. You are choosing how to respond when they show up. You're identifying as your own protector.

Look at what you call relief

I also want you to examine what I call chemical assault: the ways we use substances to escape while creating harm for ourselves.

We may call overdrinking, overeating, or numbing ourselves pleasure. But look at what happens afterward. Has the pain been resolved, or have we added something else to it?

Imagine a friend comes over feeling terrible. Would you want to help them avoid everything by getting drunk, knowing the problem would still be there the next morning? Or would you want to talk, cry, and help them go through it?

Now ask how you treat yourself when you're in pain. Do you help yourself process it, or do you try to cover it up?

My brother died of a cocaine overdose. He was so kind to the people around him, but in the last years of his life he was constantly harming himself with drugs. What seemed to be saving him from pain was also hurting him.

That experience is part of why I want us to take the way we treat ourselves seriously.

Have compassion for the part that attacks

Here's the piece that can be the hardest: you need compassion for the part of you that's doing this.

If you identify yourself as the villain and then hate yourself for being the villain, you haven't stopped the violence. You've continued it.

You can understand that part of yourself and still have a clear boundary. You can love yourself and decide you won't tolerate that treatment anymore. Compassion and a firm no can exist together.

Think about how you respond when you make a mistake. Do you use anger, hate, and threats? Or do you help yourself understand what happened and recover?

You don't have to punish yourself for realizing you've been hurting yourself. You can acknowledge it and change how you respond.

Choose a peaceful relationship with you

Ask yourself where you're inflicting harm with your words, your habits, or the way you try to escape. Then ask who you want to be when it comes to you.

How do you want to care for yourself? What are your standards? What are you no longer willing to accept?

When you treat yourself with respect, tenderness, and love, it becomes easier to offer those things to other people. When you understand the part of you that struggles, you can have more compassion for the struggles around you.

We need more love and care, not more assault. You can begin by making that commitment in your own relationship with yourself.