To Change The Things I Can

There's a funny little aspect of self-hatred I noticed recently and I want to mull it over here. Most of the time, I am focused on how to deflect or negate or block out the horrible things the voice in my head shrieks. Only recently did I start to think, "But it's not entirely wrong."

The thing is, there is a part of me that legitimately knows exactly where I fall short of my ideals. One could argue that my ideals are too high for anyone to reach, but that's another topic. The fact is that I fall short, and there is a part of me that is keenly aware of it and mortified to the core every time.

One of the biggest problems with this part of me is that it's broken. There are a lot of factors I could go through about what might have broken that part (and I'm not ruling out spiritual attacks) but the end result is that the voice isn't critical in a way that helps me. It screams and bludgeons the inside of my head and generally makes it difficult to like or motivate myself.

My shift in perspective came recently after I faced some of my own accusations. Usually, shame and self-preservation are so reactive in me that I assume there isn't even a shred of truth or rationality to the Brain Screech. However, since I'm always running from what it says and nothing ever gets better, I turned around and tried something different.

I was in conversation with my husband the other day and I did something that I often do; I compared my own ideals of how I usually behave (or think that I behave) and measured someone else against it. They fell short, so I felt better about myself. Immediately my brain dug up situations where I myself fell short of that and started screeching at me. This time I stopped, turned around, and thought to myself, "Okay. So I am a hypocrite, like you say. I am a judgmental person, like you say. Now what?"

And suddenly, relief. How very bizarre. It is as if I took the shining image of perfection that I loosely hold in front of myself like a shield against the self-hatred and shattered it. Instead of being utterly defenseless against a fresh assault, I came to a new understanding.

"Oh. I am not what I thought. In fact, I am very much worse than that. In fact, I have a very long way to go and I may never be that good."

However, once I accepted where I actually am, suddenly there was room to grow and improve. Suddenly I could sit down and think about what needs to change in my life so that there is less coming out of my mouth that makes me hypocritical or the bad type of judgmental (as I do believe there is merit to a certain type of judgment).

It is not good to accept the Brain Screech unequivocally. It is, after all, a broken mechanism that generates a whole lot of mental bombs that are not useful in the least. However, it does seem that turning to face the accusations with a genuine openness activates some part of myself (heart? mind? soul?) that recognizes what parts are true and lets me know what I need to work on.

Right now, I have identified these issues: cowardice, judgmental attitude, hypocrisy. In some ways, they reinforce each other. After all, I don't have to face my own issues if I can prove I'm a little bit better than some other person in my life, right?

Time to grow up. Time to look a little longer and harder at the stories that come out of my mouth. Time to stop comparing myself to others, either to my detriment or theirs. I am not as good a person as the image I tried to carry around, but with God's help I can try to do better than the person I am right now.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference