Self-Soothing in a Crowded Room
How do you talk to yourself? Could changing that change everything?
My healing has predominantly been about adjusting how I talk to myself. Throughout childhood, I developed a critical voice that reflected the judgments that I feared that others might make about my behaviour, decisions, appearance, or sometimes, simply my existence. I had experienced judgment and behaviour that felt like rejection on a few occasions, and found it so painful that I wanted to do everything within my power to avoid that treatment and those feelings. And that’s where my critical voice came in. She anticipates (yes, present tense, because she’s still around) the judgment that I fear. She relays to me all of the potential relational and reputational consequences of any action that I contemplate.
I’ve heard many people refer to this voice as their saboteur, or inner saboteur. I don’t think of her that way. When I gave her this title in one of my therapy sessions, my therapist responded in his usual fashion. He paused, closed his eyes as he took in what I had said, and then gave his classic closed mouth smile and said “it is interesting to me that you see her that way. What I hear is someone trying to protect you from the thing that you most deeply fear. That doesn’t sound like sabotage”.
Through our work together I realised that my frustration really stemmed from my response to her voice, which was to let what she said stop me from taking the actions that I wanted to take. I had become so familiar with her voice, and so afraid of judgement, that I thought that her proposed course of action was the only one that could keep me safe. I thought that the only way to avoid judgement was to limit my interactions with people, because that’s what she told me. I believed that I could only be loved if I wasn’t difficult, because that’s what she told me. I believed that I could only prove my intelligence by remaining silent, because that’s what she told me. I believed that following her guidance would insulate me from criticism, because she knew them all. Continuously following that voice made my life feel restrictive. I felt like I needed to choose between safety and criticism in every moment.
What I needed to learn, and what I have learned over the last 6 years, was how to respond to that voice. It often felt like I had to choose between blindly following my critical voice or defying her and suffering the consequences. In neither of these options do I actually engage with her or my fears that she is revealing to me.
And that’s where my self-talk comes in. It creates a space for me to engage in dialogue with this voice and determine how I want to proceed in light of the fears that she is bringing to my attention. It is learning how to keep myself safe while confronting my fears. It is a space where I safely exercise the agency that previously felt inaccessible to me.
In self-talk, I establish a healthy distance between me and her - the voice who is trying to protect me by highlighting the fears that a particular opportunity or interaction triggers in me. Establishing distance would enable me to respond to her (and make a decision that is right for me and consistent with my values), rather than react to her criticisms (and make a decision either motivated by fear or defiance). At first, this distance was minimal and really challenging to find because I trusted her. As time went on, I started to identify flaws in her criticisms and in her logic. I noticed that sometimes, what she was telling me was at odds with people who I trusted told me about myself and about my performance. I identified that what she ultimately wanted from me to secure my safety was my silence, and I knew that was the root of my inner turmoil. As time went on, that increased distance gave me the resolve to move from skepticism to actively questioning her. My self-talk would take the shape of: “I understand that this is scary for me, and that there is a risk that I might fail, and that my failure might change others’ perceptions of me. But there is a risk that my silence might too”. Even later on in my healing journey, I started to feel comfortable challenging her. I would respond to her perceived criticism with statements like: “All of the information that I have tells me that my brother wouldn’t think or say that about me.” Or, “I don’t think that this would upset my husband, and even if it did, we could talk about it. I don’t see the risk that you’ve identified materialising”.
Between each of these distance-creating stepping stones were small acts of bravery, carefully selected, and executed as I felt ready. I’ve shared about some of these acts in previous pieces. Like learning to practice vulnerability in my relationship with my brother and singing in public, even though my voice was shaking. Each time that I listened to her criticisms and chose to respond by honouring my desire to take action, I built confidence in myself. And that self-confidence helped me to maintain and increase my distance from the voice that I believed would keep me safe. I showed myself that I can remain safe while pursuing my heart’s desires.
Active self-talk is still a big part of my life, and I think it always will be. In the same way that conflict resolution in relationships gets easier with practice, my self-talk generally occupies less of my time than it did when I was first learning to engage with different parts of myself. Some circumstances require lengthy sessions, some just a moment, sometimes my confidence in an area has grown enough that my instinct has become to chime in with encouragement before the criticism even comes. On my hardest days, or when I feel like I have taken a leap and feel like I have failed, my critical voice becomes louder. On those days, I can only find the distance that I need to respond to the criticism by writing out our dialogue.
Two years ago, after speaking on a panel at an event in Dublin, my critical voice was all that I could hear. My mind was full of stories that the people in the room had about my worth based on the quality of my presentation, which I felt was poor. I had instant replays of the moments where I misspoke or gave clunky responses to questions on a loop in my mind. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get out of that state of mind. My typical tactics weren’t breaking through the unending stream of criticism. I wanted to get back in the room, to be present. So I did the only thing that I could think of: I wrote it all down. I got it out of my head and onto a page. I wrote what I felt during the presentation, the pressures that I felt made it difficult for me to perform in the way that I had wanted, and how I expect peoples’ opinions of me to have changed given my performance.
Here’s what I wrote:
All I could think about was my concern that I wasn’t saying what they wanted me to - that I had misunderstood the assignment. And then that kept me from being able to deliver what I had prepared well.
I felt the need to rush, but then realised that no one else felt that need. By rushing, I wasn’t able to calmly and effectively communicate what I had to say. I also missed a few things that I had intended to share.
I guess the main difference is that other presentations seemed specific - addressing individual cases to illustrate.
I didn’t feel like I was making a valuable contribution.
But like, I guess people were just sharing their work, and that’s also what I was doing, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that in the moment. I was concerned about pleasing [the woman who had invited our organisation to speak] and being useful to other people. I didn’t put myself central enough.
Facts:
I don’t have the experience yet to draw out concrete examples
I spoke to my understanding of the brief.
Stories:
I thought that [my acquaintance from the train] and [another acquaintance in the audience] thought less of me after my presentation
The people from the organisation who asked me to speak trust me less after my presentation
Observation:
I’m less comfortable public speaking because I care so much about being “on message”
It is about upholding/improving my image
Worrying about the impression I am making reduces my effectiveness.
Sitting in a room full of colleagues, minutes after giving a presentation - still at the dais - I wrote these notes to myself. I was a few months into a new job, in a new sector, and in a new place. I was representing an organisation that I had just joined to a room of people that I didn’t really know, with limited instructions on what I should address. And it was only once I wrote out my criticisms, concerns, and stories, and countered them with what I knew to be true, that I was able to gain that perspective.
On that day, I learned a lot. The observations that I wrote in my notebook are things that I still think about when I prepare for presentations, and criticisms that I guard against while presenting.
My fears on that day also pointed me towards what I value: connection. My biggest worries were reputational and relational - how my self-perceived poor performance might impact future opportunities and relationships that I value or hope to grow. I care about connection, and that’s a great thing to know about myself, and something that I have come to really love about myself.
With the benefit of the passage of time, I have also learned that none of my biggest fears panned out. After the panel, the woman who organised it, and asked me to speak, told me that what I had to say was perfect; that it addressed exactly the topics she was hoping I might speak to. The acquaintances who I thought might think less of me are people that I work with regularly and have great relationships with. I am fortunate to count one of them among my dearest friends in this city. And in a few weeks, I will start a job with the organisation that invited me to give that presentation.
Sometimes I look back on that day and feel embarrassed or unprofessional. I question the appropriateness of self-soothing in that environment and wonder what people might think of me if they knew the regularity with which I still use self-talk to stay grounded. But then I remember that most of us are talking to ourselves all the time, whether it is an active choice or not. My “natural” self-talk is not encouraging. It is admonishing. My self-talk feels like an active effort because, when I respond to my fears with encouragement, I am not only changing the script, I am reforming a pattern that I developed over decades. I remind myself that this active effort has brought me so much self-discovery, peace, confidence, and boldness. When I remember all that I have gained from actively talking to myself, I become less afraid of self-soothing in a crowded room.
