I’ve had another inner work session on the elliptical, and this time I’ve addressed a major emotional challenge of mine: chronic tension.
I’ve had a very vocal inner critic that used to be the driving force in my life, and it drove me to success in many areas of my life. But it came at a high cost. I felt miserable.
Part of my inner work journey has been to free myself from that critical inner voice. But now I wonder if silencing my inner critic just led to it manifesting itself in chronic tension.
I gotta acknowledge that my inner critic is an important force in my life. I just don’t want it to be that harsh, disapproving voice anymore. Maybe channeling that energy into the form of a challenge is a healthier choice.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Do these elliptical workout sessions while listening to this online course, It’s dope. I’m just, I’m digging that so much. I had another session today. it felt very enlightening, very cleansing. I’m there 30 minutes into it. I’m like breaking a sweat.
And while I’m sweating eyes closed, he’s doing these meditations that I’m sure he didn’t envision people on an elliptical sweating profusely doing, but kind of works for me and things are happening. I’m learning new things, some experiencing new things, I’m digging it dope.
And I had last time I did the ellipticals, he was doing like a session where he, and maybe I’ll send you the audio book because. I don’t know, maybe just works for me right now, but give it a listen, maybe for the course that you’re listening to. It’s not like it’s an audio book, but when you listen to it, it’s clearly a course in other books, right?
It’s like this one exercise [00:01:00] after the other, but for me so far there’ve been, more or less, easy to follow along. And I have gotten interesting little insights out of them. I’ll, share the audio book with you. but the last time that I listened to it, I did a bunch of sessions.
And then towards the end he started a new exercise and he asked, well, for this one, let’s look at a conflict you had recently where you had a dip at the time, deciding what to do or whatever, whatever. And. I remember I stopped it and thought, all right, I’ve done enough. I’ll listen to this all the time.
But also for maybe a lingual lingering moment was considering what’s something that’s a current conflict. And now it seems so obvious to me, but yesterday it was kind of not that easy to answer south. Oh, interesting. Well, or tack this again tomorrow. And then today he said, just pick a conflict even now, either now, something that pops up later and then, what popped to my mind was the more obvious conflicts that I have around the [00:02:00] concept of like love and relationships.
And I thought, all right, I’ll go. I don’t quite feel like this is maybe something. This is something I have. I think cultivated as an approach, it’s been serving me really well, which is when something comes to mind, especially in these kind of more meditative practices or more what I would call digging into subconscious.
Right? When you throw questions into the abyss of your mind, when things are thrown back at me, and I catch them, there’s always an impulse to debate and throw back in and go, no something else. Just wait with your hands. This isn’t good. You throw the apple back and you’re like looking for another fruit, but oftentimes, you know, I, I catch myself and I think, well, if this popped up.
Maybe we should take a look at this, you know, independently, if it’s good or bad, or if I think there should be a better thing, a better conflict of Erie, I’ve [00:03:00] already resolved so much about this. I’ve already thought about it so much. I’ve brought up today. I don’t feel like it’s a problem anymore, but it came to me right.
When I thought about conflict, the topic of relationship and love was thrown out of the abyss into my hands. And so maybe there’s something to see here, something to experience something to learn. So I stayed with it, not fully excited, but sort of
submitting to it and going well, let’s explore. Let’s see. And we start off asking these questions about, if you had to. Notice one part of you that maybe is involved in this conflict, just see what comes up. See if there is a feeling, a particular sensation or name, see what, what bubbles up and instantly I had this, what I would call now the dedicated part, which is sort of a part of me that says you just have to [00:04:00] pick somebody and then work really hard at it and stay dedicated.
the way to think about love and relationship is not finding it. It’s not being inspired by it. It’s creating it with hard work and dedication, right. Building a life together nobody’s ever going to be perfect. There’s no movie like romance. So the way an adult deals with this is you pick a good person.
You pick somebody that has some really important must haves and maybe some nice to haves, then you accept their weaknesses and you dedicate your life and you commit fully to it. Not holding back, no matter how difficult things will be ups and downs, whatever the fuck you are, a man, you dedicate yourself and commit yourself to that relation.
That’s how you creep up. Simple as that. I love your laughter, but that’s one part part of it, right? Then he goes on and says, well, [00:05:00] now that we’ve discovered that part, you know, put it on the seed. Think about maybe where the co, where a conflict could be coming up. What is an opposing force within you to that part?
Try to see if a thought comes up an image, a sensation and emotion, and the memory something comes up, just listen inside for that instantly. I feel this other part of me let’s call it the freedom seeker part of me. And that fucker is not, you know, the first one is sort of like sitting very straight or standing very straight, you know, like how you would imagine something that’s very dedicated, very stoic.
And this part is leaning back on a chair feet on the desk, hands behind the head and has an arrogant smirk and is sort of like, fuck all this shit. Love relationship is for dumb people. It’s for little [00:06:00] children and little princesses that want to believe in some prints. All this humans, you know, are not reliable.
Humans is a hop, but now I’m a selfish, just fucking be free. Freedom is the only thing that matters. Fuck love, freedom trumps. Love just live your life. Treat yourself Sabine, a love affair with yourself, travel the world, just do whatever you want and make sure you’re never changed to anything or anyone because you can’t trust these people in the park.
If you find the most amazing person today, they will disappoint you tomorrow in five years in 10 years, will anyone be growing as fast as you know, they won’t eventually you’re going to be dragging them behind you. They’re going to be slowing you down. They’re going to disappoint you. And then you’re going to have to diminish yourself to match them and make them comfortable versus them pushing you up, make you better.
This [00:07:00] thing, this love thing. It’s not real right. I mean you can, I mean love sure, but like a relationship with one person forever or a very, very long time rest of your life. That’s bullshit. I thought, okay. You know, these two parts, they seem to be an obvious conflict. That makes kind of sense. And then he says, just for moment, maybe we can put one of those two into a waiting room, so we can just get to know one part without any interruption, without any conflict, without any, any rental, one part to just go and chill in a waiting room while we get to know one part and we can tell the part we’re sending to the waiting room that we promise we’ll come back.
And then the other part will be in the waiting room and we’ll dedicate all our attention to getting to know it better. And while I was trying to do that, and it was falling along and all this made perfect sense to me, a third part popped up sort of a third image that I didn’t invite. I’m [00:08:00] glad to hear that.
I don’t like the first, second. And the third image that popped up was. Let’s call it the lover and better was a part that didn’t feel like any of the other two, but it seemed to be heavily engaged in the conflict. So it was like, oh, I have a three-part conflict here, not a two-part conflict. And that was the part of me that just wanted to completely dissolve in love, like completely experienced love.
And I know that that’s a very, there’s a part of me. That’s very sweet and very tender and wants to
surrender into love. Right. And wants to love fully and heavy handedly. And so, as I was experiencing. Feeling the presence of that part. I was like, Ooh, all right. So we have a dedicated part, the lover part and the freedom seeking [00:09:00] part. And then I started going through with this exercise of, you know, how do these parts relate to each other and think about each other, what are the belief systems of these parts and how do they direct with each other?
And I didn’t, I didn’t solve the question of love and relationship. I didn’t solve anything, but a great many things made a lot more sense to me. And it was, I was thinking, aha, this is complicated. This is a complicated group, you know, and it creates, you know, complicating circumstances for me, you know, in very confusing at times and very conflicting changes in perception, reality emotions.
And I really, I really go through. Wild tornado rides when I enter the sphere of even thinking or considering or experiencing relationship and love and it, and it feels still, [00:10:00] but for sure up until today’s session, it always feels that it’s very hard for me to sustain any level of full presence. Like I have enough presence at times that I could think of, wow.
I seem to be terrified right now, wanting to run away, or I seem to be forcing myself to do certain things, to be good to this other person. So I’m catching that and the feelings, but what, I’m not, what I hadn’t had a framework for is to unblend. Would you would call it an internal family systems unblending which is the separation of that part of the feelings and the thoughts and yourself to be able to really observe it and experience it versus being it being immersed or overwhelmed or, occupied by it.
And so I would have enough self to experience. Oh, right now my mood has shifted radically [00:11:00] without anything external happening. And now where in one moment I was in delightful bliss now in, in, in intense terror. And what the fuck, what happened? Nothing had, why is my mood changing? Why is my inner dialogue changing?
And then maybe I would get to the point of trying to say, it’s calmed down because it just feelings. It’s not fully trust them. And that’s asked, what can I do to feel better? Like that was my that’s as far as I’ve gotten in the past. And now I wonder wouldn’t the ifs framework, because I’ve experienced this in some other situations where I’ve been better at asking questions in a way that helped me unblend and then it was much easier for me to fully understand observed and then resolve situations within me.
and so I’m curious to see how, if [00:12:00] at all, this is going to help when I’m in these situations, it was at least very interesting. It’s kind of very refreshing going into something like this. And the first part in the second, I had not thought about it that way, but it was not that surprising, right? I’m like, Oh, you know, very dedicated voice in my head.
I’m like, yeah, I get that. I know that the move of freedom seeking was the thing that was interesting. Or, and I hadn’t considered before was that the freedom seeking boys was very arrogant. It was like a little shit. Like just, it was also clearly much younger. It was more kind of like an 18 year old part of me.
And that part was so cynical about people that he thought he had figured out people and people didn’t deserve certain things. And so you should be selfish. Right. And fuck all this people love you because you provide all this value because, you’re so successful, you’re this you’re that.
So people I’m impressed by you. People are trumped by [00:13:00] your charisma people, but you know, and then they think they’re in love, but that doesn’t all that, doesn’t all. This is just theater for small people. You’re better than that. It’s just don’t change yourself to anybody. And that was, that was interesting.
I never, I knew there was a part of me that just want to feed him, but I’d never looked at that part and thought, Ooh, there’s a real arrogance to it. And there’s also a real immaturity to it. Like I had not known that let’s say, but then it was delightful. It’s a way to have this third thing pop up, avoid didn’t fit into the framework or anything that he was saying in the audio course.
Right. He was like focused on two parts and then we put one outside and now we will talk to one. But while we’re about to talk to one, this other presence popped up and forced itself in front of the one. Hello. And that the delightful thing about that is that it feels both surprising and so authentic, like a real, [00:14:00] it’s like a real discovery of sorts where everything that he guided me through.
Although there were insights there that were new or distinct I was being guided. Right. So I don’t know. It just felt like he’s taking me by hand and I’m just following his path. But this thing happened because in my mind that hard popped up and was like, wait a second. There’s me as well. Let’s make sure that I’m involved in this intervention here.
And something about that was just awesome. Like, I don’t know. I just I’m delighted when I’m surprised by my mind. Right. So that was just something that soon he’s mommy. I was, I was so happy once a dude entered the room. It’s so interesting. You’re like Jesus Christ. These two parts suck. I hope he has another part that is not terrible.
Yeah. But you know, the, the, funny enough. When I thought about how these, through these three related to each other, the [00:15:00] lover part didn’t relate at all to the other two parts. the lover part was sort of not thought not having any judgements about the other two parts, but more in a I’m very desperate and a bit malnourished.
And so it was just waiting to whenever I’ll get it, almost like whenever I get an opportunity, I will love as hard as I can until somebody takes away the reins again. You know what I mean? And when I would ask, what is your opinion of these parts? It was just sort of like, I don’t know, I’m just waiting here for the next opening to love and everything else doesn’t really matter to me that much while the freedom seeking part was incredibly arrogant and judgmental towards the other two parts.
Both a dedicated one, which you thought was stupid and misguided and the love apart, which you thought was also stupid in this guidance. And the dedicated part was [00:16:00] judgemental with the other tools as well. Not with as much arrogance with a bit more maturity, but still thinking. Yeah. You know, the lover part, that’s nice, but that’s not what it really takes.
It’s all about dedication and, you know, committing yourself. That’s really not the love thing. And the freedom one is just a little shit that knows nothing. So it was also kind of dismissing the other two parts. It’s just, it was just interesting to observe that dynamic within me and within these parts and images in a way that seemed
not thought, you know what I mean? It didn’t seem like I was. Thinking it’s almost more like discovered it was missed something you found within yourself. I was observing rather than thinking. And there’s a difference and sometimes they, yeah, they’re hard to distinct. If you can do one while thinking you’re doing the other, but there’s a part of me that then still knows right [00:17:00] now, I’m not quite full.
And I had this many times doing ifs, honestly, with me many times, I’ve gone to places where asked an open question and I couldn’t get an answer or hear it. And then my mind would go into constructing answers as options. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I would have to stop myself and go, well, I’m just, maybe this is as far as we can go today, but maybe this is as far as this part is trusting me, but I don’t want to come up with the most plausible answer, you know, in my mind, I want to hear it.
I want to uncover it. And so you have to be quiet. And I had to be quite, still have to be quite diligent you have to be kind of on the lookout for that, because it’s an easy thing for your mind and you to do while pretending it’s doing something else.
Like you’re playing discovery while your mind is feeding you [00:18:00] the best quote-unquote answer. and so it was just nice and delightful to have a session like this, where some surprising things happen and some dynamics played out where I was just more or less observing. And there was very little thinking involved from my side and that I was very refreshed by the whole thing.
Can you, Ooh, this was. Some important, interesting insights. I want to get to know all these parts better, want to play, pay more attention to them and let’s see what unfolds. Let’s see. Let’s see if we can, if I can get within myself to a place that is less where there’s just less conflict where we can get the parts to collaborate and can get myself to lead versus me getting lost and blended within those parts and confused by the wild swings of feelings and thoughts that are going through when, by all accounts, nothing is happening in the [00:19:00] outside world, right?
I’m just like, it’s just sitting here and nothing has happened within the last few seconds by my mood went from. Deeply love to in panic or completely cynical. And I’m like how? Whereas like, I am always, I always felt a couple of steps behind confused about where we’re going, you know, just like, where is my, where are my feelings going and why I can’t quite catch it.
And some, uh, I was excited today in the session where I thought, all right, some of this makes sense and I’ll be mindful and I’ll pay more attention and let’s see what we can figure out. And let’s see if we can resolve some of this polarization and some of this conflict and see if I can get to smooth the waters inside.
Yeah. Yeah. Can you, can you tell me more about the lover?
That was the part that I had.
The least specific image, like the dedicated part in the free seeking part that were more [00:20:00] outlined for me. Whereas the lover, I was experiencing more as, not as a person or personality, but almost just like a, as an energy, like a deep red energy and just like I, I, it had lead less form, less distinction.
Also when I was asking it about the other parts, I couldn’t get much from it yet. And I wonder if that’s just a less familiar parts to me. so it might take some time to get to know, or maybe because there’s maybe, you know, Less trust in that relationship. So it might take a bit more time for that part to open itself up, but I had lesser information, less details.
It was much more broad in my perception. And I had this remember we had talked about my inner critic and the clenching of the teeth and the tense jaw and how I’ve been trying with any time I would ask questions to some other parts in some of these [00:21:00] sessions, I would get good answers, but then what it would ask that part questions, I would get nothing.
And there was a sort of a feeling of, I’m not talking to you, you know what, once I got something in that translated to a, none of your fucking business, right? So, and I, and I went through many sessions, very small steps, stealing a. You know, a distrust. And then later that was one of these elliptical sessions that I did where for the first time I had a bigger aha moment where felt what that parts told me that it felt that I was incredibly arrogant towards it.
Did we talk about this? I think that we’ve talked about this, right? And that, I have not been listening to it and dismissing it in my stance is basically I know everything my inner critic has to tell me, and it doesn’t matter. It’s either not important or I already know it or it’s too critical or it’s not helpful.
And I never, I would’ve never guessed in [00:22:00] a million years the thought process of my inner critic, things I’m too arrogant towards it. Yeah. It’s not something I would have matched very surprising, but once I thought it, once it came to me, it was so obvious to me. It was like, of course, because it is actually true.
I do not care for my critics points because I feel like I know this shit. I know, you know, I didn’t do everything humanly possible today. I know that I could do so much more. I know if I was a perfect human, I could have worked harder here and harder there and done this and done that. I know all this, but how is this helping me?
This isn’t helping. And today I had another session with my inner critic and I really didn’t want it. He, you know, this is this course. I’m not sure. I think it’s really meant that you do one exercise after another, but maybe not in like a three sessions at a time. [00:23:00] Cadence, maybe in a three sessions I was talking to, I don’t know, I’m an elliptical, as long as I’m running, I’m listening.
As long as I’m listening the exercises, right. I’m just like not stopping. And so he brought up, like, let’s find a part, let’s work with a part a little bit. That’s maybe negative, maybe something you’re afraid of or something you have conflict with. And intuitively I actually wanted to go to a vulnerable part of me and he said, distinctly, don’t go to something maybe vulnerable.
It’s good to a managing part, getting out. I got it. And then I was like, ah, I don’t know. My intuition was to go to something, maybe what you would call an exile, something that ha is very burdened and maybe put away. And I know that he, I think Richard Schwartz is a bit more critical of people doing self-therapy with their vulnerable parts.
I think that he thinks that that can be tricky or dangerous. So. He’s like, let’s go to a manager part and then I thought, all right, whatever. It’s like, if you have difficulty picking one right now, just lots [00:24:00] of people go to their inner critic. Let’s just start there. And I’m like, all right, let’s do another session within a group.
But I felt like I’ve done a lot with that part of me. So not necessarily the first pick, but then it’s w then once the exercise has started, you know, I’ve asked you that inner critic a number of times by now, Hey, if you could do any other job, what would it be? And I’ll tell you you something, you know, I mean, you’ve seen the picture of me, of how beat up I look in the mirror morning.
And we’ve talked about this, I think any times before how for the past two years, for sure, I’ve had this challenge of. I sleep enough hours. I do all the recommended things you should do to sleep well. I track my sleep and my quality of sleep is very high. You know, it has all the markers that you would want, but when I wake up, I feel beat up.
[00:25:00] I don’t feel refreshed and my face looks like it had been beat up and in turmoil. And I think trying to figure this out for a long time and you know, for a while, I was like, maybe this is all the inner conflict. This, you know, now feed them all the emotions. I don’t know. Maybe I feel that my inner anger at night when I’m not fully conscious.
And I don’t know, I went through many different theories, none of them, and none of the things I did had any significant impact on the way I feel when I wake up in the morning. Recently for the past two or three days, I did something quite unexpected in the morning. Usually I wake up my mind. My mind is actually playing pop sauce, right.
Is actually like in this, let’s go, let’s go. Let’s go mood. But my face is so tense and so tired and exhausted. My body feels so tense and tired that I walk on and I barely can optimize it. Doesn’t matter if I slept six hours, eight hours, 12 hours, [00:26:00] I wake up and I’m always like, ah, exhausted. And it takes so much time to get me going.
Then in that time, sometimes if I don’t pay attention, I might, you know, I might let that physical sensation get me into just a bad mood where I just don’t want to do anything. Right. And then maybe make some bad choices. Maybe I’ll choose to eat food. That’s not as healthy because it just feels so terrible.
And I just want to feel better or maybe I’ll, you know, be on social media a bit longer than I should be instead of starting my writing exercise. You know what I mean? Like I’m just doing these things because I don’t feel good. And for the past three days in the morning, I walked out of the got out of bed and then I walked into another room that has a bed, not the bedroom and is set in that bed.
And I thought, well, who is the part that’s in my bed is my body right now. Like this exhaustion is [00:27:00] beat up. Which part of me is that instead of thinking of that as me, I thought of it as would they call a knife? SBB a Trailhead, right? A sensation, a thing, a phenomena that if you follow it might. Ring you to a really important place.
And that was maybe this mornings being exhausted. Maybe it’s not myself waking up after maybe a tumultuous nights of different parts fighting or whatever. Maybe this is a part. And then I sat there and it was just trying to feel what that part feels and what I can learn. You know, the first two mornings, where did this, I didn’t really go or get very far.
There was no unique insight or anything like that, but I did feel better. Not in some 360, everything is gray. Now it’s rainbow colors, but in a, it was dark gray and we, you know, lifted it up a number of shades, right. And the color [00:28:00] scheme, just to got light gray from dark gray. And it was like, oh, I feel a little lighter, a little as burdened.
I don’t know what it is, but this already felt good. So I’ll follow this further. And today for the first time, I had a thought that came up to my mind. What if this is my inner critic? What of this? Because it did seem like it felt, I felt exhausted and I felt my inner critic is exhausted. It felt so tense.
And it was like being a critic is so tense. It has all these things to say and I’ve shut it up because my, my inner critic for the past two years has not been a voice that’s talking all day long. I don’t have a lot of critical dialogues. And when I have a sensation of you should be doing more, why don’t you?
I always shut it up. Always [00:29:00] go shush. I know, but right now I’m doing different work or right now this is the best I can do. So there’s no verbal presence of it. So I think it has migrated to a physical sense, which is this tension in the jaw. But I also, I also felt this morning that, well, if five, like, because I’ve been in relationships in the past where for a long time, I was hyper-critical and couldn’t talk to these people and it’s very draining, right?
It’s, it’s very, like I would carry all this tension, all these things I wanted to say and all this aggression and just, I would have to hold it in. And it’s very, very exhausting and that I felt in the mornings off and that I feel like I want to give up on the day. And then I felt my inner critic was almost at this point of like, I just want to give up on everything, like on this relationship when everything.
I cannot [00:30:00] speak. I cannot keep it in. I don’t know where to go with it. I’m not successful. Like I’m not useful. Right. I’m not using my inner critic anymore at all. And I wondered, I was just wondering, huh? What is, this is how my inner critic fields. And the only time I allow it is, you know, maybe towards in my sleep, but it was the last hours of my, so when I wake up, I’m blended with my critic and it just feel like shit.
And you know, I don’t know. I didn’t, it didn’t come to me with some definitive. Yes. He has a stamp of truth. It just was there as a thought. And I was, huh. And my mind was just thinking, let’s continue to follow this train of thought. Let’s keep doing this.
There’s something interesting.
When in the morning I sit down and instead of trying to get out of the state, or I feel a little confused, plenty about the stick. [00:31:00] Why do I always be, I did everything so well last night, why am I doing, looking up like this, which is one dialogue that I sometimes out, or this cake, what do I have to do to get out of this?
I don’t like how I feel. Let’s get out of this instead of doing any of these two things. How about I just sit and just visit that feeling who is this that is so destroyed and exhausted? Who is this? You know, what does this want? And then today when I was on the elliptical have already done the love conflict session, And this inner critic part comes up or practice or whatever you want to call it.
I ask my inner critic again, because he said, you asked that part, what would it rather want to do than, you know, whatever it’s doing right now, if it could do anything. And for the first time I’ve got sort of a timid answer and it was [00:32:00] saying, well, you know, my mind went to, do you want to be the encourager?
You don’t want to just be the one that’s encouraging me. And it was like, fuck, no, I don’t want to have that goal. And then the answer that came was, you know, if I didn’t have to be afraid of the consequences of you not having an inner critic. And the things that I am trying to prevent from happening, if that truly was a thing that could be done, like the worst consequences I’m trying to protect you from is a consequence that doesn’t exist anymore.
If that’s true and up until this moment, that part of me was not willing to entertain that question. So it was for the first time thinking, okay, I’m not saying that I believe it, but if it was possible that what I’m trying to protect you from is not a valid threat anymore, and that could do anything else.
I would want to be your challenger. Like the part of you that challenges [00:33:00] you to do uncomfortable things that will make you better not criticize you. So you don’t fuck up, but challenge you. So you get better in ways that like in a way that is nudging, but not. Hammering, you know what I mean? Like, just because right now, like the critic part is just hammering the same.
It’s just ringing the same bell hammering the same nail. It’s very obsessive, but this would be more if I didn’t have to have all these fucking panics and fierce these threats, I’m trying to save us from wouldn’t exist. Then I would just sit there and I would challenge you when everything else inside of you just wants to make you happy.
Right. I’d be like, Hey, I think we could do more here up for the challenge. What if you did this, let’s go. And I would like to bring up challenges rather than anything else. And then I thought, you know, okay, that sounds fair enough. That sounds like a good [00:34:00] thing. That sounds like a authentic part of myself.
And then that was like for a little second, there was a dialogue that was going on where the inner critic basically said without using these words, but it was. Mainly the message of like, listen, motherfucker, you have not, you have paid attention to so many fucking parts of you, right? Last all the feelings are important.
Not all of them, right? Like exploring, uh, love and tenderness and sadness and grief and writing, feeling that fucking the diaries. And you’ve been more resting and more loving and more, less is more and not pushing yourself. Well, it’s great. But I have been ignored. Like you’re not like my boys, anything I have to say is being shoved to the side and there’s nothing of [00:35:00] legitimacy anymore.
So I don’t believe for a second that if I change what I did, like you would pay attention to it. And I thought, all right, what will be a first challenge? Let’s just try something. Let’s just do a challenge. What will be a first challenge? And then it was obvious. We’ve talked about this for a long time. Now I’ve had the desire to write more and recently I’ve had the frustration of not really making progress on writing a lot more lately, right?
Yup. And so instantly the thought came to my well, do 30 minutes of writing for 30 days. No exceptions. No. Today I’m gentle to myself and I’m not doing it’s just 30 minutes just everyday. And there was a little fear of mine that I was like, yeah, 30 minutes is we could start slow. We could just do 15 minutes, 30 minutes.
And that was like, you little bitch. It’s 30 minutes, not three hours, 30 minutes. This you want to tell me, you cannot do 30 minutes in a 24 hour day, [00:36:00] or you this busy. And the truth is no, it’s like, so 30 minutes just say yes or fuck off. And I was like, all right, let’s try it. And today I did, I did 30 minutes of writing, which is the most writing I’ve done in a long time, I think in awhile.
And besides, you know, the one surprising thing is that it was very easy. The other thing was that was very creative. Like I like the writing, I did this, I mean this all, it’s not something to publish, but I liked doing it. It was very natural and, and there was something satisfying in me that was thinking, okay, this is, I mean, I would have done, I’ve done many challenges before in my life, but it felt like, it felt like I’m doing it for different reasons, which was kind of, it felt satisfying.
I don’t know. [00:37:00] So let’s see. But I do have the impression that as I am,
as I am discovering this inner critic part, and as in the beginning, that part, the relationship seemed not good at all. And there seem to be very little trust. I wasn’t making significant progress. Like anytime I interacted with it in the early days, all I like, I mean, it was still significant progress because I was learning, wow.
That part doesn’t want to talk. Right. Wow. That part it’s very closed off. Oh, there’s no trust. Well, what could be the reason why that part isn’t trusting me. And as I kept visiting that part of me, and as I keep an open mind and as I keep. An honest effort and a curiosity today felt like the first time after I’ve done, I don’t know, 10 [00:38:00] different sessions in various forms and exercises of like trying to visit my inner critical, get to know it better today was the first time where I felt that it was opening up a little bit in giving me something right.
Trusting me a bit. Um, and that felt really good. And that was also a reconfirmation. It was funny to me that when he was suggesting to go to the inner critic, I thought I’d rather discover something new. I’ve done so much with it. Maybe let me do something else. But then as I had the patients to go and visit that part, again, something very satisfying happened.
And I thought, Bringing this patient to that part of me every day is what’s needed to repair the relationship and maybe get to a really good place together
because I know it’s been one of the biggest things that has been bothering me in my emotional inner world. Over the [00:39:00] past two years has been this tension I can shake off.
And that eventually manifested itself in this jaw tension. That is, you know, that is hounding me in these warnings that I’m like, you know, sort of drowned and drained by. and I, I don’t know, maybe I’ll follow down this trail head and I’ll arrive somewhere really beautiful that doesn’t resolve all these issues because there’s other, other parts they’re not, who knows, but it’s been.
It’s such a beautiful metaphor for life because the, this inner relationship building this inner relationship repairing follows a very universal melody and pattern, right? the leadership you have to present the patients, the openness, when there’s not trust when there’s polarized parts, when there’s conflict within a system to generate so much tension in pain and conflict.
And it’s [00:40:00] so difficult for each part individually, to understand why things are happening, the way they’re happening and how to resolve them, because every single part is looking at itself and maybe a few others, but it’s missing the bigger picture and maybe doesn’t have the position to really resolve.
And so bringing that kind of. Tenderness and patience and openness within yourself within the parts of yourself that you might be in conflict with that you don’t like, that you want to avoid, that you want to change has a, as a beautiful quality to it. And, , sometimes it’s difficult today. It was just very, , gratifying.