05/28/2025
You are not who YOU THINK you are!!! I will be introducing a multi part series on how negative self perceptions and feelings of inadequacy form and how to resolve these often seeming unchangeable beliefs. Why are we as humans plagued by feelings of inadequacy and negativity? There are multiple layers of reasons so we must begin with what I call the relative conditioning of being human. We are conditional beings in the sense that we acquire our knowledge through repetitive learning which includes everything about the outer world and the inner world. So based on our environment, we develop unconscious belief systems that become automatic, and fundamentally we believe them as truths. Why wouldn't we? Only when we have traveled far enough from our original environment and with enough experiences to test our initial beliefs structures, do we begin to question what we believe. During those formative years of experience we develop deep seated beliefs about ourselves that mirror how others also felt about themselves. It called the collective trauma perspective of inadequacy. As time goes by, the pattern gets re-enforced without examination and becomes what seems a closed system of experience, projections, and reactions. Usually structured on the premise that others and life are to blame for one's own experience of themselves. Eventually we identify so deeply with these negative perceptions that is becomes the voice of the inner critic. But the truth is that there is no actually existing other identity in us, in fact what is going on is that we simply are using methods we learned early on in dealing with life and ourselves.. There is only ONE of us internally and yet the inner critic feels like another identity out to get me. Under closer examination we find that these are thought patterns and responses to life due to frustration and feeling disempowered to make change we berate ourselves. So is the issue actually about the inner critic or is it fundamentally about the feeling tone of feeling unable to make change? Please examine this for yourselves. Once we become more silent and intuitive we will see below the critic is a wounded feeling tone. A hurt.. A sadness. A feeling of being unheard, unseen, neglected. So what we actually need is LOVE. The opposite of the critic. And of course we also realize maybe we do not know how to be tender and loving with ourselves. This may be a new way of being that is foreign to us if we have not been around tenderness and love. So we must begin with BIG INNER HUGS OF TENDER LOVE. This will silence the inner critic and help us feel we can make the changes we seek to make in our lives. In the next article, I will discuss existential angst as another aspect of feeling inadequate. If you have any questions or comments please let start a dialogue built on love and tenderness.
