Hit the nail on the head. If I stop being critical of myself I will descend into a comfortable path to suicide. I've talked about it before, the 'adequate' spouse, 'adequate' house, 'adequate' kids, 'adequate' addictions, 'adequate' insanity and an 'adequate' suicide. Xanax my way right into driving off a cliff.
RE: Wolves I don't want to just 'not let them in,' I want to chase after them with a sharpened stick and a bunch of other angry monkeys and wear their bloody pelts. I want them so dead that the next generations of monkeys talk about wolves the way we talk about dragons, or unicorns, or other mythical creatures. And I appreciate other peoples stories and perspectives, so don't apologize for sharing what you are comfortable sharing.I felt that self-loathing saved me from becoming what I was afraid of and would truly hate; what I couldn't stand to be.
But see, that's not true. I know it's hard to reconcile, but you can both not hate yourself, and at the same time, see room for improvement and work towards it. Hate doesn't have to be your bloody whip. Take a few weeks to wrap your head around that if you need to. I'm pretty sure I did. I'm not about positive affirmations. I tried out a shrink who was and after like 2 meetings I was out of there, because sorry, telling myself I'm great over and over again isn't going to do anything positive for me. That being said - I had to do a lot of consciously learning how to treat myself with kindness. I'm still not great, and I still expect more out of myself than I would any of my family or lovers or friends. However, it's really important to learn to cut yourself a break. I tried to take time and be patient with myself. I tried to trust that even if one day I failed, I was making slow and steady progress forward. It was hard because I had to trust in myself and also in intangibles, essentially. That drives me crazy. I want to quantify, measure, and prove. I want to know. I had to learn to let that need go. (I still have to learn it. LOTS of the time.) Out of curiosity, would you describe yourself as an impatient person? I think impatient people may be worse at this sort of thing. They know what they want and they want it NOW! Many big important life goals require so many, many small steps, and years of work, stuff that can't be achieved if you're burning yourself out on 100% all the time. mk reminds me. I also had to learn how to do things gradually. See, if I rush all into something, I tend to - you know - go crazy and extremist and all-or-nothing about it and it's not sustainable. So I have to take some things slow. I don't know, probably not really that helpful, tbh. Hey, look, you, chase after them. Kill them. I don't know what your wolves are. If you can do it I encourage you to do so. I find exercise works wonders for helping one's attitude, slightly uncaging the rat of the mind, and at the same time counts as an accomplishment that one cannot really tear down as "insufficient."