Are You Disrespecting Yourself? Addressing The Inner Critic & Self-Toxicity

Duration: 5:20 754 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The video explores the critical concept of self-toxicity by examining how individuals treat themselves through their beliefs, internal dialogue, and behaviors. The speaker encourages viewers to identify specific actions that are unhelpful, discouraging, inattentive, disrespectful, or unsafe toward oneself. Common examples include ignoring personal needs, failing to communicate boundaries, and lying to oneself about what one truly wants. A significant portion of this self-criticism stems from the internalization of conditional worthiness, where people believe they are only lovable if they achieve high grades or meet specific external standards rather than accepting themselves unconditionally. Beyond self-directed negativity, the discussion extends to how these toxic patterns manifest in relationships with others and how one perceives treatment from others. Unhelpful behaviors in interpersonal dynamics are characterized by a lack of responsiveness to needs, rigidity, an absence of reciprocity, and an unwillingness to compromise. The transcript illustrates this with examples of dismissive responses, such as telling someone "sucks to be you" when they ask for help, which shuts down collaboration. In contrast, healthy relationships require a willingness to work together on shared problems, whether it is handling household repairs or navigating parenting challenges, ensuring that no one feels dismissed or forced to handle everything alone. The speaker identifies three distinct dimensions of relational health: what we do to ourselves, what we do to others, and what others do to us. When individuals engage in self-neglect, refuse to problem-solve, or sabotage their own progress, they remain stuck on autopilot within their distress without seeking a way out. The core argument is that until people can eradicate these "rent-free" villains living in their heads and develop a genuine sense of safety, they will struggle to protect themselves or engage meaningfully with the world. Ultimately, the goal is to help clients recognize these patterns so they can move from a state of self-rejection to one where they feel safe enough to love themselves unconditionally and build collaborative relationships.

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thinking about beliefs, self-talk, and behaviors toward yourself. And this is what we're going to ask clients. Thinking about how you treat yourself. What do you do that is unhelpful, unencouraging, inattentive, disrespectful, untruthful, and unsafe? That is unaccepting or rejecting. And having people articulate in what ways are you unhelpful to yourself? For example, you ignore what your needs, which makes it harder to get things done. You don't tell people what your boundaries are, what your needs are. Well, they can't help and they can't they're more likely to fail to meet your needs if you don't communicate them. What do you do to yourself that's discouraging or unencouraging, whatever you want to say. I guess discouraging is a better better word, but um it doesn't have the e in it, so whatever. >> [laughter] >> That's easy for a lot of people. A lot of people are their own worst critic, and we can really look at what that self-talk looks like. Um in what ways are you inattentive to your needs? In what ways are you disrespectful to yourself? For example, not protecting yourself, not maintaining your boundaries, not taking care of yourself. In what ways are you untruthful to yourself? Knowing maybe on some level that you want something or need something, but telling yourself you don't need that. You don't really want that. Lying to yourself. And in what ways do you just reject yourself? Instead of saying, "I am lovable." Period. End of story. Nothing else. It's "I am lovable if I am lovable when." And that's another message that most of us internalized as we were growing up. We came to believe that we were only lovable if we made the honor roll. We were only lovable if we did this or didn't do that. What types of self-talk are clients still engaging in with themselves? We need to help clients feel safe in their own skin. One of the hardest um villains to eradicate is are the are the ones that are living rent-free in their head. And until they can develop a sense of safety, until they don't hear those toxic messages repeatedly or re- revisit those toxic experiences repeatedly, they may not feel safe. They may not feel like they can protect themselves, and they may not even want to engage with others. Then ask them the same question about their relationships with others. Thinking about your beliefs, self-talk, and behaviors toward other people, what do you do that is unhelpful, unencouraging, inattentive, disrespectful, untruthful, and unsafe? And then finally, if you really want to go down that rabbit hole, you can say, "In your relationships with others, what do they do to you that is unhelpful, unencouraging, inattentive, disrespectful, untruthful, or unsafe, unaccepting?" Um We're looking at it again. What I do to me, what I do to others, and what others do to me, because those are the three dimensions of relationships. Unhelpful behaviors look like unresponsiveness to needs, rigidity, lack of reciprocity, and unwillingness to compromise. In relationships with others, it may be somebody who says, "Hm, you need help moving tonight this weekend? Well, sucks to be you. I'm I'm not helping. Um or you need somebody to pick up your your laundry or groceries? Sucks to be you. Not my problem. Uh dismissiveness or refusal to collaborate. Thinking about relationships, what do we need to do? If I need help with something, I need somebody who is going to collaborate with me sometimes, not necessarily do it for me. I've been thinking about around our house. I shouldn't go anywhere around plumbing or electricity. I know this cuz I've tried and I know I'm not good at it. My husband is wonderful at it. He is one if there's a problem with those things, I tell him, he handles it. He doesn't dismiss me. He doesn't say, "Well, that sucks to be you." But then there are other things like parenting that we had to collaborate on. It wasn't for one or the other of us to do. We had to collaborate on, "How are we going to solve this problem or address this issue?" And then self-directed unhelpfulness looks like self-neglect, refusal to problem-solve, self-sabotaging and disengagement. A person who is on autopilot, who doesn't want to solve problem-solve, they're not helping themselves out of their distress. They're just sitting in it and they're refusing to try to figure out, "How do I get out of it?"