Why "Getting Tough with Yourself" Hasn't Been Working

And you don't doubt yourself as much as you think you do

Photo by Andrew Lakersnoi on Unsplash

Aldous Huxley famously said ‘It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other’. Similarly, it’s a little embarrassing that for all the time and effort I’ve put into investigating what’s happening between my ears, what I keep coming back to again and again is that I need to be a little kinder to myself. A lot kinder even.

I have to admit though, part of me enjoys being mean to myself, gets a sadistic little kick out of it. (Is it sadism or masochism when you're being cruel to yourself? There's a philosophical puzzle for the ages.) It feels somehow warranted, appropriate. It's somewhere for my anger and frustration to go. It's unsentimental, un-wishy-washy, unhippyish, spicy. It's fun.

I’m also worried that if I go too easy on myself I’ll pull the wool over my own eyes, and will end up being the last person to know how obnoxious I’ve become - will maybe even do something I can’t take back. After all, we humans do nothing so reliably as deceive ourselves about ourselves. So much of the time, when we feel people are deliberately lying to us, they've actually been subconsciously lying to themselves for years and are telling us what they now believe to be the truth. The world is full of unreflective narcissists who think everyone around them just happens to be toxic because they couldn't possibly be the problem; recidivists who rationalise their crimes to themselves as just ‘doing what they have to do’ to get by in a tough world; warmongers who've genuinely convinced themselves they needed to invade the nearest country because otherwise it would have invaded them first; etc etc. I have a horror of falling into the same trap myself. Maybe because I’ve already fallen into it, already deceived myself about important things, already messed up so badly…

This despite the fact that I’m generally pretty high in self-awareness, by both my own reckoning and that of my loved ones and counsellors over the years. In fact, I’ve always felt I was a little too self-aware for comfort. But as any Anthony de Mello fan knows, there’s no such thing as being too aware. My problem has always been that I treat awareness like this harsh beam, pitilessly exposing every tiny defect and vaporising any rock the awful truth might care to crawl under. If I want to get the real truth about myself out of myself, I’ve always felt, the best approach is to tie myself into a chair, shine a very bright light into my eyes, and say ‘I have all day you know…you’re going to have to talk sooner or later…’ When in reality true awareness is more like the light of the sun, bestowing warmth and life as well as illumination, treating everything it touches with kindness and encouragement.

The fact is that if you interrogate people too harshly, they tend to clam up, and the same applies within yourself. If even the police have figured out that the “good cop bad cop” strategy gets them further than the bright-light-to-the-face approach, can it hurt to be more of a good cop to yourself when practising self-inquiry? Yell at your regrettable behaviours and patterns all day every day, and none of them are going to feel like “co-operating” with you long enough to shift and change.

Last year I wrote about the ways in which we often suck a lot of the joy out of our creative pursuits with perfectionist demandingness. I used the analogy of a parent playing Lego with their kid, and saying ‘Not like that!’ every time the child dares put a couple of bricks together. Result: the child sulks. The same principle applies with inner work. If your child has done something you’re not thrilled with, raising your voice, imposing over-the-top punishments and holding a grudge forever after isn’t the right way to get them to change the behaviour. Much better to gently investigate why they did what they did, make them feel heard, really try to understand their choices from the inside. This makes the child more cooperative, more likely to help you get to the truth of the matter, more likely to behave better in future because they feel supported and loved. And even if none of that were true, taking a compassionate tack still makes you more likely to understand why they did what they did. Because kindness is calming and helps you think clearly, whereas anger is agitating and blinds you to anything extenuating, mitigating or illuminating.

The brutal truth isn't just more unpleasant than the compassionate truth, it's also less true.

The reality is that facing up to your shadow is already a difficult business, and if you undertake it in a spirit of hostility and anger you double the difficulty level until the procedure becomes pretty much impossible. You never get to the core truth you’re going after, because your uncharitable approach has made it so difficult to look at that whenever you get near it your mind sort of glances off it in horror. And bounces off to some other dark corner of your mind, or finds temporary comfort in some kind of distraction, then bounces back in the general direction of the core truth, and then glances off it again, like the least fun pinball game ever. This is rumination, this is counterproductive, this doesn’t get you anywhere.

The final reason self-contempt isn’t a sustainable approach is that deep down you know that you’re not contemptible. So if you go after yourself in this way, you put yourself at odds with the part of you that loves you and is looking out for you - which sets up an inner war - which generates physical, emotional and mental tension - which completely distracts you from your goal of discovering the truth. So while it seems like “getting tough” should get results where “going soft on yourself” fails, the exact opposite is true. What makes true awareness and insight feel safe to crawl out from under its rock isn't chasing awareness and insight, it's love. Softness. Kindness. When we try a little tenderness, those “eureka” moments we’re after start to descend on us without warning.

Speaking of those, ever notice how often they don’t actually involve any new information? Sometimes we’ve been thinking ‘Maybe I keep doing X because of Y’ for years, treating it like a kind of scientific hypothesis. Then one day we really realise - emotionally, somatically, spiritually realise - that Y is absolutely definitely 100% why we do X, and we break through. It’s like the distinction de Mello draws in Awareness between knowing something with the head and being aware of it with all your being. You can know perfectly well you’re addicted to something (as nearly all of us are) and thinking ‘I really must quit’, but only if you’re aware of the addiction will you viscerally never want to have anything to do with it again. For de Mello, that’s what all wrongdoing boils down to: knowing what you’re doing is wrong, rather than being aware it’s wrong. I think there’s a very good chance he’s right.

So with those “eureka” moments of self-discovery, if thinking about and around an emotional problem is like postulating a scientific theory, then feeling all the way into the problem is like the experimental confirmation. And as any scientist will tell you, you can theorise all day, but you don’t get any groundbreaking inventions without the experimental confirmation. And as any mental health expert will tell you, you can’t feel all the way through and out the other side of your stuckness unless you feel supported and loved first. Only loving awareness makes self-investigation safe.

One of my favourite thinkers on X (yes, there are thinkers on X if you know where to look!), Scott @scottdomes, describes the process really well here. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s a condensation: ‘in the past I was obsessed with figuring out what my “core problem” was… [now I realise] we all have the same core problem…we’re scared of uncertainty, lack of belonging & love, and death…so we need a strategy for reducing fear…you cannot be having an experience of fear at the same time you’re having an experience of love; they are distinct states, distinct in the mind and the body, and mutually exclusive…so if we are afraid, the best thing we can do is cultivate love towards our fear - and the moment we do that, we shift from fear to love…> say to [your] fear: “I see you. I welcome you. I love you.” > keep repeating those words until you start to feel love in your body > surround the fear sensation with the love sensation > stay there as long as you can’.

Photo by Kristaps Solims on Unsplash

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I’m not in the state Scott describes nearly as often as I’d like, but whenever I do visit it’s amazing how quickly real insights start to emerge, and how much they surprise me. Here are a few recent interconnected ones, reached with a little help from my online & irl friends.

Most of us carry a certain amount of shame. But scratch the surface, and you just might find this sense of outrage underneath. I know I have something to offer, something the world doesn’t recognise as much as I’ve decided it should, but then if the whole world doesn’t think I’m up to much they must be right, because after all who I am I to question the whole world, but then again I know I have something to offer...I know I’m a good architect, but my parents didn’t like my drawings when I was four, but on the other hand I know I’m a good architect, but on the other hand my parents…Basically, we get angry at others for judging and limiting us, when we’re actually doing that to ourselves in advance based on what we remember others doing before, or imagine they’d do again.

But my outrage shows me that deep down, I believe that I’m OK. In fact, when I feel down that deep, I find I have all sorts of nice confident beliefs about how decent I am, how talented, gifted, how I’m on a mission, here for a good reason, and so on. Could those be grandiose delusions? Why not. But I’m no longer interested in recoiling from them and denying their power over me. So I’m typing them out, even though my learned sense of modesty is screaming at me not to - to say nothing of my worry that you’re now thinking what an navel-gazing, self-satisfied New Ager I am: ‘Besides, I’ve read your writing…’ (Knock yourself out! I don’t get to control whether you approve of me or like my work!)

Then there’s my terror that I’m silly and inflated and deluding myself, like all those creatives I’ve met at open mics who thought they were on their way to the big time, who now that I think of it I mightn’t judge so harshly if I weren’t projecting a bit. (For the record, I don’t equate “being on a mission” with being “destined for the big time”. Though I do think I’d be a lot more likely to reach a wide audience with my work if I had an unshakeable belief that that’s exactly what I was going to do.) The trouble is, denying to myself that I believe about myself what I do believe about myself is a species of the very thing I’m trying to avoid: self-deception. Worse, it’s a form of mental self-harm. Worse than any harm that could come from admitting I believe in what I’m doing, doing it, and potentially setting myself up for a fall.

A fall…there’s the rub. Turns out my self-doubt isn’t doubt at all. It’s fear.

Ah, my sweet fear. Once again we’re back to our old friend the fear-love dichotomy, the smart animal’s variation on the contraction-expansion binary that seems to drive just about everything in creation. All this self-doubt of ours is designed to make us contract, to stop us acting - because we’re afraid to act, due to what people will say or not say or think or not think. So it’s more about fear-of-others than it is about doubt-of-self. We know our doubts aren't true and we have a lot to offer, but we're afraid that if we offer it in all its fullness, it'll be rejected. If we were 100% secure in ourselves then others' opinions wouldn't matter to us, but for now if we're rejected we feel like there must be a good reason - and that's the core insecurity, not the myriad specific things we pretend to doubt ourselves about!

The kicker is that if we expect the world to reject us, we’re sending them a signal that that’s just what they should do - even if we know our worth deep down - and set up a self-fulfilling prophecy that further reinforces our defensiveness. Which is why we have to go all in on ‘I have something to offer’, let ourselves believe it, don’t let ourselves undermine it, embody it, project it out there, get it back, reinforce it, rinse, repeat. It’s kind of funny, really: all this evolutionary programming telling us to believe whatever the tribe tells us about ourselves, when they generally think whatever we subconsciously tell them to think of us. So let’s think something good! People in your past may not have undervalued you as much as your young self thought they did. Maybe they did, but don’t any more. Either way, it doesn’t mean people will undervalue you now. And if someone out there is feeling contempt for you or your work, that’s because part of them is unhappy or blocked. Deeply happy people don’t feel contempt.

What a brave thing it is to break this cycle of judgement and fear that keeps people around the world suspicious and violent - even if it means, horror of horrors, having the audacity to forgive yourself for things you did that were genuinely wrong, behaviours of yours that are genuinely harmful! - because yes, we use guilt and shame to keep us small, AKA safe from risk-taking, every bit as much as we use self-doubt - so forgive yourself today - even if you don’t think the people you know would forgive you if they knew the truth about you - you may be wrong, and if you’re right that just gives you the opportunity to buck the trend and do something noble - because forgiveness is always noble - even when it’s self-directed - after all, you forgive someone if you love them, and you love yourself right? If you didn’t you wouldn’t be putting in all those little everyday efforts to keep yourself alive and safe and happy.

Now If I were 100% resting in love, I wouldn’t be thinking about any of this stuff at all, addressing these insecurities, worrying about my ego, thinking about how I’m perceived - my tank would be full and I’d just be driving the car. But for now I’m still filling the tank. Encouraging myself. Directing that beam of gentle awareness inward.

So in the spirit of that, I’m gonna sign off with a poem about fear-pretending-to-be-self-doubt-and-guilt-and-shame-and-all-the-other-things-that-hold-me-back. Some of it may strike a chord with you.

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I know I’m a kind, honourable, good-enough person - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know I belong on the planet I was born in - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know I’m completely safe in the arms of creation - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know I have a mandate to be as happy and fulfilled as humanly possible - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know I’m engaging and charming - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know there’s no invisible wall separating me from the “normies” I resent - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know I’m bright in several senses of the word - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know I have juicy creative gifts that I can deeply enhance my surroundings with - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know my music is full of invention, excitement and life - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know I’m 100%, completely, totally forgiven - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

I know I have a life to be getting on with - but self-doubt makes me pretend otherwise.

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Thanks for reading and catch you again soon! These days I’m trying to divert more and more of my time from normal work to this, especially as I find writing the kind of post I want to write very labour-intensive. So if you’ve already subscribed I’d really appreciate it if you considered upgrading to paid at some point. Other than that keep doing what you do, whatever that is. I’m sure you’re very good at it.