Embracing Your Critical Voice The Gateway To SelfLove
[Applause]
hey
[Music]
we’re living in extremely challenging
times
i feel raw my patience is shot
and i’m ready to bite people’s heads off
for the slightest things and i can
feel my critical voice waiting to pounce
every time
i lose my patience and i’m guessing you
might have a critical voice that attacks
you too
am i right i’m picturing a big cat
it’s like a mountain lion stalking its
prey
you waiting then pounce
it’s got you in its claws sharp words
coming in for the kill
i’m an idiot will i never learn
yep instead of fangs our critical voices
use harsh words to attack us i can tell
you in the 25 years since i founded my
non-profit the body positive with
elizabeth scott
i haven’t met a single person who
doesn’t have a critical voice
and that’s out of the thousands of
people that have gone through our
training programs
i don’t teach people how to get rid of
their critical voices
because that’s impossible i teach people
how to practice self-love
i won’t say that your critical voice
will disappear forever
even if you’re the most self-loving
person on the planet
okay maybe maybe if you’re as
enlightened as the dalai lama
but if you’re anything like me i don’t
think you’re there yet
so how do we practice self-love how can
we be kinder to
ourselves before we know self-love we
have to understand the critical voice
our brains are like sponges they soak up
all of the mean
things people say and do to us and they
turn
other people’s messages into our own
listen to me they say if you just
exercise every day and get fit
then you’d be attractive
or they even worse they do things like
whisper to us in our low moments
you’re an utter failure
why do we listen why do we listen
negative bias it’s what scientists call
our tendency to cling to the memories
of our perceived mistakes and the
hurtful things that happen to us
and forget all of the wonderful things
that make us
good and caring people
the good news is that our brains have
plasticity
so it is possible to train ourselves to
hold on to the good stuff
and focus less on the negative
i’ll tell you from personal experience
though it takes a lot of practice
so let’s start with a baby step by
taking a deep breath together
as you inhale imagine that your breath
is filling up
all of your trillions and trillions of
cells with kindness
and as you exhale see if you can let go
even just for this moment of any
self-critical thoughts you might be
holding
inhaling kindness
exhaling self-criticism
i didn’t always have a self-love
practice i remember
a hot chico california afternoon and i’m
standing in front of my metal
dingy gray 10th grade locker
you know that sick feeling of fear you
get in your stomach before something
awful is about to happen
that’s how i feel as i lift the latch
and swing open my locker door
a piece of binder paper flutters out and
lands face down at my feet
my heart is racing i pick up the paper
and turn it over
yep it’s happened again for the third
time in two months i’m looking at a
graphic
drawing of me badly drawn i might add
performing sexual acts on the overly
enhanced boy in the picture
i feel sick this time i have to tell
someone so i
find my best friend and i show her the
picture but it doesn’t do any good
because neither of us know what to do me
too hasn’t happened yet
it’s the 1970s and no one’s teaching
high school students that sexual
harassment is wrong
at least not in my rural town so i blame
myself
of course i do right there must be
something
horribly wrong with me for these boys
boys i thought were my friends
to torture me like this my critical
voice says to me
you’re fat and ugly and that’s why this
happened
so i do what i always do to fix myself
i start another diet but this time
my desperation to lose weight is so
extreme that i develop bulimia
and i struggle with it for the next six
years of my life
but i am one of the lucky ones i
survived
my sister stephanie wasn’t so lucky as a
nearly
six foot tall girl who wore size 12
shoes and never really fit in at school
she blamed her body for all of her
problems
the shame she felt about her body size
led to binge eating and weight gain
and my dad who was a very loving father
but who had his own food and body image
issues
hassled my sister about her weight
dinner table comments included things
like
are you sure you want to have seconds
tonight stephanie or
do you know how many calories are in
that piece of cheesecake
like me stephanie developed bulimia but
unlike me she struggled with it for the
rest of her life
and it didn’t help that after she lost
weight
she got the most dangerous compliment of
all
from my dad you look great stephanie
how much weight have you lost now in her
early 20s stephanie got breast implants
one of them was faulty and poisoned her
body with silicone
it led to lupus cerebritis an autoimmune
disease that killed her
15 years later at the age of 36.
the moment i found out stephanie died is
imprinted
in my brain forever it’s a warm
october afternoon and my husband and i
are just back from taking
our one-year-old daughter carmen to the
little farm in the berkeley hills
i can still see carmen toddling around
with a very determined look on her face
and hear her squeal and delight as she
feeds a piece of lettuce
to a big brown cow when we get home i go
in the kitchen and i see the red light
flashing on our answering machine
i push the play button it’s my sister
marsha
her voice is choked with shock as she
says
connie dad just called to tell me
stephanie died
i don’t hear the rest of marsha’s
message i’m falling to the floor
i can’t breathe jim puts his arms around
me and my breath
finally comes and it’s followed by a
sound
i’ve never heard come out of me before
[Music]
later that evening marcia and i are at
the mortuary
to say goodbye to our beloved stephanie
she’s lying on a cold metal table
and tubes are coming out of her nose and
mouth
from the paramedics who tried
unsuccessfully to save her
we tell stephanie how much we love her
and i stroke her arm and
kiss her on the forehead before we leave
stephanie’s death is my call to action
i can’t stop thinking about why my
sister died
it comes down to this body hatred
killed my sister i’m so afraid now that
carmen will grow up to hate her precious
body
or turn on herself like i did if she
gets tortured at school
why will she be any different from
stephanie or me
or every other girl in this world
my rage and my fear are the catalysts
for one of the most
important decisions of my life
i will change the world for my baby girl
and that’s how the body positive was
born
and i did change carmen’s world she grew
up in the body positive community
surrounded by diverse people
all doing the work to love themselves
carmen’s world is different because she
developed self-love
actually what happened is she never lost
it
so what exactly is this elusive
self-love
you might not think self-love is
something you’re born with
especially if you have a persistent
critical voice
when i was writing my book and body the
dictionary definitions for self-love
that i found
only listed things like conceit
narcissism selfishness competition
if that’s self-love i don’t want it but
the fact is self-love has nothing to do
with ego
it’s something we all need for our
self-preservation
for our protection and it leads to
deeper
connections with others with self-love
we don’t have to compete with people or
compare ourselves to them
we can be vulnerable and show people
who we truly are flaws in all
in the early days of the body positive i
was told not to use the phrase self-love
everyone had their reasons but my
favorite comment of all was
you shouldn’t say self-love connie
people might think you’re talking about
masturbation
i still crack up every time i think
about that
i disagree with those who say we should
replace all
critical thoughts immediately with
positive ones
since the job of our critical voices
strange as it may sound
is to protect us by trying to perfect us
they only get bigger and louder the more
we push them away
that’s my experience anyway and it’s the
same for people i’ve worked with
all across the united states from
nigeria
chile italy and more than 20 other
countries
and it doesn’t matter if i’m speaking at
a company a university
high school middle or elementary school
the critical voice pops up everywhere
so what do we do how do we quiet these
critical voices if they’re here to stay
first we dig deep for our courage
and we face them straight on
and then we learn to love them i took a
big leap forward in loving my critical
voice when i realized it sounded a lot
like my daughter carmen did
when she was four years old and had
tantrums
i’ll be honest with you i didn’t want to
deal with carmen’s tantrums
trying to get her out of the toy store
when she didn’t want to go
was not my idea of fun but i didn’t push
her away
i didn’t run i turned to her
because i loved her i held her in my
arms until the storm passed
and then we talked about what was
upsetting her
like how leaving the toy store when
you’re four years old feels like the
world is
ending we talked about her feelings and
i validated them
and she got that it was okay to have
strong emotions
the understanding i gave to carmen was
something i
also needed for myself with a lot of
practice
i learned to be loving with myself when
i make mistakes
or when i struggle with my own emotions
so now when my critical voice speaks i
see her as the little scared child
inside of me who needs attention
i don’t run or push her away i turn and
i pick her up
and hold her and say oh hi you’re having
a hard time today aren’t you
i show up for my scared self just as i
did for my little carmen
with love here’s how it works
a few years ago i’m standing on a
berkeley street corner waiting to cross
it’s a warm sunny california day so i’m
wearing shorts and a t-shirt
a woman in a green minivan rolls up to
the stoplight with her window open
she looks me up and down and says you
shouldn’t wear
shorts like that with legs like yours
did she really just say that to me
when i get home i look in the mirror at
my 55 year old size
and i hear myself say you’re old and
ugly
the next week i want to go for a run but
i realize i’m afraid to put on shorts
because i’m repeating
the awful words of the minivan woman to
myself
shouldn’t wear shorts like that with
legs like yours
but this time i’m aware that it’s me
doing the talking
my critical voice is like a mindfulness
bell it rings
loud and clear to let me know i need to
give myself some
love thank you thighs for all the
amazing places you’ve taken me in life
and then i go for my run in my shorts
a comment i hear a lot is sure you can
have self-love connie but i can’t
there’s just too many things about
myself that i don’t like
so here’s the most important message i
hope you’ll take away from my talk today
self-love the self-protection kind
is here for us even when we don’t like
ourselves
and what i find so powerful is that it
also can protect us
from the harsh judgments that come at us
from other people
i’m not at all saying it’s easy for me
to love myself or for you to love
yourself
there are definitely obstacles and it’s
especially hard for people
who suffer from body related trauma that
results
from oppression or abuse
we all need support to love ourselves
just as we
are but sometimes a trauma specialist is
what’s needed
to help heal the wounds that block our
self-love
and sometimes we’re on our own but we
don’t have to be enlightened people
to have self-love one of my purposes
here on earth is to role model
imperfection and i can tell you i’m
doing a fantastic job
and that’s myself love talking loving
our flawed selves even when we blow it
that’s how we learn and it’s not
always easy being human that’s for sure
but what i learned from my sister’s
death and everything that’s happened
since is that life is a precious gift
even on the hard days so
what are you gonna do the next time you
tell yourself you’re not good enough
smart enough attractive enough are you
gonna believe that critical voice
try and push it away or are you with me
in turning towards that scared little
part of yourself
with love thank you
thank you