Intellectual Discernment - shutting up the critical voice

“We have our own perpetrator, victim, rescuer triangle going on within us. The perpetrator is the critical parent voice, the victim feelings come from the wounded inner child places, and we try to rescue ourselves from the pain and shame with compulsive and addictive self defeating behaviors focused on some external source. Those self defeating behaviors do not work to stop the pain within except to give us a temporary distraction, so that gives the critical parent voice more fuel to beat up on our own inner children, which causes more pain which drives the compulsive and addictive behavior. A truly vicious self perpetuating cycle of self defeating behavior - or as I call it in an article on my web site, A Dance of Suffering, Shame, and Self-abuse - the codependent three step.” “In order to stop being the victim of our self and our wounding it is vital to start setting boundaries with that critical parent voice - to start learning how to stop the inner child abuse that is part of the disease dynamic. Recognizing that it is not telling us the whole truth, that it is the result of faulty programming and polarized perspective, is the first step to starting to see that the critical parent voice is not an inherent part of our being. It is not an integral component of who we are - it is a part of us that was created by programming and wounding, it is a part of us that we can have some control over, that we can change. Then we can start practicing some discernment and use the magnificent tool that is our mind to start reprogramming the part of our mind that has been our own worst enemy. Then we can start counteracting all the negative messages with positive messages. Positive affirmations are a very important tool in this process. The reality of our codependency is that we are programmed to negatively affirm ourselves hundreds of times a day - and that is on a good day, on a “bad” one we can get into the thousands. We need to stop empowering the negative programming and start choosing to introduce positive programming into our own internal process. This is one of the ways that we start relating to our self in a more Loving way.”

This is the fifth in a series of articles focused on how to apply the Serenity Prayer in our lives by having the wisdom and discernment to recognize the things we do have the power to change.

Contact Robert

Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney is copyright 1995. Material on Joy2MeU web site (except where otherwise noted) is copyright 1996 thru 2015 by Robert Burney PO Box 98 Fallbrook CA 92088

Intellectual Discernment - shutting up the critical voice was originally published online on the Inner Child/Codependency Recovery page that I used to edit for Suite101.com Directory on October 27, 2002. There is a list of - and links to - other articles recently published on that Directory on my Suite101 Articles page.

Originally published at https://joy2meu.com/Critical_Voice.htm