Talking nicely to yourself - what can Billy Connolly teach us?
Franco Greco • February 12, 2020
Part two of the self compassion series. Being self critical can be extremely unhelpful to your overall wellbeing
In my first post on the Self Compassion series
(6 February 2020), I covered Dr Paul Gilbert's work on developing a compassionate self. One question that arises from the self compassion
work is the idea that can "self-blaming
and self-criticisms
be helpful ... can these efforts enable oneself to improve and prevent mistakes and errors.
Dr Gilbert makes the distinction between "self-critical people, compared with those who self-reassure."
Billy Connolly on Self Criticism
In Dr Gilbert's article, Criticizing and reassuring oneself: An exploration of forms, styles and reasons in female students (2004) he talks about Billy Connolly, the famous Glaswegian comedian, who suffered various forms of early abuse and struggled with depression and an alcohol problem.
He recounts an interview Billy Connolly had when he recalled an important insight he had whilst trying to relax in a flotation tank.
"I became aware of a kind of voice
when I make plans to do things. The inner voice says: ‘No, you’ll never do that. No, you’re not good enough, not clever enough, you’ll never go there...’
Connolly relates ‘this voice’ to the many who have beat and shamed him.
While Connolly jokes about it now .. he believes, too, that the voice will never really leave him; he sees his life as a series of different
strategies for learning to live with it. Not least of these was the tried-and-tested one he employed in the tank itself:
‘‘Away with you!’’ he yelled, ‘‘F . . . off.’’
Dr Gilbert argues that "as a result of early experiences,
people can internalize an ability to be self-reassuring and soothing in times of personal failure, or to act out their frustration with narcissistic rage at the self."
Self-criticizing vs. self-reassuring separated into two components
Forms of self-criticizing
separated into two components related to: being self-critical, dwelling on mistakes and sense of inadequacy; and a second component of wanting to hurt the self and feeling self-disgust and self-hate.
The reasons and functions for self-criticism separated into two components.
One was related to desires to try to self-improve (called self-improving/correction), and the other to take revenge on, harm or hurt the self for failures (called self-harming/persecuting).
What is helpful?
Teaching people skills to re-evaluate their self-criticisms and self- attacks often involves a form of self-reassuring such as focusing on one’s positives and reducing black and white thinking. This might work well for those with self improving or self-correcting types of self-criticism, especially if they basically like
themselves.
It is unclear if they will work as well for self-persecutors and self-haters.
Dr Gilbert suggest value in helping people develop inner warmth and compassion for the self as a counter affective response to self-disgust and hatred.
Case study - Clare
Dr Gilbert writes about a client he worked with named Clare.
Clare had not internalized an ability to be emphatic to her distress or reassure herself when feeling low or failing at things. She ‘hated’ feeling weak, depressed, and vulnerable.
Developing abilities for compassionate
and warm re-evaluations of the self and tolerating negative feelings with emphatic support had a major impact on her recovery.
At the end of therapy, she reflected that trying to focus on her positives (as she had in the early days of our work together) had felt like self-criticism as if she was telling herself ‘You must learn to focus on your positives and not think in black and white!’
She noted that compassionate re-evaluation felt very different and was much harder for her.
In summary
Understanding your origins, styles, and functions of your self-criticism may be important in helping you change them. Self-criticism is a complex multifaceted experience that we have yet to fully understand—if it is far more than just negative self-evaluation, and just focusing on cognitive behavioural interventions. I focus on cultivating self compassion approaches is most critical. I will delve more deeply into these in the next post.
References
Gilbert, P., Clarke, M., Hempel, S., Miles, J. N., & Irons, C. (2004). Criticizing and reassuring oneself: An exploration of forms, styles and reasons in female students. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 43(1), 31-50.
anger, self critical, self compassion, paul gilbert, self loathing
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