Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

Self-Destructive “Soothing”?

How do you treat yourself?

Hi, I’m Anne. I am a therapist in Orange County, California.

Oftentimes we do not realize that some of our most destructive patterns come from the ways we treat ourselves under stress. For example, a friend was telling me about an experience at work where he made a significant mistake by missing a detail on a large project after the project had been completed and delivered. When he realized his mistake, he was beside himself. His mind raced through all the possible things that could happen as a result of this error: would he get fired, would he be overlooked for a promotion, would others be impacted by his mistake, would his boss yell at him, would his coworkers laugh at him, would his career ever recover? His mind was racing, and he couldn’t sleep all night. He also was rehearsing all the ways he made the mistake and how if he had just done THIS or THAT it wouldn’t have happened.

The next day he brought up the error to his manager, and he was met with kindness and support. His manager helped him fix the project error and sent it back to their client without much fuss (phewf!). He shared that when he brought it up to his manager, he made sure to say that he was embarrassed, had thought through all of his missteps along the way that led to this mistake, and was certain something like that would never happen again.

As he recalled this situation to me, he said at night when he couldn’t sleep, he rehearsed what a former therapist told him: when you are anxious, think through all the possible scenarios about what could happen (AKA, go with the anxiety). He said that he also practiced a technique of thinking through what was true and not true about his train of thought. In short, he tried to soothe his anxiety by thinking.

This is a common way some of us were taught to do when experiencing anxiety. The problem is that when we try to think our way through anxiety, we accidentally treat ourselves as if we should have known and should have been perfect.

Rumination can be a cover for self-punishment

Later in the conversation I playfully asked when he planned to stop punishing himself for his mistake. He retorted that eventually he would stop once he had rehearsed the issue enough times to know it would never happen again. In short, he was shaming himself by playing the tape over and over again. This was an important window into where his former therapy failed to help him: how he treats himself.

It is important to note that while changing one’s thinking pattern can be a useful tool, it doesn’t change your relationship with yourself. On the surface my friend could “handle” the stress of his mistake during his overnight rumination, but he was simultaneously and destructively soothing himself and criticizing himself – something I am sure we are all very familiar with. When we ruminate as a solve to our anxiety, the anxiety will be worse and worse over time. And we will increasingly move through our world with rigidity, fear, and self-criticism.

Rather than only providing tools for how to get through a difficult life event, the type of therapy I practice gets at the undercurrent of ways we treat ourselves when we are feeling small, embarrassed, and undone. If we saw a child kicking himself for not catching the winning ball at his baseball game, we wouldn’t tell him how to be a perfect ball catcher next time; rather, we would help the child remember that his worth doesn’t come from his performance. We wouldn’t want him to use his thoughts to hold him accountable to his mistakes; we’d tell him that we love him no matter what he does on the field.

For many adults, it is common to live with an inner critic that berates us for all of our mistakes and gets louder when we are stressed. This critic is a carbon copy of how we were likely treated earlier on in life and has become a familiar way we treat ourselves. Depth therapy can be a powerful way to form a new relationship with yourself when you make mistakes.

Book today →. I have affordable appointments for adult psychotherapy in Newport Beach or online.