She Can Heal Podcast

Ep. 48 - How to Stop the Self-Criticism Cycle

• Keila Aldea, LCSW • Season 2 • Episode 48

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Self-criticism and bullying ourselves when we don't meet our expectations sabotages our growth and healing journey by activating our stress response and shutting down our problem-solving abilities. Positive change requires self-compassion instead of shame, challenging the misconception that being hard on ourselves is motivating.

• Criticizing yourself diminishes self-worth and self-trust, creating distrust in your abilities
• Self-bullying activates your fight-or-flight response, making healthy problem-solving impossible
• Harsh self-talk creates cycles of guilt, restriction, and eventual burnout
• Wellness progress depends on consistency and compassion, not perfectionism
• When you shame yourself, you're treating yourself worse than you'd ever treat a friend
• Replace self-criticism with a three-step approach: practice self-compassion, identify barriers, and create realistic plans
• Set achievable expectations rather than overwhelming yourself with dramatic changes
• Start with small steps like placing vitamins near your morning coffee or packing gym clothes the night before
• Sustainable change comes from consistency with realistic goals, not perfection

This week, practice awareness of your self-talk when you make mistakes or forget habits. Notice when you criticize yourself, then follow the three-step approach: be gentle with yourself, identify your barriers, and problem-solve for tomorrow.


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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the she Can Heal podcast, a podcast aimed at helping women heal and thrive emotionally, physically and spiritually. I am your host, kayla Eldia. I'm a licensed therapist and a self-care advocate that is passionate about helping women take back their power and help them realize they're important, worthy and deserve the care and attention they give to those they love most in their lives. This show is meant to help inspire you on your healing journey, no matter if you're in the discovery phase and are just realizing that you have unhealed wounds, habits and mindsets that are keeping you stuck in your life, or you've been on this journey for a while and are looking for inspiration, encouragement and or new tools to help you continue on your healing journey. My goal is to help you realize that you can heal from all that life has thrown at you and are capable of evolving into your healthiest and happiest version. On this show, I will provide you with resources, tools and insights to help you heal and thrive emotionally, physically and spiritually, because you deserve all of that. So if you're ready to ditch the guilt and make yourself a priority, then you're in the right place, because the truth is that you can't pour from an empty cup, even though most of us do this on a regular, and we really need to stop that nonsense. So get ready to be inspired, motivated and equipped to truly thrive.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to another episode on the she Can Heal podcast. I hope this episode finds you doing well, and today I wanted to talk about something that I personally have been struggling with and also I think it's something that a lot of us women go through. I know this because I hear this come up a lot in the clients that I work with, and what I'm talking about is shaming yourself or bullying yourself or criticizing yourself, basically treating yourself badly when you don't make a choice that you think you should be making, or if you make a choice that you think you should not have made. So I'll give you something that I've been struggling with and that is remembering to take my vitamins every single morning. It's something that I truly want to do, it's something that I know. It's like this habit that I really want to be consistent with, and it's something that I constantly struggle with and I get really upset at myself because I just don't remember in the mornings and I don't remember until I'm on the highway on my way to work and then I get so pissed off at myself because I said I will tell myself how much I have wanted to do this and how much I need to do this and why do I keep messing up with this, and I just get really upset at myself for that. Or sometimes, if I told myself I'm gonna go to the gym on a specific day and I decide not to go, I then get feel all guilty and I might say things to myself to bump myself down, because I know that I should have done this, I should have went to the gym and I didn't, and those types of things. For me, a lot of it is related to my health habits and it's something that I'm really working on, because working on being a healthy version of yourself and criticizing yourself do not go together, right?

Speaker 1:

You can't try to be healthy and be a bully to yourself. It just doesn't work that way, and part of the reason is because think about it Every time you criticize yourself, every time you put yourself down, what does that do to your sense of self, right? What does it do to your self-worth? It definitely diminishes it. It doesn't make you feel good about yourself. It decreases your motivation. You give up on yourself or you think that you're not good at this and you think other people are better at this.

Speaker 1:

But the truth is that in order for you to be healthy, in order for you to feel good about yourself, in order for you to be happy with yourself, we have to get into the habit of being kind to ourselves. We have to get into the habit of not bullying ourselves and really utilizing some of that compassion and some of that kindness. But also, I'm not saying that we need to excuse ourselves, because excusing ourselves is not going to get us to where we want to get to. But I think it opens up the opportunity for you to be able to say all right, what do I need to get done, what do I need to change, what do I need more of? Because if you're constantly putting yourself down, criticizing yourself and just making yourself feel like a failure, you are not going to feel open, you're not going to have space for the problem solving part that we need to implement into our day.

Speaker 1:

So if you are, for example, like what I just said, if I'm constantly criticizing myself and calling myself a failure and just being really upset at myself, it's going to create stress, my stress levels are going to go up and I'm not going to be able to be with myself to then say what do I need to do in order to be better? Because, if you think about it, what happens when your stress levels go up, when your cortisol levels are high, your nervous system is going to be very stimulated, it's going to get very parasympathetic, like they say, which is the fight or flight. And when your brain is in fight or flight, it does not allow for problem solving. It kind of shuts down that part of the brain that helps you to make decisions and things like that. And so, in order for us to make better choices, in order for us to create better habits, create different systems in our life, in order so that we can get better at doing the things that we want to do, Shaming yourself, guilting yourself, putting yourself down and creating all this narrative about why you're such a failure, why you can't do this, why you can't be better, is not the way to go, and instead it's really being that coach that you need to help you in that moment to say you know what shoot, I forgot to take my vitamins and, yes, it is frustrating because I forgot in for the last three days.

Speaker 1:

But you know what? Let me think about what I need in order to remember. Like, what's stopping me from remembering to take my vitamins? Maybe it's because they're put away and I don't see them. Maybe it's because they're put away and I don't see them. Maybe it's because I don't put a little timer for myself, or maybe I need to put them in a container next to my coffee maker so I can remember. But if I am in a place of criticism, if I'm in a place of just blaming myself, I'm going to be filled with stress and I'm not going to have the capacity to go into that problem solving mode and really explore options within myself.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so this is why it's so important for us to say to ourselves that stressing myself out, putting myself down, is not the way to go. That's not going to help me. It's just going to make me feel worse. It's going to just make me feel like shit, like I can't do anything. And then what happens is you don't have the motivation, you don't have the capacity to be kind and gentle with yourself, because, at the end of the day, putting yourself down is not going to get you there.

Speaker 1:

And if you think about it. Let's say that you are having an issue. Let's use myself example. So let's say that I. Let's say that I vent to my friend and I tell her oh my god, I'm such an idiot, I keep forgetting to take my vitamins. I just have like such bad memory and I really can't get it together. And what I probably want to hear from my friend is saying hey, don't talk to yourself like that. Listen, life is crazy, life is busy. Maybe have you thought about putting the vitamins by your coffee maker, or have you thought about just putting them in your work bag and then just taking them when you get to work. That's what I would like. That's what's gonna help me.

Speaker 1:

What's not gonna help me is if my friend says, for real, you're such an idiot you know those friends that they're too blunt with you and they'll literally agree with you and they'll be like yep, you are such an idiot, you always forget everything. And I'm pretty sure you're going to step back and be like are you serious? Did you just really say that to me? Like, did you really think that was helpful to me? Right, but guess what? You do it to yourself all the time. You do it to yourself all the time, and so in those moments, it's reminding yourself that I need to help myself to get through this, because putting myself down, bullying myself, is not going to get me there.

Speaker 1:

Let me share with you three reasons why you should not be doing this. Number one is that this type of behavior will shatter your self-worth. Okay, think about it. Every time that you say something that shames you, you are literally putting yourself down, you are hurting your self esteem and you're also creating a sense of distrust in yourself. Right, you're going to start believing that you're not disciplined enough, that you don't care about your health and well being, that you're not worthy of feeling good, and if you're someone like me who's trying to self-trust muscle, this is not the way to go. This is going to destroy any type of progress that you're trying to make in trusting yourself, and you're going to start to believe that you can rely on you and you might say things like I can't trust myself to be consistent, and you're going to think that you need other people to help you, that you can't do it on your own, which, again, it's just going to crush your self-confidence and it's going to spill over into other parts of your life.

Speaker 1:

Number one we need to stop this, because this just completely shatters not only our self-worth but our self-trust, and our self-trust is something that we need to constantly be working on, because if you can't trust yourself, if you can't rely on yourself, that's a problem, because now you're going to rely on other people, and other people are not you. You know what's best for you. You can trust that you know what you need to do, but also remember that you're only human and that you're not supposed to be perfect. We're not supposed to be perfect, all right. Number two is that when you're constantly bashing yourself and criticizing yourself and making yourself, you know, feel like a failure, this is going to create a cycle, a cycle of guilt and restriction. Right, because if you think about it, you make a choice that you get mad at yourself for, then you feel guilty because you should have done something else, then you shame yourself for it, and then what you tend to do is go to the extreme, bully yourself into restriction or other extremes.

Speaker 1:

To make it up, example would be let's just say that I'm working on eating better and I promised myself that I'm going to eat better meals, and a coworker invites me to go out to lunch. And I say yes, because why not? And she decides hey, how about this Mexican restaurant that just opened up? Of course I love Mexicans, so I'm going to go. And then I eat something that I know doesn't fall within my plan. Maybe it has too many calories or whatnot, right? So then what's going to happen is, afterwards I am going to beat myself up, I'm going to just criticize myself for not sticking to the plan or for not eating something that I know was better or whatnot. And then what we tend to do is then we tend to restrict or punish ourselves, and it might be something like well, tonight, that's it. I'm not eating dinner because I just ate about 1200 calories. And that is punishment, that's restriction, that's an unhealthy cycle that you definitely do not want to buy into. And this could be with a lot of different things too. Not just eating out. For some people, that might be. That's it. I'm going to the gym for two hours this afternoon or this. For the rest of the week, I'm just just going to eat salad, no matter what it is.

Speaker 1:

You are restricting yourself, which is not healthy for you, because restricting yourself is going to ultimately lead you to giving up to burning out and then to over consume and overdo it. So it's not a healthy cycle to be in. And so trying to guilt yourself and then restrict yourself just think about it that way it's just going to further push you away from the goal that you have, which, ultimately, is just to be a healthy person. And that one leads to another reason that we need to stop doing this, and it's because this behavior is going to definitely stop you from making any progress with your wellness. Think about it when you criticize yourself for making the wrong quote, unquote, wrong choice, or for not following through with the plan or your routine or whatever it is that you're doing, you're stopping yourself from making progress. Right, because sustaining a healthy lifestyle is about consistency, it's about compassion Again, it's not trying to be perfect and then punishing yourself for it, right.

Speaker 1:

This cycle is also going to lead to increased levels of stress, anxiety and burnout, which is very toxic for our bodies and will completely destroy any type of good effort that you are trying to do. Because, again, right, the goal is to feel good emotionally and physically, and any type of self-criticism, shame, distrust in ourselves is going to lead to the opposite of what we want. And personally, I can tell you that I've definitely seen myself in these mindset traps. I've been mean to myself for getting you know to take vitamins or for not going to the gym or whatever it is, and I get upset at myself for eating something that I know wasn't helpful or whatnot. And this isn't motivating at all and it's so disempowering to us and the version of the person you're trying to become.

Speaker 1:

And I think the number one thing is really reminding yourself of the why. Why am I doing this? Why is this so important to me? And usually, when you can identify what your why is you have a little more buy-in, you're more invested into it. But either way, we have to remind ourselves that this is not the way right. Shaming yourself, putting yourself down, criticizing yourself, making yourself feel real small, is not going to help to lead you to being healthy, to feeling energetic, to feeling motivated. That's not the way to go and it's going to become a roadblock for your health journey.

Speaker 1:

Again, this is health journey, but also think about emotional journey, right? Maybe you're working on setting boundaries and every time that you want to set a boundary, you people please instead, and then afterwards you get all upset at yourself because you're saying to yourself oh my God, I literally cannot set a boundary. I'm such an idiot, I could never do this right. And again it's the same cycle. And so you say you know what? I'm just going to stay at home, I'm going to ignore people, I'm not going to talk to no one, because that's my way of punishing myself, because I'm not good at this. So, no matter what your journey is, no matter what you are trying to achieve for yourself, this is not the way to do it. This is not going to help you. This is going to push you back, it's going to deter you, it's going to shatter your self-esteem, your self-worth and everything that you're trying to become All right.

Speaker 1:

So now we're going to move on to the good part, like I always say, which is what are we going to move on to the good part, like I always say, which is? What are we going to do instead? What is the healthy alternative to what we just talked about, which is stressing ourselves out by being mean and bullying ourselves? What could we do instead? What is the alternative? And I'm going to give you my own suggestions, things that I will do, things that I would suggest when you find yourself in this place and it's going to be a three-step approach and step number one will always be practicing being gentle and compassionate with yourself, with yourself.

Speaker 1:

And the main reason for that is because, like I stated earlier, is that when you are stressed, you activate your fight or flight response system and when you are in this fight or flight response system, you are not in a place where you can be with yourself, you're not grounded, you're not regulated, you can't really help yourself in that moment. But if we use the example of myself, I'm driving to work and then I realized that I didn't take my vitamins and in that moment I'm probably going to be a bit upset, I'm going to be a bit stressed, and what's going to help me in that moment is to bring in some of that self compassion, bring in some of that support and really help myself through that moment, versus criticizing myself and getting bad at myself in that moment. What this would look like it would be instead of your inner critic, which is the one that we talked about earlier in the episode, we're going to activate our inner coach and, if you think about it, when you are going through a really difficult situation, think about what someone that really cares about you would say to you. How would they help you in that moment? What words would they say to help you feel better? And it might be something like Kayla.

Speaker 1:

I know that you're upset because you forgot to take your vitamins again, but let's just take a deep breath and remind yourself that it's normal to forget things from time to time, especially when you're doing a lot of things. And then how about we think about what could we do tomorrow to help you to remember to take your vitamins? This gentle approach is going to help you to understand that number one. You're not perfect. You're not supposed to be perfect. And this gentle approach is going to help you to give yourself space to problem solve, to really think about what you could do next time, because the truth is that it already happened. The morning's already gone, you already left the house, there's nothing you can do in the moment, but what you can say is it is frustrating, right? We have to be in acceptance. We do have to accept that we did something or we didn't do something, but it already happened. And what could I do tomorrow to remind myself to take my vitamins?

Speaker 1:

And that brings me to step number two, which is identify what your barriers are. What is stopping you from fulfilling that responsibility, completing that habit that you really want to get done? So for me, that's vitamins. What is stopping me, in the morning, from taking my vitamins? And so for me, now I have the ability to problem solve, I have the ability to sit down and really think about this step, and so this would be a step that you would take when you have a time, maybe later on in the day, maybe when I get home, I sit down and I really think about that and say to myself okay, what is stopping me from taking my vitamins in the morning? And that, to me, for me, it might mean that I need something that's going to prime my memory of taking the vitamins, and so for me, it would either be set an alarm in the morning to take your vitamins, or that might be thinking about what is it that I do every single morning? And that's my coffee. I don't forget about my coffee, and so it might just mean put my vitamins next to my coffee maker so that when I go to make the coffee, I see the vitamins, and that primes my memory to take the vitamins.

Speaker 1:

Again, it's all about identifying what is stopping you from completing that habit or from doing that choice that you're trying to make. And so maybe, if we think of another example, maybe the example is I want to go to the gym three times a week after work and one of the barriers has been is that in the mornings I just have too much to do and I forget and I leave my gym bag at home. And so that might mean that the barrier is that the mornings are too hectic and it's hard for me to remember. So I might say you know what? It's better for me to pack my gym bag and put it in the car the night before. That way, the next day I don't even have to think about it and the gym bag is in my car and now I'm not going to forget to go to the gym.

Speaker 1:

So these are just examples of you identifying what your barriers are, because a lot of times we don't really take the time again because we're so stressed right, we stress ourselves out, we blame ourselves, we get all down so that you can kind of feel better about yourself, because stuff happens, we're not perfect and then we need to actually sit down and think about what's stopping me, what's getting in my way and how could I make better choices, make better choices. And so identifying your barriers is a big one. It's really looking at your situation and saying what's really stopping me, what's getting in my way, and then we can correct that, we can make different choices. And the last step is to identify a plan that's going to help you to be successful. And so we've already problem solved. We identified what our barriers are. Now it's time to say all right, how am I going to make this work? So for me, I came up with my barriers of time or memory, and so now I decide okay, what's going to work for me. So now on, from now on, I'm going to take the pill bottles and I'm going to put it next to the coffee maker. I'm going to take the pill bottles and I'm going to put it next to the coffee maker. So every morning when I go make my coffee, the vitamins are right there, and that's going to prime me to take the vitamins.

Speaker 1:

Earlier I talked about the person that wants to go to the gym after work but they forget to put the gym bag in their car. So that might be that person says every night, I'm going to pack my gym bag and I'm going to put it in the car. So that way I don't even have to think about it. The gym bag's already there. And that might mean something like after I eat dinner, I'm going to prep my bag and I'm just going to go put it in the car. So that way it's done, I don't have to think about it in the morning. So again, number one, you're practicing gentle and kindness in the moment when you realize that you didn't make the choice that you wanted. Number two, you're going to identify what is stopping you from following through with that habit or that choice. And number three, you're going to problem solve and you're going to identify a plan to help you to be more consistent with that habit, goal or choice.

Speaker 1:

As I wrap up this episode, I wanted to just add something at the end, which is we need to learn how to be realistic with ourselves and not trying to put too much on our plate, especially when you are going on a health journey, a healing journey or any other type of journey into becoming a better version of yourself. And that is to set realistic expectations, because one of the things that can really derail your progress is when you are trying to do too many things at once. So if you are going on this health journey, don't try to do too much at once, especially in the beginning. If you are starting a fitness journey, do not say you're going to go to the gym seven days, five days a week. Don't do that to yourself. If you're going to go to the gym seven days, five days a week, don't do that to yourself. If you're going on a clean eating journey, don't say that you're going to go from eating 2,500 calories to 1,200 calories. Don't do that to yourself.

Speaker 1:

You want to start realistically. You want to start small and remember small, little baby steps is going to get you in the right direction. So if you are new to a fitness routine, maybe it might be something with you start off with just going for walks. Maybe you just start with taking two 10 minute walks a day and then again you continue to build upon that. If you're going on a health journey, maybe it's saying what can I add to my meals to make them healthier? And so for some people, instead of taking away, some people start with you know what? I'm going to add one fruit and one vegetable to every meal. So it's again it's really starting small, because I know I have fallen into that trap too, whereas I'm trying to do too many things at once and sometimes it could become overwhelming, and that's when you get into the trap of failing or falling behind or not doing as good as you think.

Speaker 1:

So it's really important to be realistic and set realistic goals and expectations, especially when you're just in the beginning phases of something. Don't set the bar so high that it's so hard for you to reach it. Don't do that to yourself, because you're just going to sabotage yourself. So it's all about being realistic, setting small goals and being consistent with that. And in order for you to be consistent, you have to be realistic Again. Don't go from never going to the gym to saying I'm going to go to the gym every single day because I've seen clients do that, and all that happens is you crash and burn and then you give up. If you're going on a health journey, don't go from one extreme to the other. Give yourself those small little goals and you will see yourself getting to the finish line. You will see results, you're going to see progress and you're going to feel so good about yourself. Okay, so that's all for today's episode.

Speaker 1:

So for this week, I want you to practice, and maybe for you it is practicing just to be aware aware of how you react to yourself. If something happened that you didn't follow through on one of your habits, maybe you forgot something. If something happened that you didn't follow through on one of your habits, maybe you forgot something like I did, maybe you didn't go to the gym, maybe you ate something that you felt like you shouldn't have eaten. I want you to at least start with gaining awareness of what is that internal message? How are you treating yourself in that moment? And if you notice that you have fallen into that mindset trap of criticizing yourself, that you have fallen into that mindset trap of criticizing yourself, I would suggest follow the steps that we just talked about and, to wrap it up, number one is practicing being gentle and compassionate with yourself. Number two is identify what your barriers are, what has stopped you from being consistent with your goal or habit. And number three, problem solve and identify a plan of how you can do better tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

And I hope this was helpful to you.

Speaker 1:

I know again, this is something that I know that I've gone through.

Speaker 1:

I know a lot of my clients go through, and so I hope that this was helpful to you, and I hope that this really inspired you to, even if it's just gain awareness, even if it's just to notice your self-talk when you make a mistake, no matter how big or small.

Speaker 1:

I hope that this truly was something that is going to help you to become a better version of yourself, because that's the only thing that I can hope for is that you are receiving these messages with love and that they're helping you to make choices that are aligned with being a healthy and happy version of yourself. So thank you so much for being here with me today, and I will talk to you again next week, take care. Thank you so much for joining this conversation today. I hope this episode was helpful to you on your healing journey. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode packed with valuable tips and insights designed to empower you. If you found value in this episode, I'd be so grateful if you left me a review wherever you're listening from and share your thoughts and feedback. This really helps me to reach more women just like you. Thanks for listening.