Latest / Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic / 60: The War Within | How Self-Judgment Keeps Us Stuck, and What Finally Sets Us Free

Transcript

60: The War Within | How Self-Judgment Keeps Us Stuck, and What Finally Sets Us Free · Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic

• 0:03
  Tania: Welcome to Banish the Lies, the podcast where we outsmart that sneaky inner critic and get closer to the truth that sets us free.
• 0:10
  Tania: I'm Tania Cervoni, your host and fellow work in Progress here to share real stories and small shifts that help you reclaim what fear and doubt once stole.
• 0:21
  Tania: Let's jump in.
• 0:27
  Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of Banish the Lies.
• 0:30
  Speaker: Recently, I published an episode that I titled The Urge to Purge, and today I found myself reflecting on urges and cravings as I stood inside a great little ice cream shop in town that serves homemade ice cream.
• 0:44
  Speaker: There was a season of my life when simply walking into an ice cream shop felt dangerous, not because of the ice cream, but because of the war happening inside of me.
• 0:56
  Speaker: A war between the part of me that believed ice cream was bad and would keep me from being thin and therefore from being happy, which is a whole other lie to explore another day, and the part of me that really, really, really felt she needed that ice cream.
• 1:14
  Speaker: So the privilege of now feeling totally free to enjoy my favorite black raspberry scoop was not lost on me.
• 1:22
  Speaker: I was filled with immense gratitude.
• 1:26
  Speaker: Grateful for delicious ice cream, but even more grateful that the war inside of me was over.
• 1:33
  Speaker: If you've ever gone on a diet or tried to give up something that you think is bad for you but that you love, I'm guessing you can relate to this battle.
• 1:42
  Speaker: There's a reason we always wanna postpone our diet until Monday, because, you know, there's never a good day to feel deprived.
• 1:49
  Speaker: So as I walked away from the ice cream shop, enjoying my sugar cone under the hot July sun, I made my way to a bench that was under a nice shady tree.
• 2:00
  Speaker: And I thought more about that freedom, that freedom to choose foods I enjoy without guilt or shame.
• 2:07
  Speaker: And what occurred to me is that what kept that battle alive for so long was the judgment I held around all of those forbidden foods.
• 2:17
  Speaker: And perhaps what was most surprising was the battle was actually not about the ice cream, it was about everything I believed that eating the ice cream meant about me.
• 2:29
  Speaker: It meant I was a failure.
• 2:32
  Speaker: It meant I'd never be thin.
• 2:34
  Speaker: It meant I'd blown it again.
• 2:37
  Speaker: It meant I lacked willpower.
• 2:39
  Speaker: And because I judged the ice cream, I judged myself for wanting it.
• 2:45
  Speaker: And frankly, I was pissed that I was having to eliminate fun foods that so many others were free to enjoy.
• 2:55
  Speaker: And what do you think all that judgment caused?
• 3:00
  Speaker: Yep, a whole lot of suffering.
• 3:04
  Speaker: And can you guess how I dealt with the suffering at the time?
• 3:07
  Speaker: If you said eating ice cream, you'd be right, and every other food on my naughty list.
• 3:13
  Speaker: Because I judged the food, I then judged myself for wanting the food, and that judgment created suffering.
• 3:23
  Speaker: And then I reached for the very thing I decided was the enemy in order to soothe the suffering that judgment had created Humans are fascinating creatures, aren't we?
• 3:35
  Speaker: I was stuck in quite a cycle of insanity and addiction.
• 3:40
  Speaker: It took years, but eventually I learned that ice cream was not the enemy, and I was not bad or wrong or weak for wanting to enjoy some.
• 3:50
  Speaker: And guess what happened next?
• 3:53
  Speaker: When I decided that I was free to eat or not eat the ice cream, that deep craving, that vicious battle subsided.
• 4:06
  Speaker: There was nothing to fight.
• 4:08
  Speaker: I was free to eat it or not eat it, and suddenly it felt a lot easier to check in with my body to see if this was something that I even wanted.
• 4:18
  Speaker: And sometimes I decided to eat the ice cream, and sometimes I passed on it.
• 4:24
  Speaker: But what was really radical in all of that was that I was able to do it without judgment.
• 4:32
  Speaker: I didn't make myself feel like crap for what I wanted, and therefore I didn't need to console myself by binging on all the things I tried to restrict.
• 4:40
  Speaker: In other words, self-judgment had really set me up to make decisions from compulsion, not from true choice, and it took me a very long time to see that.
• 4:52
  Speaker: All those years of thinking that if I could only succeed at restricting my diet and then losing enough weight, I would have earned the right to be kind to myself.
• 5:02
  Speaker: Ironically, when I stopped fighting myself, I started making choices that genuinely cared for my body.
• 5:10
  Speaker: Now, I appreciate that maybe food has never been your battleground, but I suspect that we've all fought the same war somewhere.
• 5:19
  Speaker: Maybe your battle is with self-doubt.
• 5:22
  Speaker: You beat yourself up for not being more confident.
• 5:25
  Speaker: You compare yourself to people who seem fearless.
• 5:28
  Speaker: Maybe you tell yourself you're lazy, you're weak, you're behind, you're not enough, and then exhausted by your own inner critic, you reach for whatever numbs the pain.
• 5:36
  Speaker: It's a different battlefield, but it's the same cycle.
• 5:40
  Speaker: If only in those moments we could see that it's the self-judgment that's the root of the problem.
• 5:46
  Speaker: Yes, of course, it's important to address self-doubt, but what I know today is that lasting change begins with love, not condemnation.
• 5:56
  Speaker: I mean, think about it.
• 5:58
  Speaker: The more we love something, the more we're naturally driven to take care of it.
• 6:02
  Speaker: In other words, we can't hate our way to improvement.
• 6:05
  Speaker: It does not work, not in the long term And that idea that we can is a blatant lie.
• 6:13
  Speaker: Thinking that if I'm hard enough on myself, if I berate myself, restrict myself, push myself enough, I will become the person I need to be to earn the right to be cared for and loved.
• 6:25
  Speaker: It sounds so bizarre and illogical when I say it out loud, but how many of us are trying to condemn our way into becoming the next version of ourselves?
• 6:35
  Speaker: We cannot shame ourselves into becoming whole.
• 6:39
  Speaker: We can't condemn ourselves into becoming free, and we cannot hate ourselves into becoming someone worth loving.
• 6:46
  Speaker: The truth is that many of us have had it backwards all along, myself included.
• 6:52
  Speaker: We don't become worthy of love once we've changed.
• 6:57
  Speaker: It's when we stop treating ourselves like the enemy that real change becomes possible.
• 7:03
  Speaker: So I wonder, is there an area of your life where you've mistaken yourself for the enemy?
• 7:10
  Speaker: Because what I'm here to share today is that the woman I'm becoming wasn't built through self-hatred.
• 7:16
  Speaker: I believe she started emerging the day I stopped treating myself like the enemy.
• 7:21
  Speaker: And the battle that I spent so many years fighting wasn't won by defeating the craving.
• 7:27
  Speaker: It was won by ending the judgment.
• 7:35
  Tania: Thanks for listening to Banish The Lies.
• 7:37
  Tania: If today's episode resonated with you, take a moment to let it settle in.
• 7:41
  Tania: And maybe share it with a friend who could use it too.
• 7:44
  Tania: Lies, lose their power when we're brave enough to challenge them.
• 7:47
  Tania: I'm Tania Cervoni, and until next time, be kind to yourself.
• 7:52
  Tania: And remember, you're not broken, you're not alone, and you don't have to stay stuck.