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Key points
- We often harness questions as weapons against ourselves, to belittle and blame ourselves for our suffering.
- To access the wisdom in your self-talk, your words need to be delivered with friendliness and an investigative spirit.
- You must be willing to actually listen to your truth—from your side (not your inner-critic’s side).
“Why did it take me so damn long to realize this?” Jane was berating herself—again. “Why can’t I just ask for what I need?” She was asking herself these questions, but we both knew they weren’t actually questions. Jane was consumed with self-contempt for not realizing sooner that she could actually ask for what she wanted at work and get it. She was angry at herself for having suffered in silence for years, burning herself out and making herself sick, when an easier schedule and lifestyle had always been just a one-sentence request away.
Finally, after years of following the rules she assumed were nonnegotiable, she had mustered the courage to ask if she could work from home one day per week. Much to her surprise and shock, her boss said yes without blinking an eye. The following week, her four-day commute was launched. With fewer than 20 words and in the span of less than one minute, she had radically improved the quality of her life.
Leslie, on the other hand, was beating herself up with the question, “What’s my problem...why do I stay in relationships with people who treat me like this?” Her question, like Jane’s, was not a question. It was an accusation and self-condemnation—for accepting treatment from her partner that she knew was unacceptable.
Questions as Weapons
We do this a lot; we formulate these wonderful and enriching questions, but then harness them as weapons against ourselves, to belittle and blame ourselves for our suffering and for the places we’re stuck, lost, and caught, the places where we’re not yet able to create what we know is best for us. When we pose these questions inside ourselves, the truth is, we’re not really asking ourselves anything. Asking implies curiosity and maybe even (dare I say it) a degree of friendliness. There’s no actual curiosity in most of our self-inquiries; we’re not trying to know more about ourselves or uncover our real experience or truth. The tone and feeling are all wrong—we’re not on our own side.
If you listen closely to the words you’re saying to yourself inside your head, you’ll find myriad useful and profound inquiries. While it may not feel like it, your self-talk is full of wisdom. You probably have the right words already; what’s needed is often just a simple change in tone of voice and attitude. You have the what of it, but not yet the how. How you talk to yourself and how you ask questions of yourself inside your head is possibly the most important determinant of suffering versus well-being. To access the wisdom in your self-talk, your words need to be delivered to yourself with friendliness, an investigative spirit, and a willingness to actually listen to your truth—from your side (not your inner-critic’s side).
Questions With Kindness
If Jane were to ask the same question, Why can’t I just ask for what I need?, but change the tone in just that first word, the “why” word; if Jane could inject her “why” with an attitude of kindness and curiosity, a sentiment of caring about the person she’s asking, she would then have access to a radically different experience and opportunity, one that was healing rather than harming and felt loving rather than attacking.
Asked kindly, with a change of tone in just that first word, “why,” so that the condemning “Why can’t you?” becomes “Hey sweetheart, why is it so hard for you?...” Jane would be invited to realize that (until very recently) asking for what she needed would have been unthinkable, with good reason. The idea that anyone would care about what she needed, much less do anything to help her get it, was unimaginable in her lived experience as a child.
With her particular parents, who were utterly self-involved and didn’t care at all about what she needed, the notion that she would even have needs made no sense to her. The possibility that her needs would matter to someone else, or even more unthinkable, that anyone would actually do something to help her get what she needed—at a cellular level, all of it was beyond absurd. Furthermore, until now, the thought of admitting what she needed would have required that she be an entirely different person than who she was—that is, someone who felt like she deserved anything, or that anyone could care about her.
If Jane were able to ask her question from her own side, with kindness, curiosity, and compassion, she would most likely find strength, respect, and maybe even awe for herself and the path she’s traveled to now.
Similarly, if Leslie were able to take her question, Why do I stay with partners who treat me badly?, and change just the tone in which she was asking it, she would uncover a vast reservoir of experience and truth, and simultaneously a portal into her own core beliefs. She would see that she’d stayed in this unkind relationship and many others because she was raised by an abusive mother whom she also adored. Being emotionally abused felt normal for her; it felt like home; it felt like love. She was unable to leave because she didn’t know anything else and did really believe, until now, that anything else was possible or that she was deserving of any other kind of treatment.
If she were able to change the attitude of her internal questions and make them real questions, she could then open the door to a deep sense of compassion for what she’s endured, and believed about herself, and about love. Simultaneously, she would be able to recognize and acknowledge her life journey to herself and feel great gratitude for having woken up, and for knowing, now, that she wanted, needed, and deserved more than what her mother could give her.
