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To call 2020 “stressful” would be an understatement. In times of stress, our thoughts can become extra judgmental. Some of us turn the judgment outward, criticizing others for every little thing. Some of us turn it inward, feeding ourselves a constant stream of self-critical and shaming thoughts. When reserves are low, instead of “I’m feeling overwhelmed right now,” your brain might say, “I’m a disgusting slob who can’t get her work done and looks tired all of the time.” Brains can be bullies like that.
With some insight and self-compassion, bullying thoughts lose their power. If your extra stress is showing up in judgments about your body (or anything else) these days, asking yourself the following questions can help you challenge and reframe those harsh thoughts. It takes practice, but over time you can rewire neural pathways to go in the direction of self-compassion, not self-criticism.
1. Where did I learn to tell myself these things?
Just because a thought enters your mind doesn’t mean it’s important or even accurate. Research shows that we have upward of 6,000 individual thoughts in a day. Plenty of these thoughts are simply reflections of ideas you’ve seen or heard in your life, rather than cold hard facts.
Judgmental thoughts are some of those learned ideas. If you take time to identify some of the places you learned these ideas, you can see thoughts more accurately.
Consider some of your most vivid memories of being criticized, feeling shame, or seeing someone else being judged or rejected. If you’re struggling with body shame, consider where you learned to feel negatively about your body. You weren’t born with these ideas; they were given to you.
Understanding that you did not come up with your judgmental thoughts out of thin air can help you give them back to the source. If that voice in your head saying “gross, you gained weight!” reminds you of the body shaming comments you used to hear your relative make at family gatherings, you might practice saying “whoa, Aunt Tina is being really loud today! Aunt Tina, I hear you, but I’m going to try looking at this a different way.”
It may feel silly at first, but with practice it will get easier to see the thought as just an idea popping into your brain, not an accurate narration of reality and definitely not coming from your truest self.
2. If I didn’t believe this thought, what would be different for me?
I often remind my clients that thoughts are not facts. Thoughts are just words in your brain, but because some thoughts are familiar and evoke strong feelings, we take them more seriously than we need to.
Once you've established that your judgmental thoughts are not original content, you can decide whether it serves you to treat them as true. If buying into a thought makes you feel inadequate or unworthy, it’s probably not helping you live a meaningful, fulfilling, rewarding life. Try reframing self-critical thoughts by exploring how an alternative version of the thought would land.
For example, when you have the thought, “I gained weight during the pandemic; I’m such a failure,” you might pause and say to yourself, “I gained weight during the pandemic; I’ve had a lot to adjust to, my habits have changed, and controlling my body would have taken up unnecessary mental energy.”
If you gave more credence to the second version of this thought, what would be different? Would listening to the second version vs. the first version change the way you spent your time and energy, or the way you felt about yourself?
We can’t control which thoughts pop into our brains, but we can control how we respond to them, and whether we intentionally shift our focus to messages that are more accurate reflections of who we are.
3. If a young child (or my best friend) came to me with this self-judgment, what would I say to them?
It's part of being a human to struggle. There is not a person on this planet who hasn't felt ashamed, inadequate, or unsuccessful at some point. You’re certainly not the exception to this. Yet many of us expect perfection from ourselves, when we’d be much gentler with someone else.
Remember the lessons from questions 1 and 2 above. Just because your brain might be conditioned to call you “undisciplined” for eating ice cream or “lazy” for sleeping in and skipping your morning jog does not mean these appraisals are accurate. These are conditioned responses from diet culture. In reality, your body is doing a great job keeping you alive and functioning during a particularly scary time.
You can counteract judgmental thoughts with self-compassion. An easy way to tap into self-compassionate messaging is to picture a small child coming to you and telling you they hate their body. What do you instinctively say in response? If it seems like a cruel or dismissive thing to say to a child or to your dearest friend, it’s probably not something you deserve to direct at yourself, either.
If someone you loved said to you, “I’m so bad for gaining ten pounds,” you probably wouldn’t say “you’re right, you totally suck!” No, you might say “I know it’s hard to see your body change, since our society demonizes weight gain. To me, your weight is the least interesting thing about you. I care about you for who you are, which has nothing to do with your body size.”
What if you could say this to yourself, too?
Remember, changing your thought patterns takes time and practice. If you’ve been speaking to yourself in a harsh, critical way for many years, shifting to a compassionate and flexible approach won’t happen overnight. With intentionality though, you can start to see your thoughts as just ideas (often inaccurate ones) and refocus yourself on the messages that help you feel comfortable in your skin.
