{"id":8326,"date":"2011-04-11T09:15:26","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T16:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=8326"},"modified":"2015-12-02T12:32:02","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T20:32:02","slug":"self-attack-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/self-attack-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"Experiences of Depression: Self-Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ManThis article is part of a series that explores the ways that specific \u201cclusters\u201d of depression symptoms manifest to create different experiences of depression. The previous article in this series discussed the low-ambition experience<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Self-attack is my term for thinking mean, diminishing, insulting, and shaming<\/a> thoughts about oneself. People often think of this as low self-esteem<\/a>, but I think self-attack better describes what is actually going on. People who experience depression<\/a> often think like this, but it is also possible to engage in self-attack and not meet the full criteria to be diagnosed with depression. Whether or not your self-attack is part of depression, this is a very painful, disabling, quality-of-life-reducing, and even life-threatening way to exist.<\/p>\n

In fact, I believe self-attack is possibly the most common type of misery and symptom of depression. So<\/em> many people frequently say things to themselves\u2014whether they even notice or not\u2014that diminish or shame them: \u201cI\u2019m a failure,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m stupid,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m lazy\u201d \u201cI\u2019m unlovable,\u201d (which may sound like \u201cI\u2019m fat and ugly\u201d, or take other forms), \u201cI\u2019m a terrible parent, employee, friend, spouse\u2026,\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t do anything right,\u201d I\u2019ll never be good enough,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not worth what I have,\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n

It may surprise you that people attack themselves for good reasons. Many do it because it\u2019s how they understand love\u2014it\u2019s how their parents \u201cloved\u201d them. Others think that shame is the only thing that motivates them. Once people learn to handle themselves this way, they practice it over and over and over, and learning to do something different is very difficult.<\/p>\n

I often ask people who are plagued by self-attack, \u201cWhat if someone were following you around all day saying these things to you?\u201d Most people would yell at them, argue with them, stop them, fight back, or at least get away from them. But when it\u2019s their own voice, they listen and believe it\u2014and it\u2019s devastating.<\/p>\n

This can change. There are ways to change this on our own, and ways that psychotherapy can help. In either case, the key is to develop an internal parent who parents us the way good parents do.<\/p>\n

How the Parenting We Experience Affects Our Brains<\/strong>
\nThis is the most important thing to know about how to become a happy, well-functioning adult. Generally, when children are parented by caretakers who understand their feelings and needs and respond to them compassionately and protectively, children learn to respond similarly to themselves. Over time, children build skills in parenting from imitating their parents. This is how we know how to take care of ourselves as adults.<\/p>\n

We now know from neurological research that we are hard-wired through special neurons to imitate our parents. Our brains learn how to act in the world by incorporating the things that we see our caretakers do when we\u2019re children. It\u2019s a great system when we have parents who act in nurturing, protective, and wise ways. It doesn\u2019t work so well when our parents are abusive<\/a>, neglectful, unhappy, or dysfunctional people themselves.<\/p>\n

We also see that our brains are able to re-wire throughout our lives, so if this doesn\u2019t go well when we\u2019re children, we can usually still change what goes on in our brains when we\u2019re adults. This is what psychotherapy and EMDR<\/a> do, but there are also ways to work on this outside of therapy.<\/p>\n

We also know that when we close our eyes and imagine<\/em> something,\u00a0the same pattern of functioning occurs in our brains as when we look<\/em> at something. So if you see your best friend, then close your eyes and imagine<\/em> your best friend, your brain will be doing the same thing. This makes guided imagery very powerful. Anything we do that involves imagining being parented, or parenting ourselves in a nurturing, compassionate, protective, wise, functional way, can actually help build the brain structure we need to be the adults we would have been if we\u2019d had better parents.<\/p>\n

The Experience of Parenting Yourself<\/strong>
\nThere are many ways to do this, but let\u2019s take a couple moments to try out one. Think of a problem that is upsetting you right now\u2014nothing too upsetting. Now imagine you have a niece or nephew, four to ten years old, who comes to you for help because they are struggling with a similar problem. With the most nurturing, protective, compassionate part of yourself in charge, what would you say to them? Write this down.<\/p>\n

What would you do for them? What do you think you could give them that would help them feel a little better? Try expressing your understanding of their feelings and needs. Normalize what they\u2019re experiencing. Show them compassion. Offer forgiveness if they need it. Offer solutions or ways to get solutions. Offer to stay with them through the process. Comfort them any way you can imagine.<\/p>\n

Of course, this exercise is just a beginning. But once you learn to do this, and can do it with yourself, you have access to one of the most powerful tools we as human beings have to be happy and functional.<\/p>\n

Psychotherapy<\/strong>
\nPsychotherapy can help with this process in many ways. For example, my clients usual begin to heal when I treat them with respect, am very genuinely interested in them and amazed by who they are, reflect what I see as I come to understand what they\u2019ve had to overcome and how, and encourage them without shaming them. Being consistent and compassionate, listening carefully and responding with insight,\u00a0 is what parents are supposed to do with children so that they can develop into happy adults. Many parents don\u2019t or can\u2019t do it well\u2014usually because their parents couldn\u2019t do it with them.<\/p>\n

By being treated this way, people learn to treat themselves and others that way. They learn to expect healthy relationships where they are treated with a similar respect. It helps people express the feelings they haven\u2019t felt safe to express and to feel more capable of coping with painful feelings. It builds self-esteem and confidence. In this environment, depression usually recedes.<\/p>\n

Self-attack is very destructive, but can be overcome by developing a compassionate, nurturing, protective parent inside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Self-attack is a pattern of consistently thinking negative thoughts about oneself. Developing a nurturing parent relationship with yourself can break these patterns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2390,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[161,255,303,25,27,392,235],"class_list":["post-8326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-depression","tag-eye-movement-desensitization-reprocessing","tag-guided-therapeutic-imagery","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-psychotherapy-models","tag-self-criticism","tag-self-esteem-psychotherapy-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2390"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}