Hi everyone,

I've been going through absolute hell in therapy and life since Easter. Its been a long, dark and torturous struggle but I seem to be emerging from it and wanted to share something that I hope many of you can relate to and maybe take on board to help yourself in your process.

Through the last week I've gradually come to see that there is a part of my personality hellbent on creating misery and chaos.

It came about through some awfully tough confrontation from my T (to the point I was crying and in the foetal position and asking him to please stop sledge hammering me) who could see that I have an unbelievably harsh inner critic (or superego) that hates me and wants me dead. It will do ANYTHING to keep me suck in a cage of lonely despair where the only way out is death.

In the lead up to mothers day I did something a bit uncharacteristic - I actually admitted to some friends I was having a hard time because my own mother has been dead for over 15 years now. They were all very caring and empathic and understanding. And there I was seeing I was receiving genuine love, care and support but I couldn't take it in.

Similarly DH came home early on Friday night so I could go out shopping for a mothers day present and there I was wandering around my local shopping mall and my inner critic kept reminding me how fat I was (I'm a size 0-2) and how this is what my T and his daughter do sometimes. I finally had to stop and tell that part of myself to shut up, why were they being so mean and nasty?

Then with T yesterday it kind of clicked into place. I don't want what I have because I don't feel deserving of anything good, and my inner critic uses ridiculous and unrealistic expectations to destroy the good things I do have consequently. If I don't find a way to challenge my inner critic, I'm never going to feel the love and care I so desperately need to experience.

Yesterday I was supermarket shopping with DH and DS and as we were going through the checkout there was another family at the checkout next to ours who had a girl of maybe 2 or 3 in the trolley. She was screaming and crying and her parents were yelling at her, shaming her, threatening her. she looked so scared and of course she became more and more hysterical and her parents got angrier and more menacing. My heart wept for this poor child and then I realised that I have a very similar child inside me who reacts the exact same way when I let my inner critic run the show. I clearly saw that I have been treating myself appallingly for years because I didn't think I deserved differently but how can I expect to heal if I don't change that?


as a budding psychologist I ended up reading Freud's "mourning and melancholia" last night and that paper helped me to realise why my personality is structured the way it is. And that is that a part of myself has identified so strongly with my parents that my inner critic believes my parents are living inside me. That there is a total confusion and an inability to tell between who is me and who is the "other" per se.

I read so many stories on here of people feeling worthless, ashamed, inferior and blaming themselves for it. For those of you who do, its so important to see that your inner critic is confused. It thinks your parents are living within your mind and that's why it ends up attacking you. Stand up to it so you can heal and enjoy the wonderful opportunities life has to offer. You really do deserve it.