10:06 am 6/19/09 Friday anxietytribe blog

    Everyday I wake up,  I feel the invectives and putdowns and condemnation heaped upon my head by my inner critic and judge. Everyday I feel terrifed and resentful and just want to escape but it's like that old saying, "No matter where you go, there you are".  I can't run away from my inner critic and judge because he is like a monkey on my back that I can't shake. I feel like this inner critic keeps pounding on the back of my head with a hammer. I feel like this inner critic keeps beating me up.

   I reflect frequently on Psalm 23.

I feel like my inner critic is a constant inner enemy presence who makes me feel like I am stuck in the valley of the shadow of death.  I ask God to by my shepherd, to restore my soul, to guide me, to comfort me. Help my cup to overflow.

10:17 am

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Grant me courage Lord to face my inner critic. Stand with me and help me to step through the valley of death where my constant inner critic enemy is lobbing artillery shells which explode in my head.  I feel terrified but I pray for faith and hope to help me to keep walking through the valley of death.

What's wierd is the inner turmoil feels so debilitating and yet externally I hide the terror I feel inside. Here though, I am confessing my inner fears in hopes that writing about these fear will help to free me.

I realize that in some way the inner critic is a part of me, an abusive part of me that I need to ask God to help me repent. It is so hard. The inner critic side of myself is so powerful. I really need my higher power, JC, to help me fight this sick side of my side, a side of myself that is very sadistic towards myself. Help me JC to own and repent for this self directed psychological sadism.

I feel sad and lonely and empty when I try to repent of this selfdirected abuse. God help me fill the emptiness and loneliness that comes when i try to change my lifelong pattern of beating myself up. I feel like the orphan toddler in a village where everyone I know and love has been slaughtered and I am left to cry in the dark amidst the carnage (see hyperlink to picture that captures how I feel).

 http://www.centurychina.com/wiihist/njmassac/nmphoto/orphan_s.jpg

The sadness and the emptiness feels horrible. I know somewhere that God is there even though I have trouble feeling His presence in the Valley of Death.

I think about my childhood and how there was so much anger, and sadness and inflexibility and rigidity and how I have internalized so much of that. Trying to change these patterns feels like plucking out my eye (Matthew 18:9, Mark9:47). I know I need to do it because it causes me to sin against myself but it is painful and scary to think about metaphorically plucking out my eye. Help me God.

10:32 am

Getting caught up writing in this blog, I get stuck and find it hard to move on. Even something healthy like writing in here can become an obsession with me.  Help me find balance God to let go of moving from one anxiety to another obsession

10:45 am

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6:02 pm

feeling anxious and despairing about picking up work after taking a break. I find it hard to be positive. My inner critic is unrelenting. Kind of like the Terminator, it never stops. Except for when I am blogging or when I am with my therapist. Blogging is sort of a substitute for meeting with my therapist. It's great in a way because this blog is always here (unlike my therapist). Somehow blogging temporarily causes my inner critic to pause.  Kind of a serendipitous discovery. It's like I can pause the critic kind of like what Hiro does on Heroes when he can pause time. Not sure why or how.

6:07 pm

God help me to avoid the usual despair and anxiety or at least take the edge off. 

6:08 pm

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6:49 pm

feeling afraid of making mistake, feeling like I want to avoid that possiblity by procrasinating, yet I have spent most of my life procrasinating, so afraid of making a mistake that I have not really lived my life. The image that comes to mind is feeling like one of the Apostles hiding in the Upper Room after JC died (Luke 24:39  ) filled with doubt and fear  but never allowing myself to experience the courage that the Comforter provides. I feel like an Apostle who dies of old age hiding in the Upper ROom.