This One Bad Habit Worsens Your Symptoms
(Summary) Self-criticism often feels automatic for trauma survivors, but it can actually make symptoms worse. In this video, we explore how harsh self-judgment pushes your system into either shutdown (hypoarousal) or overdrive (hyperarousal), and why both states increase distress. You’ll see how these patterns once helped protect you during ongoing trauma, and why they now keep you stuck. Understanding this cycle is the first step toward updating your parts and finding healthier ways forward.
Many trauma survivors, especially survivors of childhood trauma, are quite critical and judgmental about themselves. And this is understandable. In the situation of ongoing trauma, being critical and judgmental towards yourself may have helped you minimize the abuse you experienced. But now, when you are no longer living in that situation of ongoing abuse, the judgmental approach actually makes your symptoms worse!
Let’s see how that works. Now, in the type of situations we’re talking about, it’s almost unimaginable that when you are being judgmental about yourself you are ever positive in your judgments. I am pretty sure you are never satisfied with whatever you are judging. Instead of “I really tried hard on that work assignment” you note the supposed flaws, such as “I didn’t get that assignment completed until the last moment! I’m so lazy!” or “I am sure if one of my coworkers had the assignment, they would have done a better job.” And there are two likely outcomes from being judgmental about yourself. Which outcome you experience will be individual to you, your trauma history, and the way your system works.
One outcome activates your submit parts. These parts will cause your nervous system to go into hypoarousal. This means you might start feeling really fuzzy, numb, have really low energy, and/or find it hard to concentrate. You probably feel hopeless and helpless. You might seem and feel very depressed. This is a really hard place to be.
The other outcome activates your fight or flight parts. These parts are activating. A little too activating, in fact, because they send your system into hyperarousal. When flight parts are activated, you become focused on making sure you have an escape route. In this example, you might start thinking about quitting your job. Or, if your flight parts are super activated, you might impulsively actually quit your job. When fight parts are activated, you may feel angry. An innocent comment by a coworker or a manager or a partner could be interpreted as something negative, and then you over-react. When angry parts are activated, you might self-harm. If those angry parts see no hope, you may begin to feel suicidal.
I want to stress that, in the original time of trauma, your self-criticism and harsh self-judgments were your parts doing their best to respond to their situation with the tools they had available to them. The problem is that you have moved on and are now in a safer situation but your parts don’t know this and continue to try to protect you in the same way they did in the past. The good news is that it is possible to update those parts! Subscribe so you don’t miss the upcoming video where I will tell you how to interrupt the cycle of self-criticism leading to an over or under-active nervous system which worsens your symptoms.