Search Results for: critical inner voice

Challenging the Fantasy Bond: A Search for Personal Identity and Freedom

…. It is manifested as a destructive internal thought process, the critical inner voice. Later, the fantasy bond is extended to family members, intimate partners, and social groups. In Challenging the Fantasy Bond, Dr. Firestone presents his latest thoughts and observations about the self-defeating aspects of this process and places the original concepts in the broader context of his overall theoretical approach, Separation Theory. Compelling case…

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Coping with Grief

…ts of loss we don’t necessarily expect. This includes a cruel and critical inner voice that turns against us. This “voice” may be sparking our guilt with thoughts like we should have done more for the person we lost, spent more time with them, or even that we should feel guilty for being the one to survive. This voice can also feed us thoughts that the way we’re grieving is somehow wrong. It may tell us that we’re feeling “too much,” that we’re be…

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The Act of Loving

…xpressing your love in this manner enriches both your lives. Your critical inner voice will most likely try to sabotage your loving exchanges with your partner. It will influence you to overlook a loving gesture: He never demonstrates his love for you. I don’t see any signs of it. It will belittle your partner’s loving responses: You call that loving? It’s nothing. You deserve more than that. It will make fun of you when you acknowledge something…

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Why Is It So Hard to Leave a Narcissist?

…de of us that doubts and diminishes who we are. We all possess a “critical inner voice” that tells us we are unworthy or undesirable in all kinds of ways. Being with a narcissist may make us feel a little better about ourselves in some respects, because we feel good that someone with such a seemingly high opinion of themselves chose us. Our partner may also build us up, making us feel special as their significant other, because they would only be…

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How to Tame Your Inner Critic Giveaway

…Click below to get a free PDF on how to tame your inner critic. Read more articles by Dr. Lisa Firestone here Learn more about how to Overcome Your Inner Critic with this eCourse here  …

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The Destructive Ways We Self-Parent as Adults

…tal cues and see ourselves through our parents’ eyes. We start to form an “inner voice” that translates the attitudes we picked up from our parents into our own self-concept. If a parent was critical of us or themselves, we take on these criticisms. If we felt like a burden, or that we were too loud, too quiet, too needy, too angry, too shy, etc., we will carry on believing these things about ourselves long after we grow up. Another way we keep ou…

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In a Relationship with a Narcissist? What You Need to Know About Narcissistic Relationships

…e anti-self (made up of extremely self-hating and self-demeaning “critical inner voices”). So, for these people, even slight criticism can be a narcissistic injury, leading to an angry outburst and desperate attempts to regain their fragile, inflated self-esteem. Often, a condescending remark will help them to reestablish their superior image. Condescending is a common dynamic in narcissistic relationships. This behavior can be traced back to the…

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Are You the Parent You Want to Be?

…l, she and her sister had had to tiptoe around him to avoid his unleashing critical verbal attacks on them. After telling her story, the woman recognized that many of her attitudes toward her son were similar to those she experienced from her father. Although she had aspired to be very different as a parent, in seeing her son as “bad” or “a problem child,” she was treating him as she had been treated. Reenacting our parents’ negative behaviors is…

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Can an Open Relationship Actually Work?

…toward ourselves,” said Firestone. She describes how a person’s “critical inner voice” can flood his or her mind with harmful suspicions and accusations that fuel feelings of jealousy. She frequently finds that what people are telling themselves about what’s going on with their partner is often a lot worse than what is actually going on. For example, a person may think, “She is totally checking out that guy. She’s losing interest in me. She’s goi…

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Give Yourself a Retreat: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

…d though I am teaching a weekend workshop on how to “Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice,” I am also looking forward to connecting with my own sense of who I am, what matters to me, and identifying those daily internal dialogues that get in my way. So why is a retreat so different from taking time at home to take on those dusty to-do lists, those pesky New Year’s resolutions, or those personal goals of spending more time with your partner or your ch…

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