Dear Tammy Meaney:

“when you have a voice in your head telling you that ‘you do not deserve xyz’. I don’t actually mean an actual voice but the voice of OCD”-

– it’s the voice of your inner critic, criticizing, berating and scolding you for mistakes imperfections, real or imagined. An inner critic exists in the mind of every person. When a person has an over-active/obsessive, vicious inner critic, it’s because it takes after an over-active, vicious real-life critic in the person’s early life, usually a parent.

“the OCD flared up last year after my Uncle passed”- his passing increased your anxiety, and anxiety fuels OCD.

“I struggle immensely with ‘all or nothing’ thinking or ‘black and white’ thinking”- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) specializes in correcting these types of thinking, referred to as distorted thinking. There are online exercises (and actual workbooks) on the matter.

If you would like to address any or all of what I mentioned here, please do and I will reply further.

anita

Dear Tammy Meaney:

You are very welcome. The inner critic, when it is overly critical and harsh, usually takes after a person in your childhood to whom you were very attached, and who overly and harshly criticized you. A child encounters a number of critical people, often many (parents, siblings, other family members, peers at school, teachers, people in the street, etc.), but the most powerful real-life critic in a child’s life is someone the child is most attached to, someone the child spends a lot of time with.

The reason it is important to identify that person is that changing the inner critic from an overly-active/ obsessive, harsh critic to a less active, gentler kind, takes understanding that as a child, you did not deserve the harsh criticism you received, that you were innocent of it. It is the belief in your innocence as a child that disarms, over time, the harsh inner critic.

anita