Health Harmony & Happiness with Cathy

#83: Navigating Your Inner Critic and Resentment

• Cathy Struecker • Season 3 • Episode 83

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When your Inner Critic stops by and brings along resentment for the ride, everyone around you, including yourself, might want to run for the hills.

Your inner critic is the opposite of your inner guidance and she or he usually has it out for you, especially when she brings along resentment.  But it's not always a bad thing when she shows up. 

In today's episode, I share about a time when my inner critic and resentment were screaming in my ears and how I used it to my advantage instead of letting it bring me down.  I share how allowing these parts of me to be present and have a voice led me to enriching my experience as a mom as well as deepening my relationship with my husband and myself.

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Other Episodes like this one:

#43: The Power of Letting Go with Dave Weesner
#44:  So You're Feeling Inadequate
#63:  Transitions


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Speaker 1:

Your inner critic is the opposite of your inner guidance, and she or he usually has it out for you, especially when she brings along resentment. Welcome to Help Harmony and Happiness with Kathy. I'm your host, kathy Stricker. I'm a state patrol wife, mama to three lively kiddos, a yoga teacher, certified NLP coach and an energetic rhythms expert. As an energetic rhythms coach, I help action taking women use their bodies, rhythms and the moons cycle to optimize productivity and avoid burnout, without letting their desire to remain in control alter their focus. And this podcast is all about doing just that, and perhaps a bit more, so that you can create your own path to health, harmony and happiness. So come along with me, and may this episode serve as a nudge to discover tools that could help you on your path towards more intentional living. Enjoy the show. Hey friends, welcome to episode 83.

Speaker 1:

Before we jump into today's topic, I want to tell you about a time in my life when I started to become aware of my breath as a symptom of my emotional state. Rewind all the way back to high school and my 17 or 18 year old self. At the time, I didn't know all that I know now about the nervous system and biomechanics of the body and breath. But I did know that when I was getting ready for something that put pressure on me individually, like competing in track or serving in a volleyball game, or giving a talk or presentation the yons would start coming. Now, what I mean by that is that, in anticipation of what I consciously knew I had to do, my unconscious would try to calm my nervous system and put me into a more relaxed and parasympathetic state by inducing yawning as a means of getting more oxygen into my bloodstream. Fast forward to my adult life and me taking up a regular yoga practice, it wasn't just the way I was slowing down and moving my body that made me feel so good. It was the intentional awareness of my breath. And once I started posturing my breath to create a specific outcome, life changed. As I've dug deeper into this phenomena of breath work and pranayama practices, I realized that I had a breathing dysfunction for most, if not all, of my life and my body had just adapted to that as its normal baseline. But when I started to incorporate breath work into the rhythm of my day, I started to notice vast changes in my perception of life and of challenges, and even in the look and quality of my physical appearance and my skin, which is kind of incredible.

Speaker 1:

Breath, when used intentionally or on purpose, can change how you feel in an instant, whether it's giving you more energy or creating a more relaxed state, or both at the same time, as you've heard me talk about with my yoga practice. But it doesn't just have to be a one time thing you do with a yoga practice. It's a tool you can use throughout your day to create a new rhythm of intentionality in your life. I have an upcoming five day breath work challenge that I'm going to be hosting in just a few weeks, and that's where I'm going with this story. The last week of August, I'm holding a short daily challenge to help you use the energy of your breath to breathe your way to calm and focus and, honestly, so many other things that come along with becoming aware of the power of your breath, like healing your body, including your menstrual cycle, lessening the symptoms of PMS, perimenopause and menopause, enhancing immunity, reducing pain and discomfort in your body, and even improving your endocrine system function so that those necessary hormones function as they were designed and not out of a state of heightened alert all the time. It will just be 10 to 15 minutes each day for five days and it will be recorded, so if you need to miss a day, you can come back to it and watch it. For a limited time, I'll drop a link to the challenge in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

This challenge will give you an introduction to some different breathwork techniques that you can use to flow with the chaos and stress when it comes your way. I'm also going to be teaching you a breathwork technique that I've recently started using that you can use to detox your nervous system, and it's incredibly powerful. Breathwork and other modalities like yoga train us to more effortlessly transition between stimulated or activated states and calm and relaxed states. It's a tool to help you learn to identify those times when your sympathetic nervous system is activated out of fear and instead make the conscious choice to use breath to move into a regulated state in which you respond out of curiosity, trust and love. I will just be touching the tip of the iceberg in terms of breathing techniques, but there will be opportunities for you to learn more coming up in the future. Just want to give you a taste and help you get started changing your life with breath, as I've changed mine, and your breath is an easy tool even easier than yoga. As I've always said, it requires nothing more than your body, and a yoga mat Breath simply requires that you breathe the gift of life that you are given. So click the link in the show notes and share it with others who you think might benefit On with the show.

Speaker 1:

Today's episode is a throwback from last year that I had recorded in the energetic rhythms for intentional living community and I thought it'd be a good idea to have it here as well. I have to say that things have shifted and changed quite a bit since this episode was recorded and, with the help of my coach, plus some breakdowns in our marriage, leading to marriage counseling, the communication and realization of emotions in both my life, my husband's life and our marriage have greatly improved since this time last year. But that doesn't mean that the pesky inner critic and resentment doesn't try to show up every now and again. Still, join in and enjoy the show. Welcome back.

Speaker 1:

We're here today and I am coming on to tell you a little bit about my weekend sort of kind of in a broad sense, I guess. But this weekend was like a super action oriented weekend for us, which is out of the norm, especially when I'm considering that like it was a new moon and everything was just calling me to not do much at all. But also there was this little thing inside of me that was saying, oh, but look at all these projects you can do, and your husband is motivated to do them, and he wants to do the projects too. So I took advantage of that, I guess, and and I did a lot of things not necessarily with my husband, but he was doing his thing and I was doing mine they were all projects that we needed to do around the house. We wanted to do around the house, and, and so we were tackling them. But I also noticed that they were wow.

Speaker 1:

Now that I'm coming on here, this is not what I really wanted to talk to you guys about, but there was a lot going on. Like I had these anxious feelings that that kind of started to appear on Friday, maybe Thursday, and they started to show up and you know who this was. It was my inner critic, like coming up, and she was just coming right out and started to appear. So what I naturally wanted to do was jump into my work, jump into projects, rather, and avoid, avoid myself in that regard, avoid the fact that there was those those feelings of wanting to do sort of not as much or to just tap into myself. But I wanted to cover it up with work, so that was kind of what was going on.

Speaker 1:

But upon further investigation of myself, I realized that what was really happening is that there was some resentment showing up in my life. There was anxiousness because of one. It was a new moon and I think there was some energy around that that I was feeling to where I was in my cycle definitely was contributing, and then it was like it was like the perfect storm to create all of these feelings, because then it was also transition time, right like the first couple days of school we had last week and and that was just kind of making me a little, a little anxious because it was new and it's a transition and transitions we talked about that in episodes 43 and 46 of the podcast. We just touched on transitions and how they can be challenging. But what really was coming up for me, I realized over the weekend, was this feeling of resentment. And I'm going to get a little vulnerable here with you because I want you to know that resentment is a real part of your life when you are an action taking kind of over committing type of person Even if you have peeled back the layers of being over committing as I have in many ways, I've really set some, some firm boundaries or priorities around what I will and won't commit to you still get those feelings of resentment. They still start to creep in, and that's deeper work that I know has to happen in my life and that I know will be happening in my life. But the inner critic in you decides to show up when your inner guidance is feeling a little bit sleepy and usually your inner critic has it out for you and she brings along resentment, right.

Speaker 1:

So resentment that is maybe towards other people in your family, maybe it's towards other people that you know, but I was definitely feeling this way over the weekend. For me, specifically, it was resentment towards my husband, because he, in my perception, frequently gets to do all of the hobbies, all of the things that he has always done, and then some, and so it just kind of made me start to feel icky and make me start to, made me start to resent him and made me start to feel sad for myself and kind of even feel bad for myself. Have you been here? Have you been to this place? I'm sure you have. I'm sure you have, because if you are the type of person who likes to give of yourself and likes to just make sure that your family is taking care of and also help out with all the other things, you most likely are neglecting your own needs and wants. That happens. It's like a natural part, especially of being a mom for one. But if you're not a mom, it definitely happens as well, and that's okay. That's okay.

Speaker 1:

It's important to acknowledge it and it's important to realize when that inner critic is showing up with the resentment and bringing along the resentment. When I start to feel this way about my husband because I'm going to just tell you also if this is not the only time that I have felt this way I recognized it right away and I knew, absolutely without a doubt, when I was talking to someone on Friday about this and she said do you think you are feeling a little bit of resentment towards your husband? And I said absolutely yes, like I know that this is what's, this is what's happening. It creates a not so enjoyable caffeine to be around, just so you know. And when this part of my inner critic shows up, I sometimes just let it fester under the surface, rather than speaking to my husband about it, which is what I probably need to do, or just letting it out in another way like journaling, and getting it out of my system. It kind of put me in a little bit of a bad mood on Friday and Saturday and made the projects that I was working on seem so much harder than what they actually were. See, it made them seem so much more challenging, and I also think that there were other things contributing to that, like the new moon that was happening, but my attitude definitely didn't help. It absolutely didn't help. It was it was making the projects harder than they needed to be.

Speaker 1:

Now I get that in a relationship there's a give and take and I feel as though I do get to do a lot of the things that I enjoy doing, but there's still this lingering feeling at times of resentment towards my husband or even my kids, because that what I've realized is that it comes with having kids or, and especially, having those priorities that make you had to have to shift into mom brain, which mom brain doesn't ever leave, like it's there as long as you have kids. So right now I'm speaking specifically to those of you who have kids. You know that. But those lingering feelings of resentment, I start to recognize them and they definitely come with having kids and shifting to mom brain. And for me, especially when I chose to set aside my consistent income from my full time career that I had before starting my business, that definitely contributes to the feelings of resentment coming up.

Speaker 1:

My choice, I was my choice to do that right, like completely my choice. But that also means that I made the choice to step into taking care of the family more, to doing more of the family things. Logically, I know I made the choice to step into that mode and to step into the being present for my kids, to being present for my family, to serving my family, to stepping away from that regular, consistent income. But then the little part of me that wants to, just the inner critic part of me that wants to come out, says no, no, but you get to, you want to have those things too and you want to have all the free time and do all the things, and rightfully so. Like there needs to be a balance in the relationship. There absolutely does. And and moms, wives, people, women, you need to be able to do the things that you want to do also and enjoy them without guilt absolutely, I wholeheartedly believe that and have a spouse or a partner who supports that as well. That completely needs to happen. But that doesn't mean that the resentment, the feelings of resentment aren't gonna come up, because that's like the illogical side of you saying that it's not fair. Right, the the inner child in you saying it's not fair. I want to do this too, even though you made the choice to make a life change or to Support your husband or partner in whatever they are doing as well. Right, I hope I am making sense with all of this. So I'm gonna go back to this point.

Speaker 1:

Once you have kids, your mom brain doesn't ever shut off. There's always this running to-do list going through your brain, right, even when you get downtime. It can be super hard to turn that to-do list off. It's possible with practice, but it's still. There are times that it doesn't want to shut off. This was how I was feeling this weekend. This is absolutely how I was feeling this weekend, and it shows up also when you maybe notice that your spouse or partner is enjoying downtime and you are left with all the responsibilities of maybe cleaning up the kitchen or picking up toys or whatever it may be.

Speaker 1:

And Speaking of picking up toys, that can lead, that can bring out the inner critic, to bring the resentment towards your kids, because Shouldn't they know how to pick up their toys? Or that when they're done playing with something they put it away, right? All of those things start to come up. You want to be able to have that time to enjoy yourself that Doesn't create guilt, right? And so when you see other people in your life close to you doing those things, it begins to create this sense of guilt that turns into resentment, turns into this feeling of resentment towards the people that you're with, even if you don't have kids.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, this maybe looks like at work or even in social organizations, people expecting you to be able to do things because, well, you don't have kids, right? So that can lead you to feel like you've got the resentment Towards those people or that organization or that group, because they're always pulling on you. They're always pulling too much of you or asking for too much of you. But I'm going to just tell you this as an action-taking over committing woman. You know this feeling of resentment, I know you do, it's the inner critic that shows up.

Speaker 1:

Like I've said, when your inner guidance gets a little bit tired and the inner critic tries to step in and bring you down. That's what they're there for. Well, they're not there to bring you down, but they're there to to bring light to the things that are challenging to you in your life. You're there there to bring light to the qualities that maybe are challenging for you, and so, with that, I want you to know that it's perfectly normal and acceptable. I just started shedding mine this morning when I started digging back into myself and and and journaling and kind of figuring out like why am I feeling this way so much and what's going on? There's conversations that need to happen, but the feeling of resentment is definitely not so strong and I can see now, as I've given myself some space from myself, that it's kind of silly how I was responding and like how I was holding this stuff inside of me and just letting it, like I said, bubble under the surface or be there under the surface.

Speaker 1:

But when you're left with these feelings of resentment towards other people In your life who you see actually doing life more effortlessly without the inner stress or the inner critic shooting on you, then these are the sorts of things that that start to come up when you're left with this resentment towards other people is that you, you should be able to do what you want to do. You should take care of the dishes that need to be washed while your kids and spouse play you, your kids should remember to pick up their toys when they switch activities and move on to something new, and you Shouldn't have to pick up extra work projects or do extra things or stay late at work Just because you don't have kids. Right, the whole theme of resentment brings up the shooting, those feelings of guilt. All those shoulds, whatever form they take, create resentment. I know it's my inner critic and that I'm not in tune with my inner guidance when this starts to show up, but they still happen. And I bet they happen for you too, because you are the way you are, as a woman who over commits herself and wants to serve others and wants to serve people.

Speaker 1:

Resentment is just a part of the game. It's a feeling that is absolutely going to happen, no matter how much you strip away. It's just a part of it. It's gonna come up, Even in small bits, and you have to catch yourself. But when I realized that it's it's landed in me, this feeling of resentment, I like to just give it time to be, I acknowledge it and I let it just be with me for a little bit. Then, of course, I begin to investigate it and, like I said in the beginning, like it often shows up as anxiety or even it brings along the anxious feelings that I know are covering up really this feeling of resentment and me not getting my needs or wants met. It's just a part of it. It happens to all of us at some point, and solving it and making it go away right away is not always possible.

Speaker 1:

Your inner critic is also a necessary part of who you are, but again, it's the opposite of your inner guidance, the opposite of your truth. Right? Your inner guidance is that voice inside of you that is your truth and your inner critic is the opposite of it. But being resentful doesn't mean that you're a bad person. It just means that you're human. It means that you have wants and needs that need to be met as well. And because you are an action taking person who is learning how to also be and be still, as I know you are, I know that you have some really good qualities about you that are there to help the world in a big, big way. And if your inner critic doesn't ever show up, you might just forget how human you actually are and how much you really do need your inner guidance to lead you. So inner critic, bringing along resentment, is indeed sometimes necessary, and it's okay. You don't have to solve it right away. It's a necessary part of who you are so that you can help the world and that you can make this bigger in bigger difference in the world, so that you can get back to remembering how much you need to tune into your inner guidance when those feelings of resentment start to come up. Acknowledge them, let them be and then investigate them. Right. That's your call to go into your inner guidance. So just know resentment is going to happen, you're human and it's okay. It's absolutely okay. Thanks for tuning in.

Speaker 1:

I hope this was a little nugget of encouragement or inspiration that can help you in your day and that can help you just accept yourself for who you are in this moment. Oh, friends, that was a good episode to go back and revisit. I picked up a lot in that while editing and while re-listening to it. But it also made me realize how much I have grown as a person over the past year, and I have to attribute that to not only my coach but also me actually digging in and doing the self-work. So working with a coach and taking ownership and feeling empowered to do the work myself, as well as opening up the can of worms with my husband that our marriage was not super fantastic, as much as maybe it appeared to be on the outside. There was a lot of unhappiness, and together we have taken the step to start to work on that and enrich the love that we have for each other and just kind of relearn about each other.

Speaker 1:

And so I don't know why I'm sharing all of this with you, other than the fact that if you are in that place with your spouse, if you are in this place where you are just covering up pain, discomfort, resentment, it's okay to ask for help. It's absolutely okay to reach out and to find someone who can work with you and your partner, you and your spouse. I'm gonna get a little emotional here, and I didn't realize that I would, because my husband and I did, and it has brought us closer spiritually to each other, which is something I've prayed about for years and it took getting to a very, very low point in our marriage in order for that to happen. But ultimately we are on this path now where we are growing closer together. We are growing in our faith, we are growing in our spirituality not just religion, but spirituality with understanding ourselves and showing up as more complete humans in this world so that we can hopefully raise our children to be whole and complete and loving and buoyant and all the things that we want for them to be.

Speaker 1:

I'll just leave you with that and if you know someone else who maybe needs to hear this message today, would you just send this episode onto them, send them a link to this episode and share it with them. You never know who might need to hear some of these words of encouragement and know that, as I said, resentment, your inner critic, they're all a part of it. But honestly, the more you can work on yourself and the more that you get the right help you need to start to peel back the layers that cause that inner critic to come up and that voice of resentment, the quieter and quieter it becomes and the more at ease, content and peaceful you begin to feel in your life. I'm Kathy Stricker and you've been listening to the Health, harmony and Happiness with Kathy podcast. Cheers to cultivating your own version of health, harmony and happiness in your life.