Self-Attack Thoughts Can Be Questioned Too
Most of the time I use Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheets when doing The Work. I write my worksheets on other people, or things, that trigger me. The reason I do that is that I love to use other people as mirrors to see myself.
But sometimes I question my self-attack statements directly. When I do, I usually don’t write a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet. Instead, I write down my self-judgment on a One-Belief-at-a-Time Worksheet and question it by itself.
Self-Judgments Are a Little Different
They don’t have all of the usual turnarounds (to the self, to the other, to the opposite). Usually, just the turnaround to the opposite makes sense for self-judgments.
For example, someone recently asked me about working the concept, “I’m overweight.” She said that she didn’t get very far when she tried to turn it around to herself. That’s because there isn’t usually a turnaround to the self for a self-judgment.
And there usually isn’t a turnaround to the other either. The main turnaround is to the opposite which, in this case, would be “I am not overweight.”
There could also be a few other unusual turnarounds such as the yahoo turnaround, “I’m overweight! Yay! How is that a good thing?” Or turnarounds like, “Others are overweight,” or “My thinking is overweight.”
As you Can See, Self-Judgments Don’t Have Many Standard Turnarounds
But that doesn’t mean they can’t be worked.
The biggest challenge when working self-judgments is that the mind may try to use The Work to get out of self-responsibility.
For example, the turnaround, “I am not overweight,” could be a great way to gain some perspective and balance on the idea that I am overweight. The turnaround points to the fact that I’m not that overweight so there is no need to attack myself about it. But the same turnaround could also be used by the mind as justification for not taking care of myself or possibly losing some weight.
The way around this is to notice if a turnaround is bringing me closer to self-responsibility and balance or not. If not, then it’s not really The Work that I’m doing.
There’s Another Way to Work with Self-Attack Thoughts
This is as valuable as, and often more powerful than, questioning the self-attack thought itself.
Usually a self-attack thought of any kind is how I react to some other stressful thought or situation. In other words, the self-attack thought is secondary.
The primary cause of stress was some outside trigger. I locate that trigger by asking myself, “When did the self-attack thoughts begin?”
Maybe it Was Earlier Today, or Last Month, or Years Ago
If I stop and consider, I can often find that I started using this particular self-attack thought at some particular point. And usually it was somebody else that triggered me. Now I can write a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet on that person and deal with the original cause of my stress.
For example, I had a client who was trying to question his suicidal thoughts. But when he asked himself, “When did the suicidal thoughts begin?” he found that it was something specific that his father had said at Thanksgiving that triggered him.
So he moved into writing a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet on his father from that situation.
Both Ways Are Helpful
Questioning the actual self-attack thoughts themselves is good. And looking for where the self-attack thoughts started in order to write a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet on what triggered the self-attack in the first place is also good.
I encourage you to do The Work from both directions and see what each one reveals for you.
Have a great weekend,
Todd
“The four questions are used in exactly the same way when you apply them to self-judgments.” Byron Katie, Loving What Is
Get two new articles about The Work of Byron Katie every week, plus my checklist for the Judge-Your-Neighbor-Worksheet. Subscribe to the newsletter here.
If you like this article, feel free to forward the link to friends, family or colleagues. Or share the link on Facebook or other social media. If you have thoughts you’d like to share about it, please leave your comments below.
