Sarah, a very successful startup co-founder, was burned out. When she came to my office, she explained that she had been overpromising work and accepting unrealistically early deadlines. For Sarah, declining any kind of client request was the same as saying, “I am a disappointment.”
Jessica, a hardworking grad student, always felt she could do better and told herself she was lazy, fat, stupid, and frequently just “bad.” Despite being her high school valedictorian, a magna cum laude undergraduate, and enrolled in a prestigious Ph.D. program, Jessica’s inner monologue was the source of anxiety, depression, and disordered eating.
To help clients like Sarah and Jessica end punishing cycles of self-hatred, I listen closely to word choices and encourage people to get curious about who their inner voices sound like. Like many people I work with, these women had inner critics that created a very unhealthy sense of self. Psychoanalytic theory calls these voices “introjects.” I call them “fake news”!
Introjection, a Freudian defense mechanism, occurs when a person, often as a child, internalizes projected feelings, beliefs, and attitudes of critical or rejecting parents—so much so that they begin to identify with the negative introjects on an unconscious level as part of their........