Can our Inner Critic make us sick?

Can your inner critic really make you sick? I’ve been sick twice this month and while I’m sure there are physical reasons why, I also can’t help but notice both incidences occurred after vocalizing to a few people how awesome and amazing life and business were going. I read this great book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks and in it he describes how our Inner Critics can make us sick. I’ve also been looking into the work of Louise L Hay as well as the new film “Is your Story Making you Sick.”

If I look back over certain events I can definitely see times where I think this may have been true. I remember several occasions of me working my ass off to prepare for a vacation. I worked myself to the bone to get everything done and taken care of so I wouldn’t have to worry about anything while I was away and I could just fully unplug and enjoy. Guess what??? Pretty much every time I got sick. This lasted for years until I became aware of the pattern and started to do extra immune system boosters and other things to help counter act that.

I also remember a couple of weeks before I had to give this really big speech in front of 275+ women and I tripped and fell while walking the dogs. For weeks leading up to this, I kept “deleting” from my mind picture after picture of me “falling” on stage in front of all those women. Did my Inner Critic fulfill my worst nightmare? I’m grateful it didn’t happen on stage but I still haven’t fully healed from that fall and it was a few months ago now…

In my research and if reflecting on my own experiences I’m beginning to think these early progressive researches may be on to something. Famous shame researcher, Brené Brown, talks about how Joy is actually one of the most feared emotions of all. It is feared so much not because of how we feel when we have joy, but because of the anticipation of what it will feel like to no longer have joy. We’ve all heard the saying, “I feel like I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop…”

Is joy, love, and abundance (or the loss of these things) so horrible to imagine to our Inner Critic's that it will actually physically sabotage us to avoid achieving those moments? I don’t know about yours, but I can definitely see where mine has taken me down a peg a time or two.

So how do we get past this. I thought those old patterns had ended but after getting sick randomly twice in one of the best months I’ve ever had in my business and my life, I’m not so sure now…

Self awareness is always the first step to anything, but how do you stop your Inner Critic from total sneaky self sabotage?

We all have a “story.” This is the story that we tell ourselves of who we are, yet it isn’t who we truly are.

I believe that when we’re born we are born whole and perfect. We are born as authentic spirits of light and goodness, knowing fully who we are in this world and what were were born to make manifest.

I believe that we lose that sense of who we truly are and that we have to lose it in order to survive. We learn fear, we learn pain, we learn to conform to the ideas and beliefs of those around us and we become numb. Numb to who we were and are and we start to believe this “story” of who were think we are.

I believe that the greatest path we can choose to walk is the journey we take back to our true and perfect whole self. It is a choice and it is an awakening some might say.

I’ve been walking this journey back to myself since I was 18. It’s a choice I make every... single... freaking... day...

I don’t want my Inner Critic to make me sick anymore. Both of my parents were extremely unhealthy emotionally and physically and mentally. My Dad’s inability to change his physical health took his life at the young age of 66. Am I telling myself that that will be my “story” too?

My mom is alive but her health has suffered greatly and she will permanently be handicapped forever. Am I telling myself that that will also be my “story”?

I thought I had gotten past making myself sick but perhaps I need to keep re-writing my “story.”

What do you want to re-write your “story” to?