Feelings / Emotions / Beating myself up

Often I find that I feel bad about myself, I criticize myself, I replay words, phrases over and over in my mind until they make me want to scream or cry in frustration.

This morning, after countless years,  I believe I understood what is going on.

I am trying to get myself to cry, to feel the emotion, and it as a BAD habit, the most effective way I have found to ‘feel’ negative emotions is to beat myself up for it, to reply a single event over and over until I make myself cry.

The method works flawlessly -  but has the fatal flaw in my self-esteem and confidence.

Someone says something and walks away, and I “feel” hurt, but I don't ‘feel’ it enough to my emotional satisfaction, so I replay it, I try to force myself to be upset because I want to ‘get over it’.

And it triggers more stronger feelings, deeper feelings, that need to come out.

I hurt myself not by cutting or physical self-harm, but instead my emotional self-harm.

I think to myself  ‘everyone hates me’ not because I belief that reallly everyone hates me, but because the feeling hurts me, makes me sad, makes me cry

And I feel better after the cry, because I needed the cry, the relief that comes afterward.

Needing to cry, and crying are okay, crying is not the problem, it is the way I am hurting myself, in order to get to the cry.

I need to find a better way to truly cry, be angry, to ‘feel’ the emotion, without damaging my own self-esteem and belief in myself.

Emotions demand to be felt. If you don’t consciously allow the feeling, they will find a way to make themselves known.

This is why people can sometimes feel like ‘stepping’ on eggshells. I may over-react to a small thing because it’s not a ‘small thing’ but because of the build up, so much pain that is inside that needs out, I keep telling myself “it’s okay” when it’s not, redirecting my energy (which is good), but all of the negative emotion does not ‘get out’

The truth is, I am np different then a lot of people who do this, I can see other people do it, I can try to rationalize it to them, or perhaps even try to be compassionate towards it but I fail, not because I suck but because I don’t give that same compassion to myself, so how can I possibly give it in a meaningful way to others?