Reasons to End a Friendship (with Yourself)

There are many reasons to end a friendship with yourself. Does that sound weird? Probably so, but I promise that there are many reasons you need to end a friendship with yourself to create peace in your life.

If you’re a bit confused as to why I am saying you need to end a friendship with yourself, bear with me. Since you found this post, you definitely have a “friend” who lives inside your mind. That “friend” is not a true friend.

You know that not all friendships are good or healthy. What you don’t realize is that the unhealthiest “friendship” you have is with yourself.

That is one of the many reasons to end a friendship with yourself. You have spent your entire life listening to that voice, a/k/a “friend”, in your head.

I seriously doubt that voice in your head has given you speeches to motivate you in a loving way. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

You already know the best thing to say to a friend who needs love. You have so many kind words to say to your friends.

The reason you know how to talk to a friend is that you know what it’s like to lack unconditional love. However, you aren’t saying those things to the “friend” who has been with you since birth.

Reasons to End a Friendship with Yourself

The reason I call your negative self-talk a “friend” is that you treat that nasty voice as if it is a friend in many ways.

You listen to that “friend.” You take advice from that “friend.” You spend a lot of time with that “friend.”

I bet you never say these words to that “friend”, though. “Don’t forget to love yourself.” It’s easy for you to find kind words like those to say to a friend. However, you would struggle to utter that phrase, “don’t forget to love yourself”, when speaking to yourself.

Now, sit for a minute and think about all of the nasty things your “friend,” that negative self-talk, has said to you over the years. Think about all of the ways that “friend” has knocked you down and talked to you as if you were a piece of shit.

You could pick any one of those things and they’d all be valid reasons to end a friendship with somebody else. So, why do you say them to yourself?

I could spend a lot of time explaining why you say such nasty things about yourself, but that’s not the point of this post. If you want to learn why you do that, click here to read my post Creation of Negative Self-Talk.

Struggles with Finding Kind Words to Say to Yourself

The point of this post is to allow you to see that your longest friendship is the friendship with yourself. In order for that friendship to be healthy, you have to be really honest with yourself.

Write a list of all of the reasons to end a friendship with yourself. If you’re reading this, you are probably able to do that easily.

Think about all the times you have put yourself down, told yourself you are a failure, or have punished yourself.

Once you have that list, imagine a friend treating you like that. Now, I’m aware that many people have allowed friends to treat them poorly, but that’s a post for another day.

If you are struggling with this, then you probably believe all of those nasty things your “friend” said are true about you. They aren’t, but I’m not here to change your mind about that.

Changing Your Negative Self Talk

Now, let’s get back to the reasons to end a friendship with yourself. If you have any children in your life, imagine somebody saying all of those terribly negative things to that child.

What would you do about that? I know you wouldn’t just sit there and do nothing. You would have so many loving, kind words to say to that child.

You would give as many speeches to motivate that child as you possibly could. That child would feel the love you have for him or her a million times over.

Not only that, but you would reassure that child that none of those nasty things were true. You’d think of all the examples you could to show that child how wonderful he or she is.

So, why can’t you do that for yourself? The answer is because that’s incredibly hard.

Believing the Lies of Your Negative Self-Talk and the Lies of Others

You have been “friends” with that negative self-talk for so long that it has become second nature to listen to that nasty, harmful dialogue in your head. You believe it speaks the truth.

The reason I know all about this longtime “friend” is that I was friends with mine for many years. I never acknowledged the millions of reasons to end a friendship with myself and that nasty voice.

It’s important to realize that this “friend” is not solely your creation. Your “friend” is a culmination of all of the people in your life since childhood who treated you poorly.

Those people were dealing with their own feelings of not being good enough. Those feelings are what I call Not Good Enough Stuff. Click here to read an explanation of Not Good Enough Stuff.

If we don’t heal our Not Good Enough Stuff, we dump it on everybody else. If the word “yuck” is coming to your mind, then you are on the right track.

Dumping our Not Good Enough Stuff on others is yucky, but it’s also not intentional for the most part. The reason we do that is that we were never taught how to heal.

Think about it this way. Most of the people in your life also have the same “friend” you have. That means there are a lot of toxic “friendships” walking around out there in people’s minds.

We can’t change that for other people though. They have to be willing to do the difficult work to heal.

Sadly, you have to let them stay right where they are until and if they decide to heal. So, my focus is on helping you heal. You wouldn’t still be reading this if you didn’t want to heal.

The Healing Journey

In order for me to truly identify reasons to end a friendship with myself, I had to gain awareness of how it got there in the first place.

If you have read a few of my blog posts, you’re probably familiar with some of the trauma in my childhood. My parents had HUGE piles of Not Good Enough Stuff that were dumped on me.

Sadly, that resulted in a false belief that I created for myself that said “You are not good enough.” That false belief grew to be that “friend” I keep mentioning.

As I began my healing journey, I had to look at the possibility of that “friend” having told me nothing but lies. Realizing that my “friend” was unhealthy and incredibly harmful to me was not an easy task.

I had believed my “friend” for my entire life. What I had to realize was that my “friend” had never been kind to me. She had never given me good advice either.

That sure never stopped me though from listening to her though. I continued to go back millions of times for more bad advice.

Does that sound familiar to you? I bet you have done the same with your “friend.”

When I got really ready to heal, I began to see the many reasons to end a friendship with myself. Just like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, that “friend” is hard to get rid of after so many years.

The slogan I had to create when my “friend” kept popping back up was, “don’t forget to love yourself.” Feel free to use my slogan. It works!

How to End a Friendship with Yourself

Are you wondering how I actually went about breaking up with my “friend?” I’ll share how I did that. It may seem simple, but it is anything but that.

I found a picture of myself as a little girl. I made that picture the background and screen saver on my phone.

Think about how many times a day I saw that sweet, beautiful little girl on my phone. It was probably too many to count.

So, every time I saw that little girl, I would have kind words to say to her. There were times when I gave speeches to motivate her.

I knew the best thing to say to a friend. I just had to learn to say that to myself. I needed the reminder “don’t forget to love yourself” multiple times a day for quite a long time.

As a psychotherapist, I have shared this way to end that nasty “friendship” with my clients. Many of them struggled to be loving to the child in the picture due to the Not Good Enough Stuff that was put on them as a child.

Often, they began believing at a very young age that they are not good enough. They were taught they were bad, unlovable and many other nasty lies.

If you relate to those clients, I have another strategy for you. Find a picture of a child in your life whom you love and adore. Use a picture of that child instead of a picture of yourself as a child.

When you see the picture of that precious child on your phone, it will be easy to find kind words to say to that child in the picture. Since that should be easy, you’ll need to take it a step further.

Every time your old “friend” shows up to spew garbage, look at that picture of the child you love. Would you allow somebody to speak to him or her like that?

Absolutely not! It will force you to pause and reconsider how your “friend” is speaking to you. Just one of the nasty comments would be one of the many reasons to end a friendship with that so-called friend.

Kind Words to Say to Your Inner Child

Now, let’s look at how you should be speaking to the child in the picture. It’s much different than how you would speak to an adult.

That child needs unconditional love, as we all do. However, you have to get yourself in the right frame of mind to give that to the child in the picture.

So, to get yourself in the right frame of mind, I have compiled a list of speeches to motivate you. These will help you, which will help you heal your inner child who desperately needs you.

I just used the phrase “inner child.” If you’re confused by that term, that is ok.

Inner child work is simply a method of healing things from your childhood. That is what you will be doing in this exercise. To learn more about your inner child, click here.

If you find it difficult to create speeches to motivate on the fly, that’s ok. Here are a few examples to listen to that will get you in a better head space to do this work.

Short Speeches to Motivate:

Long Speeches to Motivate:

Patience in Your Healing Journey

Before you begin working on this, you need to understand something incredibly important about healing. There is no set time frame for how long it will take for you to heal or end this “friendship.”

It took me a few years of using this exercise off and on before I could truly say I had enough reasons to end a friendship with myself. Please don’t let that discourage you.

The reason I am telling you how long it took me to heal this aspect of my life is to show you that it is possible. Also, it takes a true commitment to yourself.

Now, just because it took me a few years does not mean that I struggled as deeply as when I began. I did not.

Through those years, I got better and better at telling my “friend” to shut up and that she was a liar. I got better and better at finding speeches to motivate myself in the moments I needed them.

Just allow yourself whatever time it takes to heal. If your patience isn’t great, think about the alternative.

You could choose to do nothing. That means you will stay right where you are in your life at this exact moment. Just typing that makes my chest tighten.

I will never stay where I am in my healing journey. I will always continue working on myself. That does not mean that I do not love or accept myself.

It means that I always want to work to be the best person I can be for myself and others. In order to do that, I have to continue healing more and more.

That allows me to continually create a life that is more peaceful each day. Isn’t that what we all want?

So, I’m wrapping up this post, but want to reinforce the point that you have the ability to heal. You have the ability to end your “friendship” with that nasty voice in your head.

Not only that, but you deserve to heal. If you are ready to begin this part of your healing journey, I want to hear from you.

Share your process with the NGES community by commenting below. We all have something valuable that we can teach others. Also, don’t forget to love yourself throughout your healing journey. You deserve that.

DISCLAIMER:

This site is only intended for people who are truly willing to look at themselves with an open mind and have the ability to truly be vulnerable with themselves and others. Please understand that this site is in NO WAY THERAPEUTIC ADVICE. However, this site can be very beneficial in learning the causes of your Not Good Enough Stuff. This site is not intended to provide or replace medical or psychiatric treatment. Mary Beth HIGHLY RECOMMENDS finding a licensed therapist to help you process the information from this site and all that you learn about yourself. Visit Psychology Today to find a licensed therapist in your area.