Blueprint for Loving Your Inner Critic (and finally feel joy)

Hey there, Dr. Dallas Bragg here, recovery coach for gay men who want to break free from the addictive patterns of crystal meth and live their best and highest life. Today, I'm introducing you to a blueprint for loving your inner critic and finally finding joy in recovery. If you're struggling with that inner drill sergeant voice, I want you to watch this full video. On this channel, you're going to find lots of resources to help you break free from Chemsex and attain your best and highest life. Also, don't forget to look for my podcast. It's called The Aftermath Podcast. It's here on this channel as well. And I drop a long-form video just like this one every Saturday. So please turn on the notification bell so you don't miss anything. By the way, if you're interested in my one-on-one coaching program, it's called Recovery Alchemy. The link to apply is in the show notes. Through weekly one-on-one sessions, weekly group sessions, and daily accountability, your life could look much differently in 6 months than it does right now. You know what? My estimation is that 90% of the men I work with Are slaves to the voice of their inner critic. It isn't enough to be told by the external world that we aren't good enough, but we also walk around with that message being whispered in our ears all day. Of that 90%, the mistake that 99% of them make is vilifying that voice. They feel anger and resentment toward it, essentially turning against a natural part of themselves. So the solution in recovery is to embrace, observe, and find love for this voice and to give it a new way of helping. So to illustrate how this can be accomplished, I'm going to again use another client example. So this time let's talk about Michael, of course, not his real name. Michael had been substance-free for about 5 months. He had a thriving career, healthy relationship, and was hitting the gym on a regular basis. By every external measure, especially in the gay world, he was doing recovery right. But as our coaching relationship was coming to an end, he was talking to me and he is like, I have everything that I thought I wanted now, but I still feel like I'm waiting for permission to actually enjoy everything, to enjoy my life. So that hit me really hard because I knew exactly what he meant. And if you are listening to this, I'll bet you do too. So let's talk about the, the voice that never sleeps, right? Your inner drill sergeant. Here's what Michael couldn't see yet. He had stopped using crystal meth, but he hadn't stopped punishing himself. The drug was gone, but the internal drill sergeant was still there, running 24/7 commentary. You could have done better than that. Don't get too comfortable. You're one mistake away from losing everything. Remember what you did? You don't deserve to feel good. Does any of that sound familiar to you? When we're in active addiction, listen, especially with something as shame-soaked as chemsex, we develop this incredibly abusive relationship with ourselves. We have to, in a way, because there's a cognitive dissonance between who we want to be and what we're doing. And that becomes so painful that the only way to keep going is to become our own worst enemy. To turn against ourselves. That inner critic becomes louder than the high. And what most men think is that voice automatically shuts up when you stop using. But in fact, for most of us, it gets louder. There's no buffer anymore because now we're sober enough and we really hear it. And we mistakenly believe that this brutal self-talk is what's keeping us Substance-free. It's making us better. We think that harsh voice got me here, and if I let up, I'm gonna relapse, which is bullshit. I help gay men break free from the addictive patterns of chemsex and become their best and highest selves. My one-on-one coaching program, by the way, is called Recovery Alchemy. It's a 6-month intense program that can literally change your life. In that program, we talk about the inner critic, the parts of yourselves that are trying to help you, That you vilify and gets in the way of joy and recovery. If you're interested in the program, I accept 2 new clients a month. You can apply in the show notes. So listen, we've all been sold a lie. Now I want you to imagine something with me for just a minute. Picture your boss standing next to you while you work, and every few minutes he leans over and says, you're doing that wrong. What would people think if they saw this? You're going to mess this up. Don't forget you failed before. You better not screw this up again. Now imagine if they're doing that roughly like 50,000 How would you perform? How would you feel? Would you produce your best work, or would you just be an anxious, frozen mess? This is what we're doing to ourselves, and somehow we've convinced ourselves that this is what discipline looks like, what staying sober looks like, what being responsible means. The truth is that harsh self-criticism doesn't make you better. It makes you smaller. It makes you stuck. And it actively prevents you from accessing your full potential. When I was using, that shame was so thick I could barely breathe through it. And I thought becoming substance-free would dissolve that shame, but it didn't. Basically, it made it bubble up harder and more clearer, just transferred. That same voice that used to say, you're disgusting for what you did last night, Became, you're disgusting for even thinking about sex, or you don't deserve to have fun because of your past. And my favorite one for me, you're a bad father who has damaged his children. Different content, same punishing tone. Here's how to understand the inner critic's real secret mission, because here's where we get it wrong and where we get interesting is that is— this is what changed everything. For Michael, and it changed everything for me. And that's the inner critic isn't actually trying to destroy you, it's trying to protect you. So stay with me. That harsh voice developed for a reason. Maybe it was the voice of a parent who was never satisfied. Maybe it was the internalized homophobia we absorbed from a world that told us we were wrong for just existing. Or maybe it was the only way we knew how to stay safe in an unsafe childhood environment. For many of us, That's where perfectionism, self-punishment, it became that armor against a much more terrifying possibility that was being criticized, being embarrassed, being rejected, being abandoned. The inner critic's logic goes something like this. If I criticize myself first harshly enough, then maybe I can be perfect. And if I can be perfect, Then maybe I'll be safe. Then maybe I'll be loved. Then maybe I'll be enough. But here is the problem with that strategy. Perfection does not exist, right? It's not even a real target. So ask yourself right now, what does perfection actually look like? A perfect body, perfect recovery, perfect life? The more you try to define it, the more it slips away because it's a mirage. It's a delusion. We're chasing an end result that doesn't exist and we're punishing ourselves for never arriving there. So the way through this is With it, not against it. So how do we work with the inner critic instead of being dominated by it? First, we need to understand that trying to silence it or positive think our way out of it does not work. If you've ever tried to counter, you're worthless, with forced affirmations like, I'm amazing and everything is great, you know what I'm talking about. It feels hollow. It feels fake. Like you're trying to paint over rot. Real transformation happens when we develop a different relationship with the critical voice, not by making it louder and not by making it quieter, but by understanding what it's actually trying to tell us. So when Michael started really listening to his inner critic without judging it, without judging himself, just getting curious about it, something fascinating started to happen. He realized the voice wasn't actually about his performance at work or his performance in recovery. Or how he looked or his relationships. It was about a terrified kid who learned early on that love was conditional, that safety required perfection, that one mistake could mean abandonment. His inner critic was still trying to keep that little boy safe decades later, using the same old strategy it's ever known. Hypervigilance and then self-punishment. That's where he felt safe. So we got to reclaim permission to feel good. So here's what I see over and over again in my work with gay men recovering from chemsex addiction. We're so conditioned to associate pleasure with shame that we've forgotten how to experience joy without waiting for the other shoe to drop. Crystal and Chemsex gave us permission to feel good, to feel sexual, to be free, to be ourselves in ways that society, our families, and our own internalized homophobia never allowed. But that permission came with a price tag. So now in recovery, we're terrified of feeling good. We've created an equation: pleasure equals danger equals relapse. We can't be joyful. We're denying ourselves joy. And that does not keep you sober. It keeps you suffering. And suffering isn't the same as healing, no matter how much the church and some recovery institutions want you to believe that. Real recovery isn't about white-knuckling your way through a joyless life while constantly monitoring yourself for moral failure and character defects. It's about learning to experience pleasure, Connection and aliveness in ways that don't destroy you. It's about finding out who you are when you're not running from yourself or you're not punishing yourself. One of the most radical things you can do in recovery is to ask yourself throughout the day, what would make this moment 10% more enjoyable right now? Not 100%. Don't go for the gold here. Don't go all or nothing. We're not trying to chase a high, just 10% better. Maybe that means taking 3 conscious breaths. Maybe it's feeling the sun on your face. Maybe it's texting a friend something funny. Maybe it's letting yourself actually taste your food instead of eating while scrolling. This is rewiring your nervous system to understand that feeling good, feeling pleasure is safety, that you're allowed to be here, that your life can include pleasure. Without punishment. So let's practice this practice of welcoming. So there's, there's a powerful concept here that I want you to sit with. Welcoming your emotions instead of resisting them. So most of us have spent our lives pushing away uncomfortable feelings. Sadness, anger, fear, shame, loneliness. We learn to numb them with sex, with validation, with crystal, with work, with anything that would create distance between us and what we actually were feeling. Even in recovery, we often just transfer that numbing strategy to something more socially acceptable. We are still in active addiction without using the substance. Here's the thing: the emotions we resist persist, and they grow, and they become these massive, terrifying monsters in the shadows of our psyche. We organize our entire lives around not feeling them. Abandonment, loneliness, isolation. What if instead of running, we turn toward them and we just felt them? Not to wallow or to be consumed, but to simply just acknowledge, oh, there's sadness here. There's fear here. There's shame again. There's rejection without making it mean something catastrophic about who we are and where our life is going. When Michael finally started to let himself feel the grief he'd been running from for years— he was carrying grief about the time he had lost, relationships damaged, the version of himself he might have been without meth— something unexpected really happened to him. The grief didn't destroy him when he felt it. It moved through him. And on the other side of it was something he hadn't felt in years: lightness, space, possibility. Something new. He could now move on and evolve because the emotion had run through him. Your emotions are information. They're not your identity. Feeling angry doesn't make you an angry person. Feeling afraid doesn't make you weak. Feeling shame doesn't make you shameful. These are just weather patterns moving through your landscape, moving through your experience. There's Time to build a new relationship with yourself. So here's what I told Michael and what I'm telling you right now. You've spent enough time being your own enemy. What if you became your own ally instead? Let's take that inner critic and make it an ally. Doesn't mean letting yourself off the hook. Doesn't mean abandoning, abandoning discipline or giving up on growth or not doing your best. It means recognizing that growth happens through encouragement. Not punishment. This is important. This is why a lot of recovery programs aren't working. They are operating through punishment instead of encouragement. You want to work through curiosity and not condemnation. You want to welcome the emotions, not go to war with them. So think about how you would talk to somebody you genuinely love. who was struggling? You wouldn't berate them. You'd probably say something like, hey, I see you're having a hard time. That makes sense given what you're dealing with. What do you need right now, and how can I support you? Why can't we say this to ourselves? Why don't we talk to ourselves that way? The work isn't to become a different person. It's to stop being so convinced that you know exactly who you are and that you've got it all under control. You wanna lighten up around your self-concept and develop what some people call a beginner's mind or a don't-know mind. This gets you curious. This gets you open to possibilities. And when you're certain that you're a broken individual, that you're an addict, you can't heal. When you're certain that you're bad, you can't grow. When you're certain you don't deserve joy, You can experience it. And when you say, I don't actually know what I'm capable of, or maybe I'm not who I've been telling myself I am all my, all this time, that's when the transformation becomes possible. You are opening yourself up to possibilities. Your life is happening for you. So let me leave you with this. Every single thing in your life, including your addiction, including your recovery, including your struggle, With that punishing inner voice is happening for you, not to you. You're not being punished by the universe. You're being invited into a fuller version of yourself. That's the gift of myth. Michael came back a few months later with an update. He started letting himself enjoy things, small things. His morning coffee with extra time in the morning, didn't punish himself for it. Listening to a great song instead of a podcast, a conversation with a friend that was about nothing He'd stopped waiting for permission and just started noticing what brought him alive. The inner critic was still there sometimes. Of course, the inner critic's not gonna go anywhere, but it got quieter. Not because he fought it, not because he won the war, but because he stopped feeding it so much attention. He said he realized that he was so focused on not being who he was That when he was using, he forgot to discover who he actually was. And it turned out he's somebody who likes his life. He's somebody who is allowed to like his life. That's what recovery is about. You're allowed to like your life. You're allowed to love your life. You're allowed to feel good. You're allowed to feel pleasure. You're allowed to make mistakes without it meaning you're fundamentally flawed. You're allowed to be in process, to not have it all figured out, to be both healing and whole at the same time, healing and already whole at the same time. The inner critic will probably never completely disappear, but you can change your relationship. You can recognize it as an old protection strategy that's outlived its usefulness. You can thank it for trying to keep you safe and then gently let it know, I've got this now. I don't need you to punish me, to try to push me. I need you to trust me that whatever we're trying not to feel is not life-threatening. And then when you can ask yourself one of the most profound questions of all, what would bring me joy right now? Not despite your past, not after you've earned it, not when you're finally perfect enough. Right now, in this moment, as you are, what brings you joy? I feel like this was all over the place today, but I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it's helpful. Tell me in the comments and I'll see you next week.