GeniesLoki

uh... that was not the intended side effect questioning, disciplined, challenging, okay, but not meaner!

If it helps, I currently basically never engage in negative self talk. It's not a thing I do. I'm very nice to myself. So "This is how you behave with ultimate power" as a frame made me go "Hmm. Actually, zero might not be the correct number here..."

Teach me

Mostly I think it's just the end result of countless hours spent helping friends debug their own emotional problems and talking to myself like I talk to them / would like them to talk to themselves.

Makes sense. Does not come naturally to me at all.

I think it helps that I've got very good metacognition, so I spend a lot of time paying attention to the structure of my thoughts, and I'm good enough at separating myself from my emotional responses a bit that I can then go "Actually, is this helpful?"

Sounds like a great skill! My ability to do that varies hugely by my own context (health, sleep, nutrition, work, stress levels) and the nature of the think I'd be noticing (BPD is a real pain), so it can be difficult to stop even when I do notice. Making progress though.

I mean the flipside of this is that I've had to spend the last two years working really hard to get to a point where I can have strong emotional responses to anything. So I think partly we're just starting from being stuck at opposite ends of a spectrum.