Running With Teresa
How Naming My Inner Critic Helped Me Outrun Negative Self-Talk
I have a running buddy. Well, not a buddy so much as a frenemy. Well, not a frenemy so much as a nemesis.
So, yeah. I have a running nemesis.
I prefer to run solo, so the fact that she shows up on almost all my runs is, frankly, intrusive. She lives really close by, so she’s always around. She talks a lot–too much, if I’m being honest. She can be deeply unkind. She’s not particularly funny. Hell, she’s not even that smart.
She’s…me. My nemesis is me.
Or, more precisely, the interior version of me from whom springs a toxic geyser of negative self-talk day and night.
“You didn’t do [that minor thing] correctly.”
“You’re getting old. Fast.”
“If you haven’t achieved [literally any life milestone] by now, you probably never will.”
About a year ago, I started listening to guided runs just to shut the bitch up. Nevertheless, she persists.
One day recently, I was about a half-mile into a run when she joined me unexpectedly.
Everyone thinks you’re a failure, she said. (See? She’s a real piece of work.) She kept talking, letting me know about all the people who…
