Critic's Delight - locked out of my school district website

[Jdog]

Like many others, I work for a large organization that is completely dependent upon a computer network in order to function.  This morning, I found myself locked out of the system and had to call to get access to go back on the network.  I was told by an administrator in my building that I was the third person just in my school to get locked out today.  Now, at home, I find myself yet again locked out of the system.  My inner critic is having a blast with this - wondering if it's because I checked my home email from the computer a few times, or just what is wrong.  I deleted my home email from the computer and am still beating myself up as well as furious about the situation. 

Better luck tomorrow, right?

[woodsgnome]

Self-blame via the inner critic is one of those habits I also have a hard time breaking effectively. It's vicious and recycles; and often illogical besides. It's my first response--what did I do to cause/deserve/exacerbate/escalate the situation, etc. Lots of exhaustive self-blame talk can emerge from inner critic until I can't stand it. I'm so used to 'falling on my sword' for anything gone even slightly askew that it makes functioning a tiring challenge.

The ideal would be to report having found a sure way to deal with it. But even that sets up the jaws of defeat when the sure thing doesn't seem to work out; or at least didn't live up to one's expectations. The only thing is to return to basics with the hope that it can stick as a habitual response rather than a forced one (e.g. if I do it this way it will always feel good).

For me, it's helps to remember Tara Brach's RAIN method. R--recognize what's going on; A--allow all the thoughts, even the bad ones, to be there; I--investigate (mindfully) what's going on, with self-kindness; and N--not identifying with unworthiness or negative vibes about your self.

The feelings are all there, you allow yourself the freedom to investigate, and you dis-identify with the habitual past parts. Mindfulness in action, drawing on the inner reserves you'd forgot you had. But for me there's still the caveat of more self-blame when I forget to practice the RAIN, or any, process. Still I'm finding it's helping to make me less prone to accept inner critic's first response and collapse into a crisis of self-blame.

Hope your situation has been resolved, but especially hope you've regained some equilibrium and inner strength again.

[Jdog]

Woodsgnome-

So nice of you to respond with care, empathy, and constructive support.  I, too, am a big Tara Brach fan and I actually used RAIN both in meditation and after to help myself out of this self critical morass.  I found, in meditation, the feelings of being abandoned that were stirred up by being locked out of the website.  I then could offer support to my inner child and was able to avoid taking a day off from work as a result.  The following day (yesterday) brought such relief.  Relief in the form of learning that I was not the only one locked out, as well as being helped by someone in tech support.  In addition, some computer experts came out and fixed an additional glitch that had been preventing me from printing anything from my laptop.  It felt like my birthday! 

Thank you for being there for me during this difficult time.