Contrary to the traditional view that auto-aggression involves self-inflicted external injuries to the point of suicide, I think this is certainly true but extreme and not so frequent. Meanwhile, auto-aggressive attacks on oneself without obvious external signs occur almost constantly and are not identified by the personality as auto-aggression, and therefore cannot be brought into the zone of awareness and stopped.
Let’s take a step away from the prefix “auto-” and first figure out what aggression actually is. Defining this concept is hardly difficult – everyone knows it’s when fists come into play as a form of argument. It’s obviously unpleasant, even frightening, to find oneself on the receiving end of that kind of aggression.
There’s also passive aggression, something we’re equally familiar with: when, at the slightest misstep on our part, someone unleashes a flood of sarcastic reproaches in a specific tone. We call such people “toxic” and try to minimize contact with them, because we’re left feeling deeply uncomfortable – hurt, even – after such encounters.
Now, let’s bring back the prefix “auto-,” and we get the same thing, only directed inward, at ourselves. While physically hitting oneself is fairly straightforward to recognize as auto-aggression, passive auto-aggression – the kind where we speak to ourselves in a toxic manner after a failure – is rarely acknowledged as such. Even though we exhaust ourselves emotionally, we tend to interpret it as a bout of bad mood, sadness, anxiety – which we attribute to failures, conflicts, insomnia, or simply “getting up on the wrong side of the bed.”
But we almost never notice the connection:
A mistake → passive aggression directed at ourselves for that mistake → a result in the form of a cascade of negative emotional states.
At the beginning of the cycle of auto-aggression, the following happens: during any unpleasantness or conflict, a certain better version of oneself appears in consciousness. This version would certainly not have allowed it, could have done better, thought more clearly, said (or didn't say) the right thing, was on time, did everything correctly, remembered important details, replied with a sharp retort, and so on. This «better» version begins to reprimand and demand explanations from the «worse» version – the one that allowed it, couldn't do better, didn't think clearly, didn't say (or didn't say) the right thing, was late, made mistakes, forgot important details, responded meekly, and so forth.