If this hypothetical woman could realistically assess her willpower, she would accept the number on the scale and either stop torturing herself with attacks or work on this area constructively. However, this does not happen because the very act of auto-aggression, leading to the tears of the «accused» or an attack of dysphoria followed by affect (which we will consider later), is seen by the psyche as a sufficient result. Such a person is unlikely to lose weight naturally but is quite capable of feeding her own Ouroboros.
It is important to understand that the emergence of this second character marks the beginning of a cycle of self-dissatisfaction and subsequent self-aggression. The internal dialogue should be replaced by a monologue, removing the pronoun «you»: instead of "you ate a lot again, don't eat a lot," it should be "I ate a lot again, I won't eat a lot". This change eliminates the presence of two versions of oneself in one's consciousness.
I want to emphasize that the reason for such internal dialogue, and thus for an episode of auto-aggression, is not important. It can be anything, and if it is not found in the present, it will be found in the past. We are all familiar with the feeling of guilt. What matters is the presence of a large, auto-aggression-fed, and currently hungry Ouroboros in a person's psyche. I hope the reader understands that this is a metaphor; by Ouroboros, I mean not a literal lizard in our head, but the structure of an immature personality that produces dysfunctional behavioral patterns, including auto-aggression.
All of this means that if someone is alone in a room and feels like crying, it indicates that they are torturing themselves in a way that can no longer be tolerated, and they may not even recognize it.
In studying the phenomenon of auto-aggression, I realized that it is not linear; it has a multi-layered structure with many variations. I identified the following major layers of auto-aggression:
– overt (insomnia),
– hidden (longing),
– deep (unpleasant dreams),
– permanent – anxiety, which provokes an endless stream of consciousness,
– the sudden-appearing anxiety affect – the Catastrophizer.
And the versions of auto-aggression
manifested externally:
– suicide;
– damage to one's body – cuts, etc.;