self-condemnation

He tended to mask his gay self through self-accusation and self-condemnation.

Without hearing some other, kinder voice, the echoes of self-condemnation can grow louder and louder.

The inner voice that normally whispers worthlessness can become a shout of self-condemnation.

As the speaker excavates her grief and disbelief, she slowly moves from self-condemnation to a fiery insistence that she can overcome her boyfriend’s damaging assessments of her worth and reclaim the power she once had.

The spider sculptures emerge as “a woman’s revenge,” indeed an alternative “family,” and help compensate for the artist’s pernicious self-condemnation: “bad daughter bad wife bad mother.”