Discovering kindness – the story behind The Rest of Me

Bestselling author Katie Marsh reveals the story behind her new novel The Rest of Me.

In the unlikely scenario that you ever want a lesson on how to bully someone, I am the ideal teacher. Not because I spend my whole time going round hurling insults at other people, but because I have spent years firing abuse at one person in particular, every day, without fail. Before you stop reading in disgust, I want to tell you that the person I aimed it all at was me. I have spent the vast majority of my life bullying myself.

I know. It sounds crazy. Bullying is widely defined as ‘behaviour that is intended to hurt someone physically or emotionally’. Why the hell would I want to do that to myself? But – and it’s a big but – for nearly three decades I had absolutely no idea it had become a habit of mine. It started at school, when I was bullied in the playground and gradually the vicious, negative voices took root inside me. Constant criticism became the soundtrack to my life, whether it came from the bullies or from my own mind. If I looked in a mirror, I would only ever see the wobble in the eyeliner or the spots on my chin. If I started a new job I would think every single word I said was stupid and that everyone else thought I should be fired. I lived in a storm of self-judgement – constantly finding myself worthless, convinced that I was worth nothing. Compliments made no sense to me and I only heard the negatives in any conversation. I saw myself through an utterly harsh lense.

I was pretty inventive about how I bullied myself, but here are the three headline techniques I used:

Lists – to others lists may be harmless ways of summarising what needs to be done, but to me they were a chance to aspire to a perfection that was utterly unrealistic, and then to berate myself when I fell short. My weekly ‘To Do’ lists were staggeringly long, and always included impossible targets such as ‘learning French’ or ‘running 15k’ (when I didn’t even know where my trainers were). My lists weren’t ever fun – they were just full of huge targets to be fitted in around both a full-time job in healthcare and a part-time one writing then unpublished novels. I was setting myself up for failure, and so the whole cycle sustained itself and grew as the years went on.

My critical inner monologue – aka ‘Pointy’. This one was a peach, because it ran constantly and became so embedded that I found it hard to distinguish it from my own, much kinder mind. The default Pointy position on my life was: anything good that happened was luck, anything bad that happened was my fault. Pointy made me say things to myself that I would never ever say to a friend or a loved one, things so unkind that I am surprised I ever managed to get out of the house. Net result? An overwhelming and corrosive sense of failure.

‘Should’ – truly the most self-bullying word I know and number one in my vocabulary for far too long. ‘I should have done that’ or ‘I should have known that’ or – even better – ‘I should look better in this’ or ‘I should have seen that coming.’ I never say it to my friends when they hit the inevitable bumps life throws at us all but I was only too ready to say it to myself.

Needless to say, self-bullying for such a long period of my life didn’t lead anywhere good. I was trapped in an exhausting cycle of stress induced by the relentless pressure I was creating. I grappled with paralysing anxiety, relaxation was an impossibility, guilt was my constant companion and insomnia was my best friend. My twenties passed in a haze of stress and self-doubt and it was only after having my daughter that I realised that things needed to change.

Motherhood completely terrified me – far from the pristine mums I saw jogging in the park I found those early weeks and months to be messy and full of fear. A few weeks after my daughter was born, I was living life on high alert, googling baby sites at 2 a.m and regularly checking to see if she was still breathing.

It was then that my husband asked me a question. The question – the one that changed my life. He asked me why I was bullying myself – why every day when he came home I listed everything I had done wrong, and never anything I had done right.

I had no answer for him, but as time went on I realised more and more that the voice in my head – self-criticising, negative – was indeed a bullying one. My new novel ‘The Rest of Me’ is a result of me trying to overcome this voice, just as the main character Alex tries to do. She lives life at full pelt – she has been organising the lives of her ailing husband Sam and their two daughters for years and lives her life in lists and wall planners and tasks achieved. She works full-time, is constantly under pressure and the only ‘relaxing’ thing she does is her marathon training.

As such, she is like most of the women I know – she is like me (OK, apart from the marathons). Juggling the juggle we all know so well. Never letting up. Never being kind to herself.

As my daughter got bigger I realised that if I didn’t make some changes I would pass the self-bullying on to the tiny girl who was just discovering the world at my side. And I knew I didn’t want to do that. So I started reading and thinking and trying to create some space in my head – some objectivity and yes – some kindness.

I started in 2013 with my new year’s resolutions. Normally I made so many that I needed a scroll to fit them all on, but instead, that year, I only allowed myself one and it was joyful – listen to more music.

That one tiny step led to more: I began meditating – just once a week at first but gradually that increased; I put more happy photos around the house; I cut back on phone use and I exercised more. I kept my To Do lists (of course), but added happier things to them – like going to gigs, arranging to meet my friends, trips out with my family or a night at the cinema. I ate more slowly. I looked up more. I read. And little by little, over the last five years. I have stepped away from self-bullying and moved towards a world in which I am as kind to myself as I am to other people. No more thinking about all the things I might be doing ‘wrong’ – instead I treasure the things that have gone well and try to smile or shrug about those that haven’t.

So, when you finish reading this, I hope you take a look at your ‘To Do’ list (because I bet you have one), and add a few things that are just for you – a long bath with extra bubbles, a night out with friends or perhaps just some time on the sofa with a glass of wine and a very good book.

Let’s all try to be as kind to ourselves as we are to those around us – to stop the self-bullying – it can only make the world a happier place.

The Rest of Me is out now in paperback, ebook and audiobook.