Mighty Adversary

Today’s post is a book review on the theme of “mighty adversary”.

In the Hercules Poirot story, mighty adversary stood for an extremely sly and intelligent, almost untouchable enemy.

Agatha Christie has developed this theme in some of her stories such as the last showdown in the Tommy and Tuppence short story series. The story of course is The Man who was No.16It’s also seen in Nemesis featuring Miss Marple.The best example of course is Curtain, another Hercule Poirot mystery where literally Poirot admires the handiwork of an ace criminal while still working with great determination to deter the psychopath murderer.

However, in this post I’d like to review a book that explores an adversary that is insidious and extremely difficult to curb.

The critic in our minds.

And the book in question is The Bitch In Our Heads.

Written by Dr. Jacqueline Plumez based on her techniques that improved the lives of many of her patients, the book draws on her vast experience and clinical methods.

Basically, a lot of times we critique ourselves extremely harshly and severely for things that we would not mind in our own best friends. Dr. Plumez states that were it a BFF, we’d ask them to stop being so severe and cut themselves some slack. But when it comes to our own failures and mistakes, we scrutinize deeper and magnify even trivial errors. Awareness about our flaws and mistakes that is not bad but having extreme negative inner talk that stops us from trying new ideas, experimenting and taking leaps of faith certainly is.

The whole idea behind TBiYH is that when we verbalize this intent self critical behavior and give it a form and name; it is easier to focus on this attitude, start recognizing while it happens and eventually correct it.

Dr.Plumez identifies several facets of our life where we may be vulnerable to such self-defeating behavior- work, marriage, parenting, etc. She also has specific techniques to combat the messaging for each.

I really enjoyed the book and the takeaways- as we evolve as people and professionals, insecurities, impostor syndrome, perfectionism and many other feeling creep up to form these negative inner critics and knowing just how to curb them is handy intel to have.

How about you?

Have you read the book? What are your thoughts?

Also, What book or books come to mind when you think of a mighty adversary?

Let me know in the comments below.