I named my inner saboteur Grumelda

Her name is Grumelda Grudge. Like a downmarket Cruella de Vil. And she lives in my head.

She is bitter, jealous and deeply opposed to personal growth. Not her own personal growth, obviously. She has no plans for that. She is far too busy interfering with mine.

Grumelda does not like to see anybody flourish. She cannot bear to see the sun shine on anyone else. When the scale finally rewards me, my new jeans are a size smaller and I start feeling quietly proud of myself, Grumelda appears almost immediately to explain why it will all come undone soon. Like it always does.

She becomes particularly vocal when I am supposed to go for a walk.

I will be sitting comfortably, thinking about putting on my hiking boots, and Grumelda will notice that the weather looks unreliable. My legs may be tired. I walked recently enough. I have important things to do, although neither of us can remember what they are.

One missed walk makes no difference, she says.

Then, if I miss it, she changes sides.

You see? You never stick to anything.

That is one of her favourite all-or-nothing tricks: turning one missed walk into evidence that the whole attempt is doomed.

Grumelda likes to have a position prepared for every outcome.

I deliberately turned her into a person

Grumelda is not real.

I do not hear a separate voice speaking to me, and I do not believe another person is physically living inside my head. She is a character I created deliberately for the part of my own thinking that resents discomfort, wants immediate relief and tries to derail me whenever continuing becomes inconvenient.

But I did not merely give that thinking a name.

I built a whole person around it.

I know what Grumelda is like. I know how she speaks, the expression she wears and what she wants from me. I can practically see her folding her arms while I tie my shoelaces.

She is smug without having achieved anything herself.

She is critical of efforts she would never make.

She speaks with great authority about everything I will supposedly fail at, despite being wrong about me remarkably often.

She has her own unresolved issues, none of which she intends to work on, and resents anybody else attempting to sort out theirs.

Grumelda would not be someone I chose to spend time with in real life. I would avoid her at the office coffee machine. I would not tell her anything personal. I would certainly not ask for her advice.

Apparently, she talks badly about me behind my back to the other thoughts in my head.

“Look at her in her little hiking boots, bless her soul. This will not last,” she says, inspecting her long red nails.

That is just the sort of woman she is.

She has an argument for everything

Grumelda does not simply tell me to eat something or skip something.

She presents a case.

She says I have had a difficult day and need cheering up.

She says I have done well and deserve a reward.

She says I have not done well, so there is no point trying now.

She tells me that if I eat something on the sly, the calories don’t count. Science has yet to confirm this, but Grumelda remains confident.

She tells me I cannot do this. Then she tells me I should not have to do this. Then she says none of it matters, immediately followed by a lengthy speech about how awful it is that I have not succeeded yet.

She is very good with words.

Grumelda rarely arrives shouting, “Destroy all your progress!”

She comes in looking concerned.

“You have been trying so hard,” she says gently. “Why don’t you give yourself the evening off?”

She is especially convincing when she sounds kind.

Sometimes she returns sheepishly, like a toxic old friend carrying a box of chocolates and a suspiciously rehearsed apology. She says she has changed. She only wants me to enjoy myself. Things will be different this time, or some such nonsense.

Oddly, the new Grumelda has exactly the same opinions as the old one and still disappears before the consequences arrive.

Separating her from me is the whole point

Before Grumelda had a name, the quiet war in my head simply felt like me arguing with myself.

For years, I treated every thought in my head as though it belonged to the wisest and most honest part of me.

If I thought, “I cannot be bothered,” then I could not be bothered.

If I thought, “This is unfair,” then I had been treated unfairly.

If I thought, “I will never keep this up,” then some internal committee must have reviewed the evidence and reached an official conclusion.

Creating Grumelda interrupts that process.

Now, when one of those arguments appears, I try to recognise her immediately.

That is Grumelda.

That thought came from her.

I do not have to accept it simply because it occurred inside my own head.

The clearer I make her as a separate character, the easier she is to fight. I know her motives. I know she is not interested in what will help me tomorrow. She wants comfort now, drama later and no responsibility for either.

What would you do if she were real?

If somebody in real life made it their purpose to derail you, constantly predicted your failure, tempted you away from things that mattered and then criticised you when you struggled, how would you feel about them?

Would you obediently follow their advice?

Would you invite them into every decision?

Or would something petty and stubborn rise inside you like a vengeful phoenix, fuelled entirely by the need to prove them wrong?

That is what happens to me.

If Grumelda says I will not go for the walk, I want to go just to prove her wrong.

If she says I always give up, I want to continue purely to ruin the smug little ending she had already written for me.

She is particularly irritated that I have become someone who comes back.

If she says I need something from the kitchen immediately, I can stop and ask whether I genuinely want it or whether I am about to let that smug so-and-so win again.

This is why separating her from me matters so much.

I am not fighting against myself as a whole.

I am fighting FOR myself against a mythical character I created to contain the thoughts that keep trying to derail me.

And I am allowed to be spiteful towards Grumelda because I designed her specifically to be somebody I would never willingly take advice from.

How I use Grumelda

The important part is recognising her early, just as she slinks into the room with a suspiciously theatrical swish of her skirt.

Not after I have skipped the walk, eaten the thing and spent an hour feeling cross with myself.

At her opening statement for the defence.

At the first suspiciously convenient excuse.

At the first sweet little suggestion that today should be different for reasons nobody can quite explain.

That is when I try to say, sometimes aloud:

“Oh, hello, Grumelda.”

Then I listen to what she is proposing, consider what she wants me to do and decide whether doing the opposite would be better for me.

Naming her does not remove responsibility.

This is still responsibility without self-hatred, not a way of pretending an imaginary woman made the decision for me.

Grumelda cannot physically make me eat anything, stay on the sofa or speak cruelly to myself.

She is still part of my own mind.

The difference is that I no longer confuse every thought she produces with my real intention.

Some people may not need to invent an unpleasant woman and argue with her while putting on walking shoes.

I apparently do.

Maybe you do too.

Grumelda still lives in my head. She still complains. She still tells the other thoughts that I am embarrassing myself.

But I know her now.

And, more importantly, she knows I know.