Almost everyone I’ve ever met (including me) has some kind of inner critic, a voice in their head calling them names, yelling at them for doing “stupid” things (making mistakes, not learning something quickly enough, etc).
We’re going to talk about a few things here:
-where do inner critics come from?
-what is their job? (yes, they have a job and are usually trying to help us in some way)
-what are their beliefs and where did they get them?
-how can we help them, and our internal system, unload those beliefs so we can be kinder to ourselves.
Where they come from
When we’re young, many of us have the experience that adults around us get impatient, angry, or even infuriated, by things we do or say. There might be many reasons for this; the adult might be having a bad day, they might be holding beliefs about perfection passed on from their parents, they might not know another way to deal with feelings, they might have parts that are taking something out on us that don’t belong to us. Whatever the reason, this situation usually won’t have lasting effects if the adult is usually kind, apologetic and helps us process what happened. But if the adult blames us (calls us names, asks “what’s the matter with you”, etc) our parts can take in the belief that; a)there is really something wrong with us, and b) these parts had better try to make us behave perfectly so we don’t get this kind of treatment again.
What is their job?
In this latter case, one of our child parts can take on the burden of trying to make us perfect. How does it do this? Well, often in the same way it saw an adult doing it; yelling, screaming, calling names, shaming. These young parts don’t know that “perfect” is an impossible standard: they saw an adult insisting on it, so it must be right, they think. They don’t know there are better ways of encouraging change. All they know is that the anger from adults is scary, and it’s their job to make it never show up again.
What are their beliefs?
Because of the context in which they learned their job, they might have taken on different beliefs. Some of these might include:
-I should do everything perfectly the first time
-I should already know how to do things before I’m taught
-making mistakes is unforgivable
-if someone gets mad at me it means I’m bad and did something wrong
-I should be (and am) ashamed of myself
As adults we pretty much know these are not true. And yet, there’s this nagging feeling inside that they kind of are true. In some ways, in addition to parents and teachers, societal norms might also reinforce these impossible beliefs. We might go along with bosses or friends or family who chastise us for not knowing something before we learn it, or making a mistake, or “making someone mad” (It’s often the case that a part of them had expectations that didn’t happen, and now they need someone to blame for that, so they blame us.) As we listen to the inner critics and what they are actually upset about we will learn about the beliefs, and we can point out how impossible those standards really are.
How can we help the inner critics
It can help if we listen to any memories that come up for them. What past situation does this situation remind them of? As we witness how that was for them, we can let them know we get that it was really hard, and that we/Self cares about them.
We can let them know that WE don’t have expectations of perfection or not ever doing something that might arouse anger in someone. Comforting the part can go a long ways to helping the part learn new expectations and behaviors
Critics are often stuck in the past. We can ask what/who they are afraid will be upset if we do this “wrong” thing. If it’s a parent or teacher or some adult from the past, we can update them on who we are now, how old we are, where that person is right now, and that we won’t let anyone treat us in a harmful way this time.
We can let them know we can, as adults, take care of them now. If they don’t want to give up their “supervisory” role, we can at least offer to be partners, to listen if they’re worried about something we’ve done, and let them know that this time we’re an adult and will take responsibility for any consequences.
In future posts I will talk about another role our inner critics have, to protect younger inner parts who got hurt when we made mistakes in the past. That’s one of their most important functions. But for right now, if we just start by addressing the critics and listening to them we will develop that Self-to-part compassionate relationship that is the basis of a truly healthy internal family system.
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