Does it ever feel like your criticisms of others have something to do with your own blocks? Read on…
Criticizing Another Person
Eli
writes: "When I sense internal anger, many times I do not find two
internal 'parts' (one angry at the other), but an angry part
criticizing another person. How should I work with that part?"
Dear Eli
When
we start bringing awareness to a block inside us, it could indeed
happen that we find a part of us that's angry at another person. After
all, someone must be to blame! *smile*
So we'll start in the same way as ever, with the very powerful and important Presence Language.
"I'm sensing something in me
that is angry at Tom." No need to go into the names and "blames" that
this part is throwing at Tom. They aren't the point right now.
Now
sense (if you haven't already) where and how this lives in your body at
this moment. Maybe it feels like a constriction in the chest… or a
clenching in the stomach… or…
Once you find it (this could
take a bit of time), offer the word "angry" to the body feeling. Let
that word shift as it needs to, to fit the feeling even better. If you
get "it's not exactly angry," that's exciting!
(And by the way,
this is exactly the process if the inner part is angry at YOU instead
of another person. As I hinted above, there's a very typical blaming
process when life feels stuck. We either blame ourselves or others.
There aren't many other choices!)
I predict that once you have
used Presence Language to get bigger than the struggle, you've sensed
it freshly in your body, and you've checked for fresh language, the
whole thing will already feel quite different–and you'll be able to
continue, when you have time, with the rest of the Focusing process.
Maybe the Other Person is Really Yourself
Eli wrote back: "My 'hidden' question was whether the other person might be representing an exiled part."
Well, yes! That could happen, and does happen.
An
exiled part is a part of ourselves that other parts of us are so afraid
of (ashamed of, threatened by) that there is a process of exclusion
from awareness going on. "I don't want that, it's not me."
Many have observed that what we deny in ourselves, we have to encounter in others.
The
good news is that by doing Inner Relationship Focusing, starting with
what IS in awareness in the way I've described above, we ultimately
call back the exiles, while respecting the parts of us that have exiled
them. We don't have to know, when we encounter anger and criticism at
others, whether that is really something else. We just need to be
Self-in-Presence and meet it without judgment, and seek to get to know
it better.