“Something in me often says ‘You are bad and wrong,’ and another part feels hopeless and despair.”
A Reader writes:
I’m getting a bit stuck around something that has come up for me. I have been Focusing for some years now and I feel a huge benefit from all the wonderful ways Focusing helps me. In my teens and in adult life I have been through a lot of suffering! I felt life was too hard, and I felt anxious, overwhelmed and a lot of despair. I now look back and see some of my ways seem like I have been displaying Aspergers traits; for example, I still find managing social situations very challenging.
I have read with interest the section on the Inner Critic in your book Radical Acceptance of Everything, as something in me often says “NO, that’s bad and wrong! You are bad and wrong!” and the part that feels bad and wrong feels hopeless and despair. I’m just not sure how to relate to these parts now?
Dear Reader:
It can be helpful to know about a syndrome, like Asperger’s or ADD, so that ways that one has felt challenged or different from other people can make more sense and so we can bring more compassion to ourselves.
(At the same time we remember that no one is just a syndrome. Every person is a unique combination of being like and unlike other people.)
As you know, I understand the “inner critic” as a part of us that is panicked and powerless, concerned about something it sees as a problem and unable to do anything about it except criticize.
In those earlier days, when you didn’t have a way of understanding why it was hard for you to manage social situations, a part of you got anxious about it and called you “bad and wrong.” It didn’t know what else to do. Then, sadly, in the absence of Self-in-Presence, another part starts to believe that this is true, it IS bad and wrong.
Now that you can bring Self-in-Presence to this situation, it can start to change. You can turn toward each one of these parts, when they occur, with compassionate acceptance.
Accepting a criticizing part doesn’t mean accepting what it is saying. I wouldn’t engage with the content of what it says, at all. I would just inwardly turn toward it and say, “Might you be worried about something?”
They are always worried!