“Does the source of the criticism make any difference in how we treat the criticizing voice?”
A Reader writes:
Someone I am working with was born to a hyper-critical mother, whose criticisms she swallowed whole when she was too young to know better. My question is, “Does the source of the criticism make any difference in how we treat the criticizing voice?” I completely follow the idea of listening, accepting that the voice is worried, and that it wants something good. In this case the outer critical voice became internally vigilant at least in part to keep mother’s criticism at bay. Better to hear a critical voice from the inside than outside. Now mother is no longer here and the voice continues. Does it ever seem wise to reject a voice as “alien?” An external point of view got accidentally swallowed whole and it was never hers to begin with?
Dear Reader:
Parts of us that are harshly critical may be related to actual people in our childhood in two ways:
- The main function of the inner criticizer (in such a case) is to protect you from the attacks of those people.
For example, if you would have gotten beaten for not cleaning your room, the inner critical voice that yells, “Clean your room, you slob!” is trying to protect you from getting beaten.) - The inner criticizing part of you learned its methods from those people.
So the voice inside you sounds just like those people sounded, and that’s confusing. “It’s my mother!” “No, it’s not!”
You can be sure that the part of you inside that is trying to protect you is not that person, and doesn’t have the same motivation as that person had for criticizing you.
So what I would suggest is to keep saying “something in me says” rather than “my mother’s voice says” and the separation will start to get more and more clear, as you listen to what this part of you is worried about and what it is trying to protect you from.
The other thing I would say is that being treated with hyper-criticism by one’s own mother is a trauma. It’s not what ‘should’ have happened for you to develop your full expressive life…and that results in a wound that needs your tender care. You can be with that one in you who went through that, that one in you who is showing you how painful it was to have a mother like that. And really let him/her know that you hear that.
