Last month I explored why so many people who long to experience a deep sense of love toward self struggle for this to happen. To sense this gracious loving sacred presence, people need to move into a place of vulnerability, a place where their hearts and minds are sensitive and open. However, as I noted last month, entering into this vulnerable being state is very difficult for we have structures like the Inner Critic in our soul/personality that resist vulnerability. Furthermore, our Inner Critic often criticizes and expresses words of anger and self hatred at us as part of its strategy to keep us from becoming vulnerable. No wonder we struggle to experience God’s love and self love. How do we get out of this spiritual knot around love? The secret to untying this spiritual knot involves love, but love in a surprising way, namely loving our Inner Critic. The purpose of this blog is to explore what it means to love our Inner Critic part for in doing so, it opens the way for us to experience more often and deeply the love of God and our love of self. For us to experience a deep internal love for self, we need to somehow help our Inner Critic step back from its role of protecting us. When our Inner Critic, and its partner Inner Manager, are active, they form a protective internal wall around our fragile younger vulnerable parts that carry the pain and memories of our past and childhood. Until these Protectors settle down and step back from this protective stance, there is little opportunity for us to enter into a more vulnerable open state where we can possibly sense compassion, love or grace flowing toward us from others and God. This is what happens when we learn to bring love to our Inner Critic. How the Inner Critic Formed In my last blog, I share how our Inner Critic formed. It is a Protector structure that formed in our soul during times in our past when we encountered overwhelming negative energies like anxiety, fear, and powerlessness. To survive such difficult incidents, our soul created two structures, a young Exile part that contains the distressing memories filled with emotions, beliefs, and images, and Protector parts, like the Inner Critic, whose goal is to protect us from entering future situations that may trigger these Exile memories. Now you know why Protectors, like our Inner Critic, are so active in protecting us from entering states of vulnerability. It sees vulnerability as dangerous for it was during one or more such vulnerable times when overwhelming distress flooded our soul and almost destroyed us. Based on those few painful past moments, our Inner Critic often sees every time of vulnerability as potentially dangerous. Inner Critic Distrusts the Sacred But there is one other insight that I want you to see beyond the Inner Critic’s fear of vulnerability. I have noticed that Protectors like the Inner Critic are very distrusting of God’s spirit. Think about that for a moment. Moments of trauma arose when God’s incarnational spirit failed to manifest within our childhood environment to protect us. So, from our Inner Critic’s viewpoint, trauma happens because God failed in protecting us as children. As a result, our Inner Critic, and Protectors like it, were formed to make up for God’s failure to protect us. No wonder our Inner Critic is often suspicious of God, even anti-God at time through their internal negative chatter and the feelings they create within us around God. (Personally, I actually see the formation of Protector structures in our soul, like the Inner Critic, as God’s backup plan when trauma happens to us due to lack of support from others in our life.) This is the seemingly hopeless internal situation that every person finds themselves in to some or greater extent...where our Inner Critic and Exiles are locked in their emotional positions. Our Inner Critic keeps us from vulnerability and often does this through harsh criticism and words of self-anger and self-hatred. No wonder it is hard for us to experience love from God and love toward self. In contrast, our Exile parts seek vulnerability for that is where caring, comfort, and compassion and all the fruits of God’s spirit arise from. How can we move from this hopeless situation? Learning to Love our Inner Critic This is where I have found again the Internal Family System (IFS) framework so helpful. Instead of seeing our Protectors, like our Inner Critic, as the problem and often rejecting them by seeing them as the enemy, IFS invites us to love our Protectors and see them in a totally different light. In many ways, IFS invites us to practice the teaching of Jesus to love our enemies (Matt 5:44), in this case, our internal enemies. What does it mean to love our Inner Critic, especially when our Inner Critic often says or thinks such cruel things about ourselves? It involves developing a love relationship with our Inner Critic, one step at a time. Lets look at each step briefly to understand how this love develops. Step 1: Separating from our Inner Critic For us to begin to love our Inner Critic part, we need to see and experience the Inner Critic as separate from us, separate from our sense of “I”. Without this separation, it is not possible to form a love relationship with our Inner Critic. This is why I often ask clients where they experience the Inner Critic. Most people say in their heads or outside their heads. Some people connect their Inner Critic to a critical voice that is speaking negatively at them. Others connect it to intruding negative thoughts about themselves. The key purpose of these questions is to help people notice that their Inner Critic is not them...but a structured part separated from their sense of “I”. Step 2: Becoming Curious of our Inner Critic Once, we notice that the Inner Critic is a part in us, and not us, we can then move to forming a relationship with it. This happens by exploring how our Inner Critic works. When is this part active? What triggers it? When does it arise? What circumstances? What tone of voice/thought does it use? How are you affected when your Inner Critic is active? Within IFS, Inner Critic parts are seen as Protectors. That should cause us to pause for we often don’t experience them as our protectors. If anything, we often see our Inner Critic as demanding, critical of us, angry at us, even hateful of us. They often cause us much shame, fear, and emotional harm through their angry critical words. How can they be protecting us when they feel like they are harming us? This is a very good question... especially when IFS sees them as Protectors within our soul. How could such internal harmful behavior be actually protecting us? Jay Earley, co-author to “Freedom from your Inner Critic”, and a major promoter of IFS therapy, says it this way, “one of the startling discoveries about our Inner Critic is that they are actually trying to help us…In its own distorted, confused way, your Inner Critic is actually trying to help you. At first this may seem surprising, but once you get to know your Critic in a deep way, you’ll come to understand why it is attacking you. It may be negative and harsh, but it is doing so in a distorted attempt to protect you from pain. (p 8). When counsellors have clients investigate these types of questions and ideas about the Inner Critic, they are trying to encourage the client to become curious of their Inner Critic part. Eventually, IFS encourages them to ask, “How do you feel toward your Inner Critic?” The purpose of this IFS question is to invoke the client’s essential Self and notice how their Self is relating to the Inner Critic part. If our client responds with words like “I hate this inner critic” or “It makes me nervous”, that tells us, as counsellors, that there is another client part blending with the client’s sense of “I”. In these cases, we invite this angry/hateful part or fear part to step back, to unblend from the client’s sense of “I” so that the client can experience a fuller sense of their Self. And then we, as counsellors, ask the question again, “how do you feel toward your Inner Critic now?” Eventually, after doing this unblending process a few times, the client will respond with words like “I am curious about my Inner Critic” or “I wonder how it protects me” or “I am curious where it came from” and so on. (to learn more about unblending from your Inner Critic, see chapter 4 in Earley’s book “Freedom From Your Inner Critic”) That curiosity, a quality of God’s spirit, is a sign of God’s nonjudgmental love arising toward our Inner Critic. Instead of judging it as bad or the enemy, we feel a curiosity toward it and wonder how our Inner Critic functions in our life, and how it might actually be a Protector in disguise. This curiosity opens our mind causing us to ask deeper questions around how our Inner Critic actually works. Step 3: Beginning to Appreciate our Inner Critic This curiosity opens up more space between you and your Inner Critic. However, “it is also important to develop a relationship <with it> in which it trusts that you appreciate its efforts and roughly share its goals” (Earley, p. 37). To form a relationship with your Inner Critic, you begin by asking questions like, “when did you first become aware of your Inner Critic? Who does the Inner Critic remind you of when you were young: a teacher, a parent, a family member, etc. Is its tone similar to someone in your childhood?” When a non-judgmental relationship begins to form between the client’s “I” or Self and his/her Inner Critic, you can then ask the client another key IFS question, “what does your Inner Critic fear will happen if it does not criticize you, if it does not shame you when you make a mistake, etc.” Often, in response, the client’s Inner Critic will reveal its core fear. This fear provides a huge clue to how our Inner Critic is a Protector, and what young Exile part it is trying to shield. Our Inner Critic might reveal thoughts like, “If I didn’t berate him, he would be lazy and never finish his task and get hurt, like what happened with his Dad when he was young”; “If I didn’t yell at her and keep her scared and small, she might do something bold that will cause her to get severely hurt like she did as a little girl in her family”; “If I didn’t scold him when he does something imperfect, he will continue to make mistakes and get really hurt by someone.” You can see in all these statements that the Inner Critic is trying to protect its host through its critical thoughts and voice, a negative behavior that it sees as not near as dangerous and abusive as the original traumatic incident that our Inner Critic fears will happen again. As we understand how our Inner Critic protects us, we also notice the younger exile parts that it is trying to protect. In the first example, the Inner Critic is trying to protect a little boy exile part from re-experiencing the pain caused from being accused of being lazy by his Dad. In the second case, the Inner Critic is shielding a young girl exile from speaking her mind so she won’t get abused again. In the third instance, the Inner Critic is trying to make the man act perfectly so his little boy exile won’t be distressed again for failing to live up to his parents’ ideals around perfection. Once we understand how our Inner Critic is a Protector, we can begin to perceive how its negative and painful behavior actually protects us in a strange way, despite how it makes us feel. Rather than hating our Inner Critic, we now may begin to appreciate the role it has played in our life, another aspect of love. It is often helpful to express mentally words of appreciation to our Inner Critic when this feeling of appreciation emerges. Step 4: Experiencing Compassion toward our Inner Critic However, feeling this appreciation toward our Inner Critic does not dismiss the harm our Inner Critic creates in our life through its critical and shaming dynamics. This begs the question of whether our Inner Critic could do its protective role in a different way, one that is not near as painful to us. Before we can help our Inner Critic explore doing its protective role in a different way, we need to understand why it is doing its protective role currently. This means we need uncover the origins of our Criticized Exile Child and begin to form a relationship with it, without blending or getting lost its pain. (Check out Chapter 6 “Uncovering the Origins of Your Criticized Child” in Earley’s book Freedom from your Inner Critic to learn how to do this). As we, counsellors, invite our client to explore why their Inner Critic protects their Child Exile that way it does, we often discover a few common things. First, we learned that it is not easy for our Inner Critic to change. Our Inner Critic feels trapped in its role and can’t imagine protecting in any other way for that is what it has done all its life. It is important to remember that our Inner Critic took on this Protector role reluctantly for the sake of keeping our internal system stable following the trauma. Furthermore, our Inner Critic feels very much alone for every one judges it as bad, sometimes evil, even though it is trying to protect our Exile parts from experiencing trauma again in our lives. Finally, we discovered that our Inner Critic is quite tired of its protective role, especially when it has been triggered. Due to its hypervigilant nature, it is always on guard against vulnerability and other activities that may lead us to getting hurt. As we understand how hard, trapped, and lonely our Inner Critic feels in trying to protect our traumatized Child Exile, the experience of compassion begins to emerge in our soul toward our Inner Critic. When this happens, it is helpful to mentally express words of this compassionate understanding to our Inner Critic. This is another expression of Divine love arising in our soul toward our Inner Critic. Step 5: Offering Hope to our Inner Critic When our Inner Critic experiences curiosity, then appreciation, and finally compassion from our sense of Self, it begins to soften considerably. This positive attention from our Self is a totally new experience for our Inner Critic for our Self was not strongly present when the original distress happened that formed our Inner Critic often due to developmental reasons (we were a young child when it happened). Now with our Self directly relating to our Inner Critic, our Inner Critic begins to trust our Self. However, our Inner Critic cannot imagine giving up its protective role until our Exile is released of the traumatic pain and beliefs it is carrying. The presence of this traumatic pain is why our Inner Critic took on its protective role in the first place. It is here that Richard Schwartz, developer of IFS, says that we become hope merchants to our Protectors, like the Inner Critic (Schwartz, p. 199). We help our Inner Critic realize that its future can be different. We, as counsellors, ask if our client’s Inner Critic will allow us and our client’s sense of Self to care for the young Exile part that it has been protecting all these years with the promise that we can healed this Exile of its traumatic part. Most Inner Critics, after experiencing the curiosity, appreciation, and compassion of our Client’s Self, are open to this invitation, and so step back and allow the counsellor and their client’s Self to minister to this unhealed Exile part. Part of this healing involves the client’s Self and counsellor becoming a compassionate witness to the trauma the young Exile went through. Another part of the healing involves inviting the Exile part, when it feels heard and trusts the Client’s Self, to leave its painful place in traumatic memory and move to the Present Moment where the client’s Self resides. In this present moment, the trauma is no longer playing out and the young Exile part can finally rest and do what it wants. Much more could be said about this healing process but I refer you to one of many IFS books that explain in great detail how this healing process works. (See chapter 7 “Healing Your Inner Children” from Earley’ book Freedom from your Inner Critic to learn more.) Step 6: Encouraging our Inner Critic to Pursue Its Preferred Role With our Exile part now experiencing life in the present moment, it is no longer living in constant fear of pain. This means that our Inner Critic no longer needs to play its protective role of scaring or shaming our young Exile for it is now safe. The polarization between the Inner Critic and traumatized Exile is gone for they are both free of their past pain. With this shift, our Self can encourage our Inner Critic, another aspect of Divine Love, to pursue a different role, one that it may actually enjoy doing and be closer to its original purpose within our life. Sometimes this role may be one of discerning, helping us discern what is true and not true, but now it does this discernment in a gracious way, no longer criticizing or shaming us. Other times, its role, at least for the moment, is simply to rest and enjoy life for it is tired from all the stress and hypervigilance it has practiced all our life.
Conclusion What I have described in this blog is the journey of what happens when we learn to love the enemy within us, our Inner Critic. Depending upon how much trauma we have experienced in our past determines how harsh and powerful our Inner Critic is, and thus how long our healing love journey is. In severe cases, the Inner Critic can have a demonic feel to it, a strong hatred toward us that feels evil. However, even in those cases, the pathway to healing is one of love, although it takes longer for us to unblend from our parts so we can access our Divine Self. It also takes longer for our Inner Critic to respond and trust the various forms of love that arises from our Self, namely curiosity, appreciation, compassion, hope, and in the end transformation. Questions to Ponder: 1. How do you experience your Inner Critic? Critical voices at you? Negative thoughts about yourself? When does your Inner Critic get triggered: When others critique you? When you feel you have let others or yourself down and failed to meet theirs/your expectations? 2. For those of you who are aware of your Inner Critic, explore how your Inner Critic could be trying to protect you through its behavior, keeping you small, insecure, weak or powerless so you don't say or do something that will bring negative attention to yourselves. Consider what your Inner Critic might fear would happen if it stopped its critiquing or demeaning behavior? 3. This blog explores how our experience of Divine Love can grow toward our Inner Critic allowing our Inner Critic to transform. First, this love shows up as curiosity toward our Inner Critic and how it works, then appreciation for the role it plays in protecting us, then compassion for how hard it works (always watching) to keep us safe, and finally in offering it hope through being transformed by healing the young exile it is protecting. What are the different ways you have expressed love, or would like to express love to your Inner Critic? Bibliography Early, Jay and Weiss, Bonnie. Freedom from your Inner Critic. Boulder: Sound True, 2013. Schwartz, Richard and Sweeney, Martha. Internal Family Systems Therapy. New York: Guilford Press, 2020. Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
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