You know how sometimes you mean to do something but somehow it never happens? Or  you have a goal, but seem to keep doing the opposite? In February I suggested thinking of an “objecting part” of you that feels differently about your conscious goal, worrying that doing that thing, reaching that goal might make things worse for you in ways your conscious mind isn’t considering. The “objecting part” speaks through sabotage rather than words. (Check out “Getting Unstuck in Eating Disorder Recovery by Befriending Objecting Parts” to learn more.)

Objecting parts are examples of parts of your mind that have a purpose, that is, they are trying to do something important for you. The objecting part’s purpose is to put on the brakes when it has doubts or fears, sometimes unconscious ones, about the direction you’re heading. Your eating disorder probably includes a number of parts with a purpose. For instance, you’ve probably got a part that has cued you to go straight into eating disorder behavior when difficult emotions pop up. Or maybe you’ve got a part that signals you to restrict when you feel out of control. Today I spotlight yet another “part” of mind that virtually everyone with an eating disorder shares: the Inner Critic.

The Inner Critic

The “Inner Critic” is the part of your brain that lands on you like a ton of bricks whenever you make a mistake, disappoint or offend someone, fail to live up to your highest standards, or think you’re being weak or inept. Your Inner Critic also predicts your future: you will fail, be humiliated or rejected, maybe end up alone and outcast. You know exactly what I’m talking about, right?

You can recognize the Inner Critic by the way it talks and thinks. For instance, the Inner Critic’s favorite words are never, always and should. As in: You never do anything right. You always say the wrong thing. No one will ever love you. You should never get angry at anyone. Your Inner Critic thinks in all–or–nothing, black–and–white terms, never in gray.  For example, when it comes to your eating disorder, your Inner Critic is the part that tells you’ve blown it if you eat one bite outside your meal plan or that a pound above ideal weight means you’re gross. And that’s another thing: it’s not above calling you the worst kind of names.

How can I say that a part that treats you so cruelly serves a purpose, other than to torture you? To figure this out, you need to distinguish between the Inner Critic’s methods and its intentions. Its methods involve kicking you around, judging you and predicting you’ll have a miserable future. But its intentions are quite the opposite: the Inner Critic exists to protect you! I realize this is hard to believe, but bear with me.

How the Inner Critic Means to Help You

Your Inner Critic believes its cruelty is necessary to make sure you’ll succeed and that other people will accept, admire and love you. It’s beliefs come from lessons you learned growing up. That’s because your Inner Critic came into being way back when to help you be a kid your parents would love and approve. If their love and approval weren’t so easy to come by, your Critic tried to help you adapt to the parents you had, as seen from a kid’s eye view.

Part of being a kid, and especially being the kid of parents who seem hard to please, is to blame yourself for what’s wrong. Though very hard on self–esteem, this belief has the advantage of making all–powerful parents seem benign and reasonable, if only you could be good enough to be worthy of their love. Believing it’s all your fault also provides a sense of control to a small, powerless child: you can always try to change and improve yourself. The Critic is in charge of this all–important mission. Its harshness reflects not only how kids experience hard–to–please adults, but the dire necessity of its aims—after all, you were completely dependent on your caretakers.

What if your parents didn’t seem so hard to please and you still ended up with a tyrant of an Inner Critic? Sometimes a harsh Critic reflects your childhood intuition and internalization of one or both of your parents’ own harsh Internal Critics. Your budding Critic may also have absorbed judgments from other important adults, like coaches or teachers, or from peers or the wider culture (for instance, the message that says you have to be thin to be worthwhile).

Of course, what made these “lessons” tricky is that they often weren’t taught in any open way. You probably stored some or all of what you learned unconsciously. All that pops into consciousness is your Critic, attacking you when you fail, or fear you will. Here are some examples of things you may have learned you needed to be in order to gain love and approval:

• a high achiever at school or work
• a standout athlete
• compliant, agreeable
• neat and organized
• a selfless caretaker of others
• someone who sticks to a strict moral code
• kindly and generous
• attractive, thin

A big part of the problem is that you didn’t internalize these lesson as just temporary ways to help you get through a difficult childhood. You installed them as laws of life that apply everywhere, always. They come up in the present in any situation where you could be accepted or rejected, approved or disapproved, succeed or fail. This could be in school, on a job, in your social life or romance. They rule even when the only one who knows is you. Fail to live up to expectations even a little and your Inner Critic will let you have it.

In my next post, I’ll go over some specific ways you can work on changing your relationship with your Inner Critic. For now, I want to leave you with the first and most important step: awareness. When you understand that your Inner Critic is trying to protect you in its own misguided way, you have space to stand back and consider taking its criticism with a grain of salt. Here are some awareness–promoting exercises for you:

• Listen for always, never or should. Is there anything else you notice about your Critic’s habitual language or tone–of­–voice?

• Write down the situations in which your Inner Critic gets activated. What pattern(s) do you notice?

• Make a guess about what your Critic is afraid will happen if you don’t heed its warnings.

These exercises will be good preparation for my next post: Dethroning Your Inner Critic in Eating Disorder Recovery: Part II (5/7/10). Stay tuned!

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Part #: KPART11860

Mahatama Ghandi, leader of India’s fight for independence, famously said: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” You don’t have to be seeking national liberation to use this inspirational advice. In fact, you can apply it in your home.

Whether or not you still live with your parents and siblings, family interactions can support or undermine your recovery. We’d all like it if we could just put notes in a family suggestion box when we want things to be different. Family members would read our notes and make the changes we want. I don’t know about you, but my family never got that memo. If we want things to change, we often have to be the first to set the example.

Here are five problems that commonly occur in families during eating disorder recovery, followed by examples of how you can “be the change” you want:

Problem 1: Boundary violations
Boundary violations are behaviors or interactions in which someone fails to honor your personal space, your separateness as an individual, your right to your personal point of view or your entitlement to direct your own behavior (depending upon your age).

“Be the change” solutions:
No matter what others are doing, you can honor personal boundaries. For instance you can refrain from interrupting, finishing someone else’s sentences or assuming you can read the other person’s mind. You can reach out for and respect differing points of view while holding onto your own. You can honor appropriate secrets and privacy. All of these behaviors will make your requests for similar treatment more powerful.

Problem 2: Making your eating disorder the center of family life
This is what happens when most other family activities get dropped or diminished to focus on your eating disorder. (This is normal at the beginning, but should shift as your recovery progresses.)

“Be the change” solutions:
You can start by making sure that as your recovery gets some footing, you include interests and activities in your life that have nothing to do with your eating disorder. You can talk to your family about your other interests or include them in some way.  This will let them know that there’s more to you than your eating disorder.

Problem 3: Fighting for control of your symptoms

When someone else tries to police your eating disorder behavior, you aren’t getting better. The effort shifts from your recovery to who’s the boss of you.

“Be the change” solutions:
You can take the wind out of the sails of a control struggle by refusing to engage in it. You can state clearly to your family that you assume ownership of your symptoms and you take responsibility for their consequences to others. (Of course, all bets are off if you’re engaging in life­– threatening behavior or actions that are destructive to others.) You’ll want to pay attention to your behavior to make sure you’re not doing things that invite other family members to try to take control.

Problem 4: Expecting instant change
Sometimes out of not knowing, often out of worry and feeling helpless, family members want you to get better now. This can show up as hovering, blaming, impatience, fretting, putting down your treatment or other unhelpful behaviors.

“Be the change” solutions:
Sometimes there’s a specific incident, grievance or behavior that has sparked increased anxiety about your eating disorder in another family member. It might be helpful to ask about this and discuss the worry. Providing literature that explains for families that eating disorder recovery takes time may help. If you know you’re working sincerely at your recovery and doing the best you can, you may have to let family worriers manage their own anxieties. (That’s also practicing good boundaries!)

Problem 5: Covering up conflict
So long as families are made up of individuals with different opinions and needs, disagreements are bound to come up. Some families don’t know how to do conflict and/or resolve it. Eating disorder symptoms can often be a way to cover over conflict.

“Be the change” solutions:
If you speak up clearly and directly about a disagreement, there’s no hidden conflict anymore! Of course, you can’t guarantee your courage and openness will get other family members to respond the same way. But in many cases, it just takes one person to get the ball rolling. The more you focus on your own feelings and views and avoid attacks or insults about the other, the more likely this is to happen.

Remember: anytime you step outside your family’s familiar way of doing things, other family members can become confused and upset. Their first reflex may be to try to get you back in line with old familiar ways. It’s usual for families to need time to catch up when one member makes positive changes. But most families eventually adjust.