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!
