Plagued By An Inner Critic
Are you afraid to feel angry, jealous, lonely, helpless or anxious? It’s no coincidence that four out of seven clients I have seen this week have all had the same paralyzing fear about expressing their feelings to someone they love, be it a parent, lover, friend, or wife. What they all have in common is a very strong inner critic. Often, those of us with this difficulty feel overwhelmingly vulnerable just saying what is on our minds and in our hearts to someone we love. Why is this?
Many people grow up with a critical parent or parents. What criticism does is teach the child that their feelings aren’t valid, or that they are “overly sensitive or emotional”, and in some families, negative feelings aren’t tolerated at all. How many times has a client said to me “When I cried in front of my mother/father, I was told to stop it, or I would be punished further or sent to my room.” “I remember my father saying to me that if I didn’t stop crying, he was going to hit me.” This lack of empathy and acceptance on the parent’s part teaches the child that negative feelings are dangerous and therefore need to be suppressed.
In some cases the child grows into an adult who unconsciously chooses a partner that is also critical or judgmental of their feelings. And in some cases, the client simply assumes that their loved one is going to meet their expression with derision or scorn which keeps them from being able to get their need for emotional safety met at all.
I recently discovered a wonderful website dealing with this issue called www.forthelittleonesinside.com. Here is what the author has to say on the subject of the inner critic: “Our inner critic, although it now seems only to torment and batter us, originally came into being to protect our small and vulnerable selves. It came to prevent us from doing things and being ways that threatened to bring upon us more frightening and dangerous external criticism…criticism that might have led to the withdrawal of the love and support that were so essential for our survival. “
I think Alice Miller said it best in her well known book, The Drama Of the Gifted Child, The Search for the True Self “…for a child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother’s love or the love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress her emotions. She cannot even experience them secretly, ‘just for herself’; she will fail to experience them at all. But they will nevertheless stay in her body, in her cells, stored up as information that can be triggered by a later event.”
My clients feel ashamed and confused about their feelings because acknowledging and accepting their full range of emotions have never been safe, but we are “feeling creatures” by nature. Denying and suppressing our feelings leads to emotional pain and physical pain. Science confirms that there is an area in the brain responsible for detecting cues that may be harmful for survival, such as physical danger or social separation, and that this area shares a common pathway with cues for physical pain. In a meta-analysis by Eisenberger and Leiberman out of UCLA, the authors state that “It has been suggested that, in mammalian species, the social attachment system borrowed the computations of the pain system to prevent the potentially harmful consequences of social separation.”
So I assure my clients that they are not crazy or defective for feeling so fearful. I help them to understand the basis of their fear of feeling, and encourage them to question their inner critic rather than to accept outright its insistence on pushing us to do more, be better, faster, smarter, and thinner in order to feel loved, worthwhile, and valuable. The only thing we need to change about ourselves is to stop holding ourselves to these unreasonable standards and begin to risk ourselves by being honest with those we love. As I remind my clients: “Those who never risk themselves, never fully become themselves.”
Blog on Step #4 Look for Solutions…stop submitting, stop rebelling.
Do you hate your body? Do you try to diet thinking that if you just lost 10 pounds, your life would be miraculously improved? Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired of your struggle with weight? Then practicing step #4 on a daily basis is your answer. Look for solutions…stop submitting, stop rebelling.
In my last blog about step #3, Look for answers…don’t stop until you’ve found them, I invited you to ask yourself what needs of yours were being met by food, and I shared with you some of the places that I have looked to find MY answers. Step #4 is similar in that looking for our answers sometimes leads us to our solutions in overcoming body dissatisfaction, body loathing, and the drive to thinness through dieting. But unless you are familiar with the concepts of compassionate communication, you must be wondering what the heck I mean by “stop submitting, stop rebelling”. Simply put, whenever you submit (disregard, ignore, repress) your needs, you are doomed to rebel in some way. Rebellion takes on many forms. It may look like passive-aggressive comments or behavior, over eating or binging, under eating or restricting, over drinking, compulsive shopping or gambling, showing up chronically late, calling in sick to work, having an affair, the list goes on. Whenever you say “yes” and you really mean “no” you are submitting some need of yours.
Most diet programs focus on extinguishing the rebelling behavior, but that is totally backward. If you give yourself the time and energy to know what your needs are, and are then willing to ask for them to be met, you will no longer be in the submit/ rebel cycle. Since I gave you a clear example of the submit/ rebel cycle last blog by sharing Lisa’s story, let me give you a couple of examples from my clients that have nothing to do with dieting. I have a client; we’ll call her Betty, she works as a nanny. She loves her job and the family she works for, but Betty also loves her Sunday’s off. She looks forward to this one day a week where she has no commitments or responsibilities to anyone else. A few weeks ago her employer asked her to attend the birthday party of the little girl she nannies for, and guess what, it was on a Sunday. Betty, feeling that she “should” say yes, said “sure” and then came to her session with me that week and complained about it. First of all, whenever your self- talk includes a “should” or a “have to”, you are probably submitting. Betty was submitting her needs for rest, choice, and peace and harmony. I gently tried to point out the set-up she created by saying “yes” when she meant “no”. That was pretty much the end of it until today, the day after the party when client described feeling miserable and wanting very much to “call in sick” to work. This was her “rebellion”. Again I pointed out her part in the submit/ rebel cycle.
Another client, let’s call her Veronica, clearly states that her partner does not meet her need for appreciation, acknowledgment, and emotional safety. She wonders why sex has become so physically painful to her (now she avoids it). And then there’s Carly. Carly is a client who is engaged to be married. As it often happens, family issues that aren’t often discussed rear their ugly heads when it comes time to plan a wedding. Her fiancé’s brother, in a jealous rage, threatened to kill him last year. Now, his family not only thinks he “should” be invited, but that he should be part of the wedding party. Carly and her fiancé do not agree with his family. I asked Carly what she thinks would happen if the brother where to come (submitting their needs). Without skipping a beat she admitted that her fiancé would most likely get drunk and that would ruin the night for both of them. I congratulated her on recognizing the rebellion (over-drinking) right away.
For the many of us that were raised to be kind, sensitive, compassionate, generous and people-pleasing, saying “no” means risking the discontent, anger, or judgment of others. Many of us learned to say “yes” to avoid the guilt or negative consequence of saying “no”. Submitting our own needs was encouraged when our needs were at odds with our parents’ needs. Alice Miller’s book, The Drama of the Gifted Child explores this phenomenon using other terms, but makes the point that growing up in a family environment in which the child had no choice but to acquiesce to the emotional needs of the parents, results in the child ignoring his or her own needs, which results in the disappearance of the “real” self. The “false” self that emerges is interested foremost in pleasing others. This dis-connect from the self is often what leads us to binge eating, chronic body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders.
“Okay, I get it now” you say, “but what do I do from here?” Knowing your needs is step#1. Looking at your resentments is another good step so that you can clear them out of your way. It’s no accident that the fourth step in my recovery plan corresponds to the fourth step of most 12 step programs which is “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” I don’t recommend doing this part on your own. Find someone whom you can trust and ask for their support, preferably someone with 12 step experience. They are there to bear witness as you work through this step. They are not there to comment or to pass judgment. In order to clear away resentment I recommend making four columns.
1. I’m Resentful At 2. The Cause 3. What it affects 4. My Part
(people,institutions,principles) (why I’m angry) (self-esteem, pride,pocketbook, (selfish, dis-
Ambition,personal relations,sex) honest, self-
seeking,frightened)
I like to replace “What it affects” with “What needs were not met”. This reinforces your needs as being a part of the process. The 4th column, “My Part”, is usually the most difficult as it asks you to take responsibility for the exact nature of your wrongs. For this reason, it’s recommended that you do all the examples you can think of for column 1 before moving on to column 2- the cause. Complete that column before moving onto your unmet needs in column 3. When you have finished with your unmet needs (for each example you listed in column 2) then and only then are you ready to look at your part.
As I’ve said before, breaking free from chronic dieting, learning to love and accept yourself, isn’t always easy. I make no promises that this step will be easy, but if you are willing to be honest with yourself and others, you will put an end to submitting your needs, there will be no reason for you to rebel, and the result is lasting self-acceptance and self-worth. For more information on step #4 or any of the previous 3 steps, please visit my website www.colleenperry.com. You are not alone!
1. Admit you have needs that haven’t been met.
2. Seek help and support.
3. Look for answers…don’t stop until you’ve found them.
4. Look for solutions…stop submitting, stop rebelling.
5. Practice gratitude daily.
6. Develop a balanced point of view.
7. Share your stories with others…you are not alone.
8. Clear away the wreckage of your past…mourn the lost opportunities.
9. Continuously revise your life story.
10. Practice honesty and compassion for self and others.
11. Meet your needs..communicate honestly and directly.
12. Knowing that you are not powerless, food will fall into its healthful place.
Blog on Step #3…Look for Answers…don’t stop until you’ve found them.
There are reasons why you are a chronic dieter. There are reasons why you have an eating disorder. Do you know what they are? My guess is, probably not. That’s why you’re reading this! It’s important to know the “why” behind your behavior. Some people will disagree with me here. They would say that it’s not important to understand “why” you are doing what you are doing. It’s only important to know “how” you’re going to stop the behavior. This is “why” I disagree. Let’s take overeating as an example.
There are plenty of programs out there that promise to show you “how” to lose weight, and “how” to stop overeating. They will tell you what to eat, and, so as to not leave anything to chance, they will even provide the food for you in its correct serving size. You don’t have to think about anything…just buy the food and eat what they tell you to eat. Great, but for how long? What happens when you’ve lost all the weight and you’re ready to eat on your own again? If you haven’t addressed the “why” for overeating in the first place, you will most likely go back to your old way of eating.
Step #3 Look for Answers…don’t stop until you’ve found them, asks you to explore what need were getting met with food. What needs are being met by over-eating? If you don’t figure this one out, you’ll never know how to get those needs met in a life-serving way, a way that does not require you to use food. And this, my friends, is one of the reasons that dieting alone DOES NOT WORK! Here is my friend Lisa’s story: “I finally decided, after a long struggle, that it was OK to divorce my husband. Since he was overweight, I stayed slightly “padded” as well, although I was naturally athletic and petite. I realized, as I grew further away from him in my heart, I was still trying to stay connected by identifying with him - by having this thing in common - fat. After all, if I got really into shape, I would become more attractive to others and myself and would have to deal with a whole new can of worms - our lack of intimacy and my own buried sexuality. My padding helped to insulate me from feeling a lot of fear and guilt. I’m very happy to report; I found the courage to take care of myself. I’ve worked through my feelings and proceeded with my divorce. Exercise kept me sane and in great shape. And most surprising and blessed of all - a very special and fit man has come into my life!
Any woman, man or child trying to break free of dieting or an eating disorder must be willing to be fearless in their search for answers. If it were easy, then millions upon millions of us wouldn’t need to be dieting; wouldn’t loathe ourselves so much that making ourselves vomit or starving ourselves would seem reasonable. For many of us, body dissatisfaction has been a life-long struggle. We don’t stop to ask ourselves who’s standard of beauty are we conforming to; our culture’s, our family’s, or friends’? Who was it that told you that you were anything less than beautiful? Why did you believe them? Why do you chase after the need for self-worth based upon your weight? Aren’t you more than just your body? I know I am. As someone who has both met the cultural norm for beauty and has defied it too, I can tell you that my own self esteem comes from doing “esteemable” things, NOT by fitting into a size 4 pants.
I have been a warrior in my quest for happiness and self-acceptance. Here are some of the places I’ve looked to find MY answers:
You Can Heal Your Life – Louise Hay
Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield
Conversations With God – Neal Donald Walsh
Countless other self-help books
Hypnotherapy
Inner child work
12 step work
Yoga
Individual therapy
Group therapy
Life coaching (learning non-violent communication)
Sitting in circle with women
Drumming
Graduate work in psychology
Acupuncture, chiropractic care, massage therapy
The Mind Body Prescription – John Sarno MD (cured my chronic lower back pain)
Movement and dance therapy
Volunteer work every week
Women’s retreats
Master and control of body (aerobics teacher, pilates, ballet, jazz, triathalons)
The Artist’s Way course
Drugs for depression
Nordic Runes, I Ching, Feng Shui
Dream boards, vision boards
Started a business
And this is only what comes to mind! I haven’t always found the answers I was looking for, but inevitably whatever path I was on led me to the next path. It’s a matter of “way leading unto way” as Robert Frost so eloquently wrote in his famous poem The Road Less Traveled (read a great book by the same name too!). What have you tried in looking to find happiness and acceptance for yourself other than by losing weight?
Blog on Step #2…Seek Help and Support
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colleen-perry/how-to-free-yourself-from_b_159390.html
The 12 Steps of Recovery from Chronic Dieting
Last week I invited you to welcome in the New Year by stopping your dieting. I gave 2 compelling reasons why diets don’t work for lasting weight loss, set point and water balance. This week I’m going into more detail on the first step toward “diet recovery”: Admit you have needs that haven’t been met.
Every one of us is born with a set of needs that is unique to them. This is called our temperament. We all have the same basic needs, but the priority given to each need and preference varies from person. Much of our temperament is determined by genetics, and some is formed as we live our life…so some is the result of nature and some the result of nurture. To a large extent it is believed that the attunement to our needs by our primary care giver at birth determines our responses when our needs are not met. For example, the woman whose mother or father was emotionally distant may use other sources to get her needs for nurturing, love, and connection met. In time she may discover that food seems to soothe the pain of these needs not being met by her parent(s). Food is constant, non-judgmental, and often, easily available (unlike her parent). Or consider the boy that goes “unseen” by his alcoholic family. He devises a way of using food to numb his rage and pain. Or the little girl who grew up as “the apple of her father’s eye”, whose needs were met until she began puberty when her body began to change, and her father grew distant and uncomfortable around her. She begins to restrict her food, unconsciously thwarting her natural growth into maturity through dieting or anorexia.
Admitting you have needs that have not been met is the first step of 12 for a very good reason; unless you are in touch with the needs that you are currently meeting with food, dieting, or binging, you have very little chance of permanently breaking free of the cycle of weight loss/ weight gain. Some of the needs met by food include but are not limited to: autonomy, freedom, choice, comfort, connection, reassurance, predictability, emotional safety, sharing, community, family, and pleasure. Some of the needs met by dieting include: autonomy, freedom, choice, individuality, self-worth, self-respect, purpose, acknowledgement, being liked, respect, friendship, companionship, acceptance, aesthetic, validation, exercise and movement. You can see how some of these needs overlap, but I hope the prevailing point is that there are a lot of needs met by both dieting and not dieting. The goal is to acknowledge first that your needs are legitimate…ALL OF THEM. For some people this is the most difficult part. Many of us feel undeserving of getting our needs met. Maybe you were told you have too many needs i.e. “Don’t be so needy.” Maybe you were told to submit your needs by putting the needs of others first i.e. “Don’t be so selfish. Help your mother.” Maybe you weren’t even aware that you have needs! That’s not so uncommon.
So, are you nourishing yourself lovingly with healthy foods and healthy relationships? If so, you’re probably not the chronic dieter or someone with an eating disorder. For the rest of us, the challenge becomes twofold: 1) being able to know your needs, 2) figuring out how to get them met. The second part may require trial and error, but trust me; it’s worth putting in the time. Think about all the time, energy, strength (willpower) and money you have invested throughout your life in dieting and weight loss. Imagine investing equal time, energy and strength into getting your needs met! Spend the money too if you need professional assistance. What is stopping you? What scares you about doing this? You are worth it! For all the people you love and for yourself, why not make this investment in you? What would change as a result? Some of you secretly fear that if you were to become healthy (a person that you like, someone whom you admire) your current relationships would no longer serve you, and then where would you be? I understand this fear, but it’s fear that keeps us stuck in old beliefs and old patterns. It is love, love of self, and love for others that is our salvation.
So, to recap, here are the 12 steps to recovery from chronic dieting or eating disorders:
1. Admit you have needs that haven’t been met.
2. Seek help and support.
3. Look for answers…don’t stop until you’ve found them.
4. Look for solutions…stop submitting, stop rebelling.
5. Practice gratitude daily.
6. Develop a balanced point of view.
7. Share your stories with others…you are not alone.
8. Clear away the wreckage of your past…mourn the lost opportunities.
9. Continuously revise your life story.
10. Practice honesty and compassion for self and others.
11. Meet your needs..communicate honestly and directly.
12. Knowing that you are not powerless, food will fall into its healthful place.
Next week we will go into depth on step 2: seeking help and support. Please visit my website www.colleenperry.com for last week’s blog and for more information on this subject.