Beverley appeared to have had a happy and loving upbringing. A single child, she’d spent a great deal of time with her mother and was always immaculately turned out. However, as is often the case in families, things were not as they seemed.
Beverley’s mother had suffered from severe anxiety, and she saw her daughter as her comfort and an extension of her own needs. What Beverley needed or wanted was of no importance; indeed, the parent–child relationship was effectively reversed, and Beverley was there to take care of and meet the needs of her mother.
As we unpacked her childhood together while filming my In Therapy with Alex Howard series, Beverley shared one particularly striking event that occurred when she was around 11 years old. Her mother had asked her what she’d like to eat for her evening meal, adding that she could have whatever she wanted. This never happened: Beverley’s mother liked sweet food, and so that was what she fed her daughter, whether she liked it or not.
Now, most children given this choice would likely opt for ice cream or chocolate, and if they had to have something savory it would involve fries and plenty of tomato ketchup (or perhaps that’s just my kids!). Not Beverley: She was desperate for a proper meal and so she asked for meat and vegetables.
Beverley’s mother responded to this request with irritation, annoyed that she’d have to go find the ingredients and spend time cooking. She’d assumed that Beverley would choose a dish that she would want – the idea that her daughter might have different preferences wasn’t even in her world of possibility.
A few months after this incident, Beverley had a nervous breakdown and became entirely unable to function. Although as a teenager she’d worked hard to get things back on track, and when she was in her twenties, and at other times later, she’d put herself through therapy, for much of her life she’d struggled with intimate relationships and had suicidal thoughts.
At the time I met her, Beverley had recently retired after a 40-year career as a dentist and was feeling somewhat lost; she was unsure of her purpose in life and wanted to heal and make sense of her past. As we uncovered more of the pieces of her trauma jigsaw, the events of her life increasingly made sense. Indeed, the intense love deficit she’d grown up with had spilled into everything, from her relationships and friendships to her health.
At the heart of many of Beverley’s struggles was the way she spoke to herself. This inner voice, or inner critic (more on this coming up), is shaped by the way our primary caregivers spoke to us and treated us, and with her mother having been so harsh with her, Beverley developed a particularly vicious and cruel inner critic.
To her inner critic, whatever Beverley did was wrong, and it would also regularly imagine the cruel and unkind things it was convinced others were thinking and saying about her. This constant internal abuse made it particularly difficult for Beverley to make big life decisions, and to reach out and build the friendships and connections that she needed and deserved.
Sigmund Freud (whose work we touched on in Chapter 6) was a fascinating character who was mapping human psychology in the late 19th century, an era of significant sexual repression, and as a result, one must hold some of his theories in this context to understand why be believed that repressed sexual desires and impulses are behind most human behavior.
However, one of Freud’s immensely valuable contributions to psychology was his concepts of the id, the ego, and the superego of the human personality. The superego is the part of the mind whose job it is to keep the more unruly areas of our psyche in check. In Freud’s native tongue, German, the superego is the ‘über ich,’ meaning ‘over I.’ Effectively, it’s our internal voice of judgement, which sits above us and judges, criticizes, and directs our inner world, our choices, and our behaviors. It’s this voice that constantly tells us that we are broken and that our suffering is our own fault.
In popular psychology, we refer to this personality structure as our inner critic, as effectively it’s that voice inside us all that’s endlessly criticizing and judging us. For some, this voice is subtle and quiet, while for others it’s raging and unavoidable.
One of the significant impacts of our trauma is that we become normalized to talking to ourselves in abusive, harsh, and ultimately unhelpful ways. As we work to reset our nervous system and heal our trauma, we must ensure that this ultimately translates to a new way of relating to ourselves. To do this, we need to work on transforming our inner critic; if we don’t, we’ll continue the cycle of trauma in the way we treat ourselves.
I think that the damaging impact the inner critic has on our life cannot be overstated. From influencing our basic mood from day to day, to limiting our capacity to pursue the things we’re passionate about, to being part of the makeup of our inner resistance to feeling our emotions, when our inner critic is at work, it affects how we feel. The inner critic constantly drains our energy, which means we end up fulfilling significantly less of our true potential in the world.
At this point you might be thinking, OK, I recognize that I have this voice, but surely, I need it to function in the world. Without it I’d have no sense of morals or right and wrong. To which I’d respond: It’s true that as children we do need this inner voice because it helps keep a version of our parents present when we’re alone, and it helps us learn how to navigate the complex and overwhelming world to get our core emotional needs met.
However, as adults we certainly don’t need this inner voice in the same way, and if we need it at all, there’s absolutely no value in it constantly attacking and belittling us. Indeed, even when our critic gives us feedback or challenges us on something, it inevitably does it in a way that makes us feel smaller and less empowered rather than supported and motivated to make the change it’s asking for.
Here’s an example of what I mean. While spending time with a friend you make a joke but then immediately realize that you didn’t express it in the lighthearted way you’d intended, and it could be offensive. Before you even pause to see how your friend has reacted to the joke, your inner critic immediately goes to work, attacking you, criticizing you, and making you feel like you’re the worst human being ever to walk planet Earth.
In this moment, there’s absolutely no opening to explore your hidden prejudice or possible unconscious privilege; instead, you’re reeling from the abuse and attack of your inner critic. Unlike giving feedback to an employee in the workplace in a sensitive and skillful way, our inner critic’s constant attacks give us less of what we need and want in life, not more.
Now, it’s certainly true that sometimes there’s a grain of truth in what our inner critic says (although often there’s not). But that isn’t the point. The point is that our inner critic weaponizes the grain of truth in its agenda of making us feel small and helpless. And as a result, we’re less able, not more able, to act to address the grain of truth.
Our inner critic can manifest in several forms, and for some of us it’s much more obvious than others. Sometimes, the more subtle the critic is, the harder it can be to spot and so the more damage it can do. Many years ago, I gave a public talk in Scotland in which I mentioned the inner critic and the impact it can have on us. Afterward, a woman came up to me and stated rather boldly, ‘I don’t have an inner critic. I have an inner motivator.’ And yet, everything about the way she said it suggested that this motivator was far from kind and supportive – labelling itself as a force for good was just another way it avoided scrutiny and challenge.
Ultimately, to fully reset our trauma and unlock a future that isn’t constrained by the sufferings of our past, we must learn to defend against and break free from our inner critic. Creating meaningful change with our inner critic can take significant effort, but I find that using a simple four-step process developed within The Diamond Approach (a path that’s heavily impacted my own journey) can be immensely helpful.
In this, we need to:
Let’s look at the four RIDD steps in detail.
The first step is to recognize that we’re being attacked. A huge clue that our inner critic is attacking us is feeling small and childlike or disempowered in some way. Our natural state as a human being is to feel valuable and worthy, and that our place in the world is deserved and justified, and any sign that we don’t feel this way is a clue.
Just as we normalize the state of our nervous system, the same happens with our inner critic. We get so used to attacking ourselves all the time, that we normalize to being in this state, which can make it harder to recognize that, although it might feel familiar, it isn’t our true, natural state.
To recognize our inner critic, it’s helpful to be aware that it can show up in three different ways, and we all do each of these to a varying degree:
What happens to your physical and emotional bodies when you’re being attacked by your inner critic? Do you notice that you feel smaller and ‘less yourself’ or do you perhaps feel emotionally shut down or more defensive? Or maybe you feel a sense of hopelessness or resignation. Or is there an overwhelming feeling that everything is your fault?
Write down a few notes about what happens to you during an inner critic attack; this will help you recognize when you’re attacking yourself in the future. Which of the three ways that the inner critic shows up (above) feels most familiar to you? You’ll find a worksheet to help you complete this exercise in your companion course at www.alexhoward.com/trauma.
Once we’ve recognized that we’re attacking ourselves, the next step is to identify the specific wording and nature of the attack. Here are some examples of inner critic attacks that you might have while reading this book:
Our inner critic will show up in every area of our lives to a degree, so really, the question isn’t whether it’s there in some way but how skillfully you’re spotting it. Often, the content of our inner critic attacks will be shaped by the personality patterns we explored in Chapter 8. For example, if we have a strong achiever pattern, our inner critic attacks will be fueled by this and triggered by our ‘failures.’ Likewise, if we have a strong helper pattern, our attacks will be driven by this, and so on.
Which are the most common phrases your inner critic uses when you attack yourself? Although the content of the attack might change, the types of attack it makes are fairly consistent. Write down the 10 inner critic attacks that feel the most familiar to you.
Once you’ve identified the content of your inner critic attack, the next step is to defend yourself. Having taught thousands of people over the years how to defend themselves against their inner critic, I must confess that there are two words which seem to have a somewhat sacred power and impact compared to all others: Fuck and Off.
Now, I know that for some of you using these words may feel uncomfortable. However, I find that there’s a strong therapeutic value in using such colorful language. You see, because it’s your inner critic that’s telling you not to use these words, doing so is an act of defiance.
To be clear, I’m certainly not suggesting that you tell people in your life to fuck off if they criticize you (although at times it might have its place!); the point here is that you’re talking to a voice inside your mind, not a real person. It’s your power and strength that your inner critic is using against you, and so by defending yourself against it in this way, you’re taking back that power and strength.
As you notice your inner critic beating up on you, tell it, out loud, to fuck off. Then take a deep breath and become aware of how you feel. Practice doing this as often as you can. Obviously when you’re around other people, it’s preferable to say it inside your head, rather than out loud!
When defending yourself against your inner critic, it’s very important not to get into a discussion or debate about the content of the attack. With each back and forth, you’re just giving your inner critic more energy and power. Therefore, once you’ve defended yourself against your critic, you need to shift your focus away and put it somewhere else.
It’s a little like playing a game of tennis with your inner critic. You’re not looking to continue hitting the ball back over the net to it in your attempts to argue and justify your value and self-worth. Instead, you’re recognizing that you’re being attacked, defending yourself, and then putting down your proverbial tennis racket and walking off the court.
One helpful place on which to put our focus is a positive statement we can make about ourselves. Not as an argument against what our inner critic’s saying to spark more back and forth, but as something independent about ourselves that we can celebrate.
Think of 10 positive things that you recognize about yourself. They can be attributes of your character, particular skills or talents you’re proud of, or things you’ve done in the world or for others. Now make a list of them, which you can refer to and use after you’ve defended. When you disengage, remind yourself of the things on this list.
So, to summarize RIDD: you’re Recognizing that you’re being attacked; you’re Identifying the nature of the attack before Defending yourself against it; and then you’re Disengaging and focusing on a positive quality or attribute about yourself. And, as with all the tools in this book, the key to success is persistent and consistent practice.
While getting RIDD of your inner critic entirely is, I’m sure, a rather appealing prospect, it’s not something that I’ve observed is realistic. What is possible, though, is changing our power dynamic with our inner critic and quietening its impact on us.
By constantly recognizing that we’re being attacked, identifying the specific attack, defending ourselves against it, and then disengaging, over time we’re fundamentally retaining this part of our mind. In so doing, it becomes much easier to be gentle and loving toward ourselves.
Let’s return to Beverley’s story. Growing her awareness of her inner critic was a key part of our work together. In particular, she noticed that she projected her inner critic onto other people, which resulted in her living in a world of judgement of which she was the unconscious architect. The good news was that being the architect also meant that by becoming more conscious of what was happening, she could change it.
One of the consequences of Beverley’s constant barrage of projected judgement was that she was continually people pleasing and being overly accommodating of others to appease her inner critic and her imaginings of what people were thinking about her. Just as she’d learned to always put her mother’s needs first, she was doing the same for everyone else in her life.
As Beverley began to defend herself against and quieten the impact of her inner critic, she learned to better boundary her relationships with others, and to listen to and ask for what she really wanted. The result was that her inner world felt easier, and her outer life of friends and relationships became more supportive and enjoyable. Beverley was also able to understand that her suffering was not her fault, but rather the product of growing up in an environment which was unable to meet her core emotional needs.
Now that we’ve explored the RESET model for trauma healing, it’s time to look at how we can ensure that your healing isn’t just in your inner world but also in your outer life with other people.