Chapter Four
The Critic’s View of the Physical Body
We are bombarded in our culture by specialness. Beng ordinary is simply not acceptable. The demands of physical perfection are like a runaway train that we could call the Special Express. It is no wonder that the Critic has developed so much power when it comes to judging our physical bodies.
We have had conversations with literally thousands of Inner Critics during the past fifteen years. We have heard them criticize just about everything there is to criticize in a human being. We doubt that there is much that could surprise us at this point. The critique of the physical body is so all-pervasive, so powerful, and exerts such a negative and destructive influence on people’s lives that we want to devote a chapter specifically to this area of the Critic’s function.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
People are always saying that they don’t like this or that about their bodies. They will say such things as, “I don’t like the shape of my face. My hips are too big. My neck is too short. My hair just lies there like a wet dishrag. My toes are crooked. I cannot stand the way my ears stick out.” It never occurs to most people that these negative feelings about their bodies do not belong to them as aware human beings. Similarly, it never occurs to them that these are comments made by the Inner Critic. Most of us take this abuse for granted and when we use the word I as we describe our perceptions of our physical bodies, we actually mean the perceptions of our Inner Critics.
In the kind of situation described above, when there is no Aware Ego and when someone is fully identified with the Inner Critic, no amount of reassurance will help. If you tell such a person that her hair is really lovely, the Critic will counter that with a comment such as, “She’s just trying to make you feel good” or, “She says that to everyone.” Or if you tell such a woman that her blouse looks great on her, she will feel quite embarrassed because her Critic will be saying in her head, “He should know what you really look like.” As we have pointed out before, the Inner Critic’s comments are like a mantra, repeating over and over in your head: “The trouble with you is. The trouble with you is …! The trouble with you is …!” There is no way to counter this from the outside, and it generally is present except for one period of time in people’s lives, and that is when they fall in love.
During the falling-in-love period, with the accompanying joy of romantic love, these Inner Critics generally fall asleep for a period of time. The other person loves us unconditionally and we love him or her unconditionally. Our Inner Children flower and feel safe and the garden grows because there is no one around to stomp on it. Having someone love you unconditionally and having this person’s full attention focused upon you is a soporific for the Inner Critic. Whereas you may always have been very critical of your eyes (the Critic told you they were too close together and the wrong color), your partner adores them, and suddenly your eyes are beautiful. The world truly sparkles because all the negative evaluations are gone.
As this phase of the relationship comes to an end, however, the Inner Critic returns. Your partner who has loved your eyes unreservedly and who has given you full-time attention now gets busy at work again. He or she still loves you, but that total commitment is not there in the same way. He is back into himself and the intense romantic involvement is waning. Maybe she even has reactions that she is not sharing and these, of course, become judgments. You may even find yourself responding at some level to these unconscious feelings.
As the romantic phase ends and as the constant positive feedback ends, the Critic returns and lets you know again that your eyes are spaced too closely together. Your partner may try to reassure you that this is not true, but somehow this does not sound the same as before and your partner no longer has the power to hold back the renewed onslaught of the Critic.
SOME SOURCES OF THE CRITIC’S POWER
This critique of the physical body causes people enormous pain. As we mentioned in the last chapter, we have seen many instances of people who simply refuse to look into mirrors because they cannot bear what they see there. This may come as a surprise to you, but the Inner Critic has a number of very special places where it lives and rests. You will learn more about these later in this chapter. For the moment we will simply share with you the fact that one of its special resting places is bathroom mirrors. It loves to live inside these mirrors and look back at you when you look into it. The next time you look in the mirror, look carefully and deeply behind the glass and you will see him or her peering out at you.
For many people clothes shopping is a nightmare because nothing possibly could look good on them. A number of years ago Hal met with a young actress who was quite beautiful. In talking with her Inner Critic, however, one would have thought that a monster was sitting across from him. He (her Critic was a he) ripped her apart. There was nothing right with her body. Shopping was a total nightmare for her. She was devastated and lived as painful victim to this judgmental self inside her. Being an actress could not change a lifetime of criticism and judgment from her parents. She had long since broken with them, but on the inner level they were stronger than ever. No amount of objective validation could make any difference. A very strong Inner Critic turned the world into a system of judgments, all directed toward her, spoken or unspoken.
We have described how these Critics develop in us. They come from parents, siblings, school, religious leaders, books, everyone in our environment. One time Hal was facilitating the Inner Critic of a woman and she started laughing and could hardly stop. What Diane had remembered was an incident with her mother just before her mother died. Diane recalled that her mother was exceptionally critical. At the time of this incident her mother was eighty-five years of age and was in a hospital suffering from a terminal illness. She had great difficulty breathing, and it was obvious that the end was near. Diane walked into the hospital room on this particular morning, and the mother, who had been semicomatose for several days, saw her enter the room. She suddenly sat up in bed and said to her daughter: “Is that the only purse you have?” She then collapsed back into her coma and died a few hours later. This kind of judgment obviously leads to very strong Inner Critics.
We have noticed a clear pattern: The stronger the Inner Critic, the stronger the judgmental voices that have been around the person in the growing-up process. The stronger the judgmental voices around us in the growing-up process, the stronger will be the Inner Critic.
A CONVERSATION WITH THE CRITIC ABOUT ANNIE’S BODY
We are going to give you now a longer Voice Dialogue conversation, though still an excerpt, with an Inner Critic that is sharing its feelings about Annie. This particular Critic was quite powerful, so we decided to focus first on the body itself and then move on into other areas.
FACILITATOR (to Critic): Since you seem to have so much to criticize Annie about, why don’t we do it in some kind of wholistic fashion and start first with the physical body? I know from what Annie has said so far that you don’t like a lot of things about her body.
CRITIC: What’s to like? Look at her. Just look at her!
FACILITATOR: Well, I am looking. Quite honestly, she looks pretty good to me.
CRITIC: You’re just trying to make her feel good. There is so much wrong I don’t know where to start.
FACILITATOR: Let’s do it scientifically. We’ll start with her hair and you can rate each part on a hundred-point scale where zero is the worst and one hundred is the best. Let’s start with her hair. How would you rate that?
CRITIC: I’d give it a ten or twenty.
FACILITATOR: What is wrong with it? Why so low?
CRITIC: Well, first of all, it has no luster. It’s dry. It’s too short. I don’t like the color. She never does anything with it. She might be okay if she lived in Africa in some village.
FACILITATOR: What about her face?
CRITIC: It’s too plain. There is no character to it. Her nose is too large and it’s too compacted. I don’t like her complexion either. She always looks like she’s on the verge of hepatitis.
FACILITATOR: You really are rough on her. What is your rating?
CRITIC: I’ll give it a twenty.
FACILITATOR: You’re coming in pretty low so far, aren’t you?
CRITIC: You asked me how I feel about her. I’m only speaking the truth.
FACILITATOR: How do you feel about her shoulders?
CRITIC: Actually, they’re not so bad. I’d give them a fifty.
FACILITATOR: If they’re not so bad, why does she only get a fifty?
critic: She gets nothing over a fifty because she doesn’t deserve anything over a fifty.
FACILITATOR: What about the shape of her body in general?
CRITIC: You have got to be kidding! Do you have a week to spend on this? Her body is a horror story. Look at her hips. They’re huge. And her thighs. Aside from being too large she has cellulite. I’ve told her a hundred times to have the cellulite taken off. (It is amazing how many Inner Critics are cellulite experts.) She won’t listen to me. So I keep at her.
FACILITATOR: Could anything she ever did satisfy you? Truthfully now, could she ever get you to stop criticizing her?
CRITIC: Not really. She’s just weak. She lets me criticize her and never even thinks of stopping me. She deserves everything that she gets.
FACILITATOR: Where did you learn how to be such a powerful Critic? It seems as though you’ve had some very good schooling.
CRITIC: Oh, I had the best schooling of all. Her mother had a Ph.D. in judgment. Her father only had a B.A. in judgment. Then her older sister got her Ph.D. in judgment, and I learned from all of them. She could never do anything right. Anything she wore was wrong and her body was simply something that needed to be fixed. I had the best of training. To tell you the truth, I started criticizing her so that she would be prepared for their attacks. I figured that if I got to her first, it might not hurt as much when they went after her.
It is amazing how often one hears the Inner Critic attack someone for being too weak to stop it. That is one of the paradoxes of the Inner Critic. It pounds us and pounds us, and in this process it hates us for being so weak. It actually criticizes us for having an Inner Critic that is out of control.
The Voice Dialogue excerpt that we have given to you is only an excerpt. The kinds of things that the Critic can find wrong with our physical bodies are infinite in variety. It can often go on for hours.
When facilitating, we sometimes ask what appear to be silly and outlandish questions. Then the Aware Ego can hear how far-out, how absolutely extreme, the Critic is in its judgments toward us.
For example, we might ask the Critic such things as, “How do you feel about John’s big toe or Mary’s right kneecap or Al’s earlobe or Yvonne’s elbow or the hair on Harry’s chest?” Invariably the Critic will have something negative and quite reasonable to say about whatever it is we are asking about. This amazing power of the Critic to attack us in this way causes great suffering and anguish in people. Low self-esteem does not even begin to describe the shape that Annie is in because of these constant Critic attacks and evaluations. What chance does she have to make a successful relationship with these kinds of self-evaluations constantly going on in her? Such Critics create victims, and such victims have a very difficult time feeling equal to other people.
People’s identification with the Critic is often so complete that they will say to us, “But what he says is true. My hair is terrible. I am too short. My thighs are too big.” To remain identified with this Critic is to live in prison. To separate from it—to recognize that these critiques are coming from a voice, from a person who lives inside of you—is to leave this dungeon of despair. The conversation we have given you is just a plain, ordinary, everyday dialogue. There is nothing special or unique about it. It is going on in the heads of people much of the time. We must realize that radio station KRAZY is playing in our heads. Once we know this we can change the station or turn off the radio.
THE “TALKING” BATHROOM SCALE AND MIRROR
No discussion of the Critic’s view of the physical body would be complete without consideration of the talking bathroom scale and the talking mirror that we alluded to earlier in this chapter. Most people are not aware of the talking scale in their homes. Every time you step onto it or look into it, a voice speaks out. (There are actually scales that talk to you, telling you your weight and comparing it to what it was yesterday. What a joy for your Inner Critic! What we are talking about here, however, is the commentary of your Critic that only you can hear.) Similarly, every time you look into the mirror, you hear comments, marvelous comments, such as,
Oh my God! I can’t believe your weight (or face)!
Look at the lines on your face!
Please put on your make-up!
I told you to skip dessert last night!
It was pig-out time again! (Variation on this one:) You’re bloated!
Your hair is dead!
If you were going to the gym regularly this wouldn’t happen!
When are you ever going to lose weight!
What more can we say? We know that there are positive features of scales and mirrors and reasons why we need them. Certainly, however, for the Inner Critic the bathroom scale and the bathroom mirror are the greatest inventions since the wheel. It is a morning ritual that is more powerful than coffee and one that ensures the Critic a major say in how our morning begins each day. Or should we say, how our mourning begins each day?
SPECIAL NOURISHMENT FOR THE CRITIC
It is easy to see how the Critic is nourished by judgmental parents and siblings and other persons in our environment. Add to this Critic soup pot the magazines: Playboy, Playgirl, Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, GQ, Body Building, and a multitude of other magazines that sing the praises of how to be one of the “beautiful people.” Add a few cups of weight reduction clinics and aerobics classes. Add fourteen gallons of television and movie images constantly showing us the “most attractive” men, women, body, legs, hair. Even plain in television means glamorous.
To this we must add five bushels of advertising that constantly put in front of us women models who weigh ninety-six pounds and men who are built like Arnold Schwarzenegger or dressed to the hilt, and unbelievably suave and debonair, in gorgeous Italian suits. Add two quarts of sexy, passionate love scenes that show unbelievable lovemaking done by the greatest pros in the business. Add our final ingredient: several gallons of an elixir called “being special.” This is a very nourishing soup that our Critics are fed every day of our lives. It is no wonder that the Critic has so much clout when it comes to judging our physical bodies.
There is one ingredient that is not allowed in this Critic soup. It is a criminal act to introduce the ingredient of normal or ordinary. Our culture has become a runaway train that we would have to call the Special Express. So much of the input that we receive has to do with being special. Watching a jeans commercial on television raises the rear end of people to a status approaching divinity.
Lovemaking is never ordinary or boring on television or films. Certainly filmmakers must have experienced or heard about just an ordinary, average kiss or lovemaking session. Does anyone ever kiss without musical accompaniment? Is it any wonder that the Critic goes berserk in the face of all of this and demands some mythical, special, nonordinary way of being in the world? For a woman to strive toward the ideal form of a fourteen-year-old and for a man to strive toward the ideal form of a weight lifter or hard-as-steel cop is unrealistic, to say the least. All of this contributes toward the massive power that the Inner Critic has achieved in so many people. It would be funny if it did not cause so many people such grief.
HOW DOES YOUR CRITIC VIEW YOUR BODY?
1. Gather together a large number of different magazines and look at the advertisements that use male and female models. What is your impression of them and how do they affect you? Tune in to your Inner Critic’s comments as you look at them.
2. What do you remember in growing up about being special and ordinary? Were you pushed in a certain direction? Who pushed you and why?
3. How does your Critic feel about the possibility of your being just ordinary? What does it say about this?
4. What does your Inner Critic like to criticize about your physical body? Does it do this by comparing you to other people?
5. Do you have a talking scale? What does it say in the morning?
6. Do you have a talking bathroom mirror? What does it say in the morning to you?