Chapter Five
The Wholistic Critic A Self-Improvement Expert

In all of the learning that we do in relation to personal growth, we have a partner. The Critic would call itself an ally. It is with us when we read a book or attend a lecture. It is with us at every seminar that we take, and it listens to every conversation we have. It soaks up information like a dry sponge. It is operating right now as you read this book, and it will use this information in some way to criticize you.

One of the first things to appreciate about the Inner Critic is that it is by nature wholistic. It criticizes everything about us with equal enthusiasm. It criticizes our bodies, our emotions, our minds, and our spirituality. In the old days, before we all became involved in personal growth, its sphere of influence and its available power were somewhat limited. What is important to realize about the Inner Critic as it operates in most of us today is that it has grown up in the New Age of psychology and it has absorbed an amazing amount of information about the way we should and should not be.

As we have seen, the Critic works closely with the Rule Maker, the Pusher, and the Perfectionist, three very important selves in us. The Rule Maker is the person who figures out the way we should be in the world in order to make things safe for us. The Perfectionist sees that we do it properly. The Pusher jams us to see that things are done right away and that we keep doing more and more things. The Critic then plays off these three selves and criticizes us when it feels that we are not playing the game correctly, which is most of the time.

OUR PARTNER IN LEARNING

In all of the learning that we do in relation to personal growth, we have a partner. It is with us when we read a book or attend a lecture. It is with us in every seminar that we take and every conversation that we have. It soaks up information like a dry sponge. It is operating right now as you read this book, and it will use this information in some way to criticize you. It may tell you that you are not aware enough or that you are not bright enough to understand this material. It may even criticize you for having an Inner Critic. Let us look at an example of a Voice Dialogue conversation to see how the Critic operates in relationship to personal growth.

Steve is a lovely young man who has become deeply involved in personal growth work. He has read a good deal and attended many lectures and workshops. What he has not realized, as we have mentioned above, is the fact that the Inner Critic has been with him attending all of the seminars and reading all of the books. Let us see now what his Critic has to say about his work. Keep in mind that all of these examples are taken from longer Voice Dialogue conversations.

FACILITATOR: It sounds as though you enjoy a lot of the self-help work that Steve does as much as he enjoys it.

critic: I do. It gives me a great deal of information to think about that I don’t ordinarily have.

FACILITATOR: What, for example?

CRITIC: Well, I’m very interested in his eating since he got into all of this nutritional work. His diet is terrible. I knew nothing about food before we started reading the new health books. The class that he attended was fantastic. You know how important nutrition is. I have to keep telling him to clean up his act around food. I’m there whenever he eats, trying to get him to do what’s right. I’ve started to tell him how bad meat is. I tell him that he’s eating dead animals. The trouble is that he likes meat.

FACILITATOR: And you apparently have a clear sense of what is right and what is wrong?

CRITIC: Well, that’s why we read these books. All of these experts seem to know what is right, and I use that information. It’s confusing sometimes because different experts say different things.

FACILITATOR: What else do you criticize?

CRITIC: He should be running every day, at least five miles a day. And he should be going to the gym.

FACILITATOR: Would that satisfy you?

CRITIC: I don’t know. There’s always more. He has to stretch. I don’t want him to turn rigid. He needs more discipline about these things. I’d also like to see him start running meditatively. He read an article by someone about that and I thought that would be a good idea.

FACILITATOR: Is there anything else that is particularly important to you about Steve?

CRITIC: There’s so much. I want him to write his dreams down every morning and also to start to meditate every morning. And he drinks coffee. I tell him to stop drinking coffee. It’s a drug.

Steve’s Critic and Pusher have combined to focus on his exercise and health routine with a little journal work thrown in. The list of shoulds can become amazingly long. Every should gives the Critic its opening. People are driven crazy by these kinds of requirements and attacks. Life itself ceases to be fun as the New Age Pusher and Critic lead people into this merry-go-round of New Age consciousness. It is not that the ideas themselves are bad. It is that they have an energy behind them that is very powerful and all-knowing and there is often too little discrimination and choice being made about what truly is appropriate for a person.

To understand the attacks of the Critic, we must keep in mind the underlying vulnerability and anxiety of this self. If we read a book and it tells us that something is bad for us, and if we do not have a strong enough Aware Ego to read this kind of statement and evaluate it properly, then it stirs up a miniature anxiety attack in us. The things that we learn from books, lectures, and workshops become the shoulds and shouldn’ts from which the Inner Critic gets its power. The bottom line for the Critic is that it wants us to be safe, successful, and economically protected. It wants to be sure that we are not abandoned, that we do not look foolish or do anything to embarrass ourselves in such a way that will cause abandonment. It is also terrified about our becoming ill because this means danger and the possibility of economic deprivation. For the Inner Critic, if we can but follow the shoulds and shouldn’ts of the Rule Maker and the Perfectionist, then everything will be okay and we will be safe.

The Critic remembers all too well the pain of our childhood, the innumerable times when we were shamed and criticized and made fun of. It remembers the anxiety of our parents about money. It still feels, through the feelings of the Inner Child, the terror of abandonment when we were left alone or when a divorce or separation caused a parent to leave. It desperately wants us to avoid that primal pain, and the only way it can handle it is to make us perfect To make us perfect it must criticize us because it has no other way to help us. Inner Critics do not come to us and say, “I’m feeling vulnerable and anxious and upset.” We have to learn how to do that for them, and we have to realize that these are always the underlying issues, no matter how vicious the attack on us. It is only by understanding this underlying dynamic of the Critic that we can make sense about the nature of its attacks.

A CRITIC WITH A SPIRITUAL FOCUS

Jane is also involved in much personal growth work, but her focus is more on being spiritual and loving. She was always a very caring and loving child, and her entry into the spiritual movement enhanced this. Thus she has identified with a set of rules that says she must be caring and loving at all times and that this is the goal of spiritual development. The stage is set for her Inner Critic. Listen to the following Voice Dialogue conversation:

FACILITATOR: So far you have had a good deal to say about Jane in many different areas—all critical, I might add.

CRITIC: Well, that’s my job. Without me she would be nowhere. She wouldn’t amount to anything.

FACILITATOR: How do you feel about her spiritual development? You haven’t said anything about that so far.

CRITIC: Well, the best I can say for her is that she tries. She has a long, long way to go, I can tell you that. I hardly know where to start. First of all, she doesn’t meditate enough, and she gets distracted too easily. That bothers me. She sits there, and much of the time she is thinking about a hundred other things than what she is supposed to be doing. The worst thing, though, is that she gets upset too easily. She gets angry at her children and yells at them. Then she feels guilty and apologizes. She should have more control. If she were really spiritual she wouldn’t have to get upset so much. It happens with her husband too. She’s always getting angry with him about something or other. I really let her have it then.

FACILITATOR: It sounds like you would like Jane to be perfect. Never getting angry is a tall order.

CRITIC: It’s just a matter of control. She grew up with a mother who was always flying into rages. We made up our mind early on that she would never be like that. She was the victim of that rage. There is no reason to perpetrate it on her children or anyone else. Besides that, it just isn’t part of a spiritual tradition to be getting angry and emotional all the time.

Jane’s Critic/Rule Maker combination was born out of reaction to an emotionally explosive mother. They became very central to her life, and they wanted her way of being in the world to be the opposite of her mother’s explosive behavior. So the Critic has available a well-laid-out game plan. She makes sure that she reminds Jane whenever there is a loss of control. Of course, the emotional explosiveness grows inside of Jane and ultimately can damage her greatly. This is exactly the basis of much physical illness in people. The Critic does not mean to hurt her. It is just doing the job that it was trained to do.

THE INNER CRITIC AND THE RULE MAKER

It is clear from this conversation that in order to understand the Inner Critic, we must understand the system of rules under which a person operates in the world. The rules under which Jane operates are as follows.

1. One must be loving at all times.

2. Anger is bad.

3. In particular, anger at one’s children is terrible.

4. In meditation one should be free of all extraneous thought.

5. One’s marriage should be basically loving at all times.

Think of the consequences of these rules. It is like saying to someone, “Stand in the corner and do not think of an elephant!” Try as you may, you will think of an elephant, and the harder you try, the harder it will be to get the elephant out of your head. Try to be loving all the time, and you will be engorged with negativity. Try always to keep your mind clear while meditating, and you will be invaded by thoughts and fantasies. Try always to be loving to your children, and you will be invaded periodically by negative feelings that will assault you. The more shoulds and shouldn’ts we have from the Rule Maker, the more ammunition the Inner Critic has because one of its primary functions is to uphold these rules.

So it is that Jane’s Critic attacks her for getting upset with her children and her husband. It criticizes her for being “invaded by thoughts” while she meditates. But, after all, most people get upset with their families from time to time, and learning what to do about this is part of living life fully. Everyone is invaded by thoughts during meditation. Learning how to handle these thoughts is what meditative practice is all about. The voice of the Critic makes each of its pronouncements sound like absolute truth. Who would dare to question its statements?

Arnie has a different kind of Critic. He is the kind of person who is always reacting and telling people how he feels about them. His Rule Maker requires him to be tough, but he has another voice that wants him to be sensitive to people’s needs. His Critic attacks him for hurting people and for being insensitive to their feelings and needs. He initially was a shy, introverted youngster, and as he grew up he was very sensitive and quite vulnerable. Since he had to live on the streets of New York, being soft and sensitive did not work for him. It got him beaten up with great regularity, so he had to learn how to be tough and hard. Softness meant pain.

The vulnerability, shyness, and tenderness that operated early in his life was buried and is now unavailable to Arnie. But the Inner Critic plays off this sensitivity. It is afraid that his anger, reactivity, and hardness result in people not liking him, which in fact is often the case. Critics are very resourceful about criticism. Whatever works is good enough. Sometimes, as with Arnie, they use their understanding of our disowned selves to more effectively critique us.

AN INNER CRITIC POTPOURRI OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Because there are so many viewpoints in the world of self-improvement, the Critic has a field day. Let us listen to a few of the choice selections that we have taken from Voice Dialogue conversations:

He is not being authentic. (This is a popular one in personal growth circles.)

He didn’t say that from his essential being.

She needs to be more open. / She needs to be more reserved.

She is not a very good daughter / sister / friend/mother.

His body is too rigid. It needs work.

She doesn’t have a good personality: it is too outgoing / it isn’t outgoing enough / there is too much fear / there is too much vulnerability / he’s not real enough / she’s too personal / he’s too impersonal / she is too much in the transpersonal / her writing is pedestrian.

He (or she) is not in touch with: his feelings / her sexuality / his spirituality / her body / his higher mind / her emotional life / his core.

His energies are off. / Her auric field is not clear.

We could go on for hours listing these comments of the Critic. We have heard each of them hundreds of times during our Voice Dialogue work. What a field day all this is for the therapy profession! What therapist, counselor, or teacher can go hungry with such goings-on? To teach anything in personal growth work or to study personal growth work without an understanding of the Critic and how it works is going to add to the power and the strength of the Critic!

As a client or student, too much of what is transmitted in books and workshops and therapy becomes dogma for the Rule Maker/Critic combination. For the teacher or therapist too much gets communicated in a way that lends itself to the interpretation of the Critic. The emphasis of too much therapy and too much personal growth work is on trying to find out what is wrong with people and then fixing them. This fundamental attitude is one of the main reasons why people can come out of extensive personal growth work with Critics that weigh three thousand pounds. So long as therapists and teachers are parental “knowers,” Inner Critics will gain weight. Rather than discovering what is wrong, let us discover who we are and how we work. Let us become aware of the amazing system of selves that lives inside us and see how they interact. Then let us learn to have more choice in how to use them. In this way, we are all in the same boat, all fellow explorers, and the Inner Critic does not have the same fuel available to it.

THE CRITIC AS DEBATER

One of the things that makes things additionally difficult is that the Critic is schooled in debate. It can take any side of any question, and often you will hear it take both sides of the same question with the same person. One of the greatest challenges in learning to deal with the Inner Critic is to begin to recognize that the content of what is being said is not important. It is the energy behind it that is central to our understanding. A Critic may say to you, “That really did not work out very well!” You feel depressed and down. You focus on what did not work out and why. That is not the issue. The issue is that someone is hurting you. No matter how good or how well-meant the reaction of the Critic, if it is said with a knife (or choke hold or hit on the head) then the issue is to recognize the energy of the voice and to realize that it is wielding a dangerous weapon against you. You can deal with the details of the content at some other time.

Listen to the following Voice Dialogue conversation with Ellen. She has been talking about her problem with her girlfriend and how she feels very critical of herself with her friends:

FACILITATOR (to Critic): Ellen says that she feels very critical of herself in regard to her friendships. I have to assume that this is you operating inside of her.

CRITIC: Well, of course it’s me. She is too aggressive in her relationships. She needs to hang back more, play more hard to get. She’s just too open.

FACILITATOR: It sounds as though you’re suggesting that she be a little more manipulative with her friends, not let it all hang out there.

CRITIC: No, she can’t be manipulative. She has to be there with the other person. I want her to be real and authentic.

FACILITATOR: But you said before that you felt she was too aggressive and too open. Now you say that she should really be there and be authentic. What does that mean to you, to be authentic?

CRITIC: It means being honest and clear without any game playing. She needs to be much stronger. She needs to be able to show her real feelings. She also is too needy. I can’t stand her neediness. She needs to be more self-sufficient. I want her to have more friends.

In this brief conversation the Critic has told Ellen, through the facilitator, that she is too aggressive and too open; it wants her to be more honest and authentic; she needs to be stronger; she is too needy; she must be able to express all of her feelings. Aside from all this confused content, there is a more central issue and that is the assaultive nature of the communication. The emotional attack is what we must learn to listen for. This is just a plain, everyday Critic conversation, the type that is going on in our heads constantly. Is it any wonder that aspirin is so widely used? To say that the Inner Critic can give you a headache is a vast understatement.

THE IQ OF THE INNER CRITIC

We have often felt that it would be valuable to give IQ tests to the subpersonalities. How different the results would be! The Inner Critic would probably score two to three times higher than we, ourselves, would score. The Critic is amazingly bright. Its mind works with the swiftness of a high-speed computer. It is able to jump from one area to another, find the weak spots, and defend its arguments and attacks in a way that is quite awesome. There is no greater testimony to the intelligence of the Critic than the fact that it has remained hidden all these years.

It is not that people are unaware of being critical of themselves. You will hear people say all the time, “I’m very critical of myself about this or that.” However, it is not “I” who is critical of me, it is my Critic who is critical of me. That is the step we must learn to take. Every time we become aware that we are critical of ourselves, we must take the next step. We must be smarter and more aware than the Critic. We must learn to step back into our Aware Ego and say, “That is not me who is critical of myself. That is my old, tried-and-true friend, the Inner Critic. He (or she or it) is the one who is criticizing me. He must be feeling vulnerable or anxious about something. I shall have to talk to him and find out what he is upset about. Otherwise he will stay at me all day.” In this way we support the process of separation from the Critic, we help to alleviate the anxiety of the Critic, and gradually we help transform the Critic into a part of our creative and discerning mind that can operate under our control.

WHAT IS YOUR CRITIC’S AGENDA FOR YOU?

1. How many books do you have in your bedroom waiting to be read? What does your Critic say to you about the fact that you have not read those books?

2. What does your Critic say to you about the way that you eat? How does it want you to improve your health?

3. What are some other areas in which your Critic feels that you should do better? Consider physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual improvement.

4. To whom does your Critic compare you? Who can do it (whatever it is) better? Who is more evolved than you are?