The time has come to dive into the second chapter of McKay's book on self-esteem. It's about "The pathological critic". Sometimes also called the "inner critic", it's the negative inner voice that attacks and judges us. Everyone seems to have one, but for people with low self-esteem it tends to be more vicious and vocal. In this post, I will focus on describing the critic and it's origines. In the following post, we'll see what is the reason we listen to it, and try to do an exrecise to help us to "catch our critic" when he strikes.

I found the following list describing the inner critic especially powerful. "The critic:

  • Blames you for things that go wrong
  • Compares you to others achievements and abilities and finds you lesser or worse in some way
  • Sets impossible standards of perfection and then beats you up for the smallest mistake
  • Keeps an album of your failures, but never once reminds you of your strengths or accomplishments
  • Has a script describing how you ought to live and screams that you are wrong and bad it your needs drive you to violate his rules
  • Tells you to be the best—and if you're not the best you're nothing
  • Calls you names — stupid, incompetent, ugly, selfish, weak — and makes you believe that all of them are true
  • Reads your friends' minds and convinces you that they are bored, turned off, disappointed or disgusted by you
  • Exaggerates your weaknesses by insisting that you 'always say stupid things', or 'always screw up a relationship', or 'never finish anything on time'

The pathological critic is busy undermining your self-worth every day of your life."

One of the key problems with the inner critic is that we are so used to hearing it, that we don't notice its devastating effect - it always seem reasonable and justified. It feels normal to judge our selves, as we are so very well aware of our thoughts and feelings. And indeed, there is a normal ongoing process of noticing what we feel and do. The voice of inner critic is not a part of this normal process. The critic takes these observations and uses different tools to judge and undermine us.

One of his favourite tools is values and rules of living we grew up with, the so called "shoulds". The critic compares the way we are with the way we ought to be and then judges us inadequate or wrong.

And the effects of these ongoing attacks are devastating for us. "It's more poisonous to our psychological health than almost any trauma or loss". That is because with time, we can grieve over our loss and learn to live with it. Critic is always with us, "judging, blaming, finding fault". Wow. It sounds like learning how to silence this voice is indeed a key to happiness. The book promises this can be done: "with practice you can learn analyze and refute what the critic says".

When and why is the critic born? Apparently, we take the critic together with love and care we receive from our earliest care takers/parents. To teach us "right from wrong", which behaviours are accaptable, and which dangerous, annoying, etc., they reward us for an appropriate behavior (e.g. hug us) and punish us for an inappropriate one. The book lists 5 main causes for developing an early "not-OK" feeling:

(1) The degree to which issues of taste, personal needs, safety or good judgment were mislabeled as moral imperatives (e.g. making a low grade into a sin)
(2) The degree to which parents failed to differentiate between behaviour and identity (e.g. there is a big difference between a stern warning about dangers of running accross the street, and calling a chald a "bad boy" for doing this)
(3) The frequency of punishing gestures
(4) The consistency of punishing gestures. The problem of sometimes punishing the same behaviour that is otherwise not punished, is that the message is not that the behviour is wrong, but the child itself
(5) The frequency at which these punishing gestures were tied to parental anger or withdrawal

As I was reading this list, the last point really spoke to me. Every time I try to recall the image of my dad from my early childhood I see his hard face hiding the warm feelings of love I was craving. I am over-sensitive to people's anger and even just lack of show of approval or any form of affection.

So, how does reading this make you feel? Please share your thoughs...