Interiorized critic, not inner critic
English is not my first language, and yet, I feel I master it well enough to understand nuances. In the multi-language mix I have in my head, in all languages I speak and understand well enough, I reached the same understanding - it’s incorrect to say we have an inner critic. What we have is an interiorized critic. An adopted monster of external beliefs that we took as absolute truths and made them about ourselves.
Go figure, after (almost) 38 years on this planet, I come to realize that when my mommy brought me into the world, I didn’t have strong thoughts about what it means to be a good communicator or that I should wear make up to fit into this world. I just was. Curious. Exploratory. Interested. And then I took for granted, with my under-development brain-child, as absolute truths - things that I heard around me. As I internalized them so early in my life, they became habits, beliefs and behaviors that are manifesting in how I show up in the world, years and years after.
Just to illustrate with one example - let’s take something my parents told me (with all their good intentions) - and observe how I interiorized it. And how years later, I am still working on healing this part of me. While I cannot reproduce the voices of my parents, just imagine 2 adult parents, telling their child that “in life, if you do something, you either do it well or you do not do it at all”. My child brain registered this message, but alongside with it, with the interpretation that anything I would do not well makes me useless and unlovable, a waste of space on this planet. So, not being able to stand by this “truth” meant I am nothing, meant I would become unloved by my parents and who wants to be unlovable?
The child that heard her parents giving a good life advice, ended up by striving for perfectionism - in all areas of her life, and when that was not achieved, any further attempts were abandoned, aborted.
That child became a workaholic, an obsessed with Inbox 0 at the cost of sleepless nights. Or at the cost of friendships and love. That child became obsessed with having.
The child adopted, unknowingly, the external world, and made it an insider. The inner critic is a fake. It doesn’t exist more than it is allowed to exist. And even it pops up, it is nothing else than an interpretation of the world. A scenario that can always be re-written. With help, as at times, it is challenging to go through healing all alone. But it is possible. The interiorized critic can be transformed into an interiorized observer of outside world, a compassionate one.
