Maybe It Isn’t Self-Sabotage: What the Inner Critic is Really Trying to Do

Renae: Be gentle to yourself.

Laura: I know, I’m trying. In the mornings, I am. In the evenings, it’s a different Laura.

Renae: I know.

Laura: That’s a mean, Laura.

Renae: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about, because I think that’s not uncommon. So why do we think that our, why do we think that our mean critic or worrier or judge or whatever part of ourself that doesn’t, that brings icky feelings with it.

Laura: Yeah. Show’s up

Renae: up. Joe’s I’ll Go.

Laura: An interesting question. I wonder if it, I mean, for me, I think that a lot of it has to do with energy. Like that’s like my lowest energy time. Maybe everyone else who’s more reasonable is done for the day. And then maybe then that the critic is like, aha, everyone’s asleep. Now it’s my turn to talk. All right.

Renae: So we have these, we have these, these parts that are waiting in the wings, kind of right. But when you said something about the energy, that’s interesting to me too, because the idea that we, like, if we have more energy, are we, does that mean in the morning, like we have enough energy to hold them at bay? Are they always pressing?

Laura: Yeah, that would be an interesting, an interesting thing to. Explore throughout the day to just like check in with the critic and see, is it hiding during the day? Is it talking, but it’s easier to be like, okay, like, I see you there. You know, like, what is it actually doing? It’s an interesting thing to explore.

Renae: And I think that the parts piece of it, you know, people get really wonky about, obviously we’ve moved into podcast territory, but people get really wonky about the parts piece because they’re like, oh no, multiple personalities, split personality, DID, dissociative identity disorder. And what we’re, what we’re talking about is that all of us have different parts. We talk about it all the time. Part of me wants to do this. Part of me wants to do this. Or I was going to do this, but I caught myself. Well, what part of you caught what part of yourself? We contain multitudes of different facets and they all have different jobs. So it’s not that we’re switching personalities. It’s that whatever part of us has a role will rise to the front. So what is the role of the critic? What is its job? Is its job to edit us before other people do? Because it’s got to be some kind of protector.

Laura: It’s certainly keeping, I think in this specific case, it’s keeping me safe from saying, oh, that’s another thing that didn’t work.

Renae: Thank you. So the critic shows up to tell you this was blank or this was, or I think it’s like, okay, like stop trying this now before it, before you put so much energy in it and it still doesn’t work, would maybe be the critic’s words in this specific instance. Okay.

Laura: Now that you’re asking me to think about it, I think that’s, that’s what it is.

Renae: So it’s trying to protect you from, ultimately from, from failure. Right. And from, hold on just a second. Delivery. Special. From failure, but it’s using fear, like the fear of, so is it failure for yourself, failure for other people? Yeah, that’s a good question.

Laura: I think that, I mean, I think it’s more myself than necessarily other people in this instance, just because I, by my nature, just try a lot of different things and do a lot of different things and not everything turns out the way that I wanted to. And I, and I know that. And there’s another part of me that can be like, that’s how it works, right? Like I have to do 10 things and two of work. Awesome. And I can, and have done this exercise before, like can give you a list of things that have worked. Um, and I think that when I’m in a cycle of though, at the eighth one that hasn’t, I can get a little bit fatigued about having to do another thing that doesn’t work. But I, I’m glad we’re having this conversation because it’s, it does help me to reframe the expectation of what this should be, you know, and to keep it in, to keep it in the realm of experimentation, of play, of noticing that, like this specific example, um, you know, like I edited this video and I. I did actual video transitions, and so now I have that knowledge that I could carry forward. So there are a lot of positive things that come out of it, and yeah, even just bringing awareness to the idea of where this critic is coming from is a helpful exercise.

Renae: Yeah, well, I’m glad to have that conversation because I’m thinking about my own, like my nighttime spirals. I think focus a lot on definitely informed by my trauma in life. I think it’s never going to end. You’re going to continue to lose everything over and over and over again. And it’s never going to end. There’s no rescue. There’s no way out. And so part of that, for me, I know comes from the, my brain continues to collect evidence that I’m not allowed to fully be happy because the bottom will drop out. And it’s not that it’s not true. It happens. And if you look, if you look at, especially my life in the last 20 years, there’s been a. A lot of tragedy and loss and betrayal and hurt and disappointment and crises. And I’m not a person who enjoys the drama. I don’t enjoy the cortisol load in my body constantly. I don’t crave that at all. I want peace and beauty and laughter and fun and all of those things. That’s what I crave. I crave way less of the turmoil. But boy, howdy do I seem to continue to attract it. But I don’t think it’s, I mean, I don’t think I really attract it. It just is a super common thing. And when I’m talking to people, they’re like, it’s so much. I’m like, it is so much. It’s always so much. And so in some respects, it’s like. It’s true that it’s never going to end, but it’s also not true that it’s never going to end.

Laura: Yeah. Right.

Renae: And so I think in some ways that narrative is similar to your critic in that it’s trying to prepare me for that I keep having this idea that there’s going to be this rescue and everything will change. And that’s not the reality. And so it’s to kind of like manage and mitigate to say, no, this is about you learning how to be in the midst of it. And then there are things that you can strengthen. And this last set of terrible circumstances has… … … … … … It’s taught me a lot. And one of the things it’s taught me is to allow people to care for me and support in different ways. And then also, so I think that’s one thing that it’s taught me for sure. It’s like expanding my capacity to receive care. Um, and also care without having to worry about other people’s feelings in the midst of it. So I think in the past, I have really mitigated other people’s, you know, been very concerned about how it’s going to affect them. Or managing, you know, their experience of my drama or trauma. And this one I can’t. The one thing I have done that’s been very significant is because the circumstances around this particular situation are so traumatic. I have been very careful to ask people for consent before I tell them. And so they’ll say, what’s up? And I’m like, and I will give them some information, but it’s very vague. It still conveys a seriousness, but it’s a vague. And then I’ll say, I don’t want to tell you anything about this until you are ready to hear something traumatic because it is traumatic. And I think that that’s, it’s not that I haven’t, you know. I think I did that differently before. I just chose for people not to tell them. And now I’m giving you a choice and consent as to how disrupted you want your nervous system to be. And interestingly enough, there have been people who are like, I don’t need to know. I’ll just pray for you.

Laura: Really?

Renae: Right? And I’m like, good for you. You know, good for you. And also good for me that to have at least the awareness of presence of mind to say, wait a minute, just because you can handle this in a certain way does not mean that other people can handle it. And a lot of when I told people who’ve said, yes, I want to know. And then they say, I don’t even know what to say. I don’t know what to do. This is too much. And I’m like, oh, I know. Right? Yeah, it is. It is too much. And in the telling of it, for me, it’s not for sympathy. There’s this piece of bearing witness so that I don’t fall back into patterns of my history where things were diminished, right? There is this low-level and sometimes high-level of gaslighting that’s like, you don’t tell people outside of this circle, right? This is secret or private information. You don’t tell people outside of the circle, and it normalizes that we have to experience and then hold horrible things internally.

Laura: Yeah, I’m sure it also created a sense of isolation because no one could understand.

Renae: what you’re going through. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, so yeah, that’s the, so I think that’s the loop for me is the, it’s never going to end and it isn’t, but it’s not in the same way. Yeah, that sounds so convoluted.

Laura: I, you know, I think that’s what I appreciate about our conversations is that this stuff is nuanced, you know, it’s, there’ll be awesome if there’s a black and white answer for things, but, you know, then we wouldn’t have anything to talk about. So how’s the weather on the East Coast? How did you get hit with the tsunami? It is, you know, reflecting on your experience does bring to mind me, like my coping strategy is to dissociate, to reframe things. To be more positive, to just, you know, kind of ignore or push down things that I don’t really, would just rather not face. And I’m really, really skilled. I’m so skilled at that, that I even fool myself a lot of times. So I appreciate you making me sit here and think through, like, why do I have this nighttime critic and what it’s saying and why instead of just… Doing the thing that I’m really good at, which is just like, okay, it’s night, it’s after 6 p.m. and I’m no longer going to think about anything that has to do with any progress I’m trying to make in my day work. Because that is really what I do a lot. And I don’t think that’s all bad, but I think that if I ignore it indefinitely without understanding it, then that is when it will eventually override whatever I’m trying to do to ignore it.

Renae: Post 6 p.m. Right. I wonder if there’s a, well, there’s two things that came up for me. One is it’s so hokey. I know like we had a little light that said hokey. We would put it on right now. But the gratitude journal or the gratitude practice of, can you think of three things? But it could be an affirmation or it could be a, look what I did today. And sometimes the answer is for people who are in tragedy. Today, look what I did today. I did not die. There we go. There’s my celebration.

Laura: I was able to have three waking hours where I got out of bed.

Renae: Yeah. And so that, that, that could be an antidote.

Laura: Yeah. I love that idea actually. Just a little bit of a twist on that is, for me, I think in this situation, is to look at three positives out of the work that I did that maybe this critic found disappointing. You know, because there are things that are positive about it and learnings that I have and advancements that I’m making.

Renae: And it’s not that the negative is bad. I mean, negative sounds bad.

Laura: Right. It’s not that it’s not valid or that it is, you know, that it’s inherently wrong. But when there’s 50% negative, 50% positive, and I’m putting the positive back here and all I’m seeing is the negative, then it’s not a very balanced view of what’s happening.

Renae: Right. And so it’s, it’s not, it’s not deleting the lessons from the negative, but it’s saying there’s lessons from the negative and the positive.

Laura: Right. Right.

Renae: Right. Right. Right. Coming back to that concept of it being balanced, and that balance isn’t something we stay in. It’s something that we come back to, like alignment, right? It’s the practice of saying, am I out of balance? Am I out of alignment? What adjustments can I make? And there’s a speaker for one of my upcoming summits who I appreciate, who talks a lot about posture, and he’s focusing on alignment. He’s not just talking about physical alignment. We need physical alignment. I’m sitting up straighter as I say this. I’m lengthening my spine, and I’m seated, so I’m lengthening my spine from my sitz bones up to the top of my skull, and when I do that, I… I can breathe better. When I do that, I feel like I’m taking up more space. When I do that, my system is working better. have more energy. I have more presence. I can feel more because I’m in alignment and I have that awareness. I think that’s the same for us, for our parts. There is an alignment for our parts that when they’re doing their jobs and one of them is not trying to overtake and pull us out of alignment, they all have their role. That alignment helps us to then be like, oh, I have more energy. I’m functioning better because everybody’s doing their job inside of me.

Laura: Yeah, I like this idea too of balance being a dynamic state. If you think about a yoga class, you’re always like Sterosukam Asana, so there’s firmness. Softness in every position. at the beginning of class, we would lean more on the softness. And as we get to the middle of class, we lean more on the firmness, like engaging our muscles more and doing less relaxation. And then at the end, then we’re shifting that balance back to the softness. And I think that you make a good point of, you know, like, how are you, sometimes it’s okay for the negative to be a bigger chunk of that balance, as long as you’re aware of what is happening. And that you can shift that at your will, and you’re empowered to do that.

Renae: And that’s healthy to do so. Yeah. Well, I would, the question that came up for me earlier is, you know, of course, as much as you want to disclose, but what really brought you into the parts work? up me earlier. Well, And like, what was the entry point for you where it started to become a way to make sense of things? Do you recall that?

Laura: You know, I think there’s two things, and I don’t know what order they happened in, but one of them I heard about that book, Internal Family Systems. Remind me of the author’s name?

Renae: Richard Schwartz. Right.

Laura: So I read his book and got a lot out of it, found it a really useful tool in just thinking about self-reflection. And then I also was in a coaching program, you’ll remember this, because we were there together. And the coach said, would you, you know, like think about, she was just walking me through some, a really light, a light version of the parts work where it was like, okay, I know you, I know there’s a part of you that’s really confident that this. is a thing that will work, but it seems like there’s a part of you that isn’t. So can you take the part of you that’s really confident and pretty much, you know, dominant and put her to the side? And then could you talk to the person that is not so confident and that is worried? And maybe do a meditation on that, maybe do some sort of visualization on that and not turn it out to be like a super powerful exercise for me. And so ever since then, I use that a lot.

Renae: Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s, it’s a very, mine was introduced in a, in a, a program that I learned to facilitate. And IFS is at the center of it. And it was in such an incredibly powerful experience for me, personally, it did literally change everything for me, like everything. Everything. And that for there to be this, even in all the work that I have done in the trauma space and about creating trauma-informed environments and how we do scaffolding and all of those pieces, understanding attachment, the neurobiology of trauma, grief and loss, all of that, there was still this piece of, okay, well, if I have all this awareness, now what do I do? And I’d been to therapy, lots of different types of therapy, some great medications, some not great medications to try to figure out these things. And then it was in this experience of this is the first time I’ve had a key as to how to actually heal because a part of me that never got… What it needed was getting what it needed. And I actually had the power to do that. Right? Yeah. And that’s, that’s powerful. It’s very empowering, isn’t it?

Laura: It’s, it also is such a good way. I mean, aligned with that, it’s, we are so complex, you know, and we like, how can I be this confident, intelligent person, and then I make a stupid decision, or I’m afraid of something, you know, like, I think that sometimes that really confuses us.

Renae: Mm hmm. When you look at yourself, and then this is such a framework that makes so much sense to help you sort out your complexity. Yeah.

Laura: And then to your point, once you have some of those pieces isolated, then you can care for, for that almost like it’s a part of your body. Like if my finger hurts, I’m not trying to treat my whole body. Like. I’m going to zero in on this finger. And that’s also what it lets you do to treat the part that is currently in pain.

Renae: Yeah, I like that. I like that, too, because it’s not like you separate your finger from your body and put it into a chamber and address it. It is like you’re part of a system. You’re part of a system. And because you don’t have what you need to to function fully in a healthy way, then we’re going to we’re going to take some resources from the other parts of the system and and make sure that you’re taken care of. But ultimately, your healthiness makes the whole system better, too.

Laura: Right. Yeah. It’s holistic.

Renae: So if we so I think where we ended up for today is for you having a. It’s of, it’s not reframing, but it’s the balanced view of the lessons from the critic. And so who was the, who, what’s the other part that, is it an encourager? You’re giving stage to two parts of you at the end of the day.

Laura: Yeah, I, it’s, I, I have a few, but I, I think that it’s definitely in, there’s like a wise woman and there’s a CEO, Jesus on the park bench. And then there’s like a protector that’s, everyone can laugh about this because it is funny. There’s a scorpion that’s called Mr. Creepy. So those are like, like a forming characters of what I would consider like the healthiest parts. And they, in conjunction with each other, address the… I need some help. So it would be those four parts, I guess, talking to the critic. But also, I think what you’ve really helped me see here is to talk to the critic in the morning when I have some energy to do that.

Renae: Okay.

Laura: Interesting.

Renae: Okay. That’s cool. That’s really cool. And there is a piece of, if we can show gratitude towards the, because the critic is a protector too, is just focusing very much on, it’s fear-based versus, maybe hope or love-based, right? Right. So it’s a different type of protector. So giving it gratitude means that when it’s showing up. It can show up with less fear and more, hey, have you thought about? Right.

Laura: Right?

Renae: It can have a more constructive tone to its voice.

Laura: Instead of being like, oh my gosh, later, later, quit everything.

Renae: And I think for me, I probably need to memorialize the process of sharing, whether I’m writing it down or making a flowchart or whatever the thing happens to be to say, you know, what is my decision tree for how and when to share information and it not being about worrying. about what they can handle, but about staying true to my reality and honoring and respecting that the timing or the capacity might not be there and making that okay. So it’s not, for me, the reframing would not be that people don’t care or that they’re going to abandon me because it’s too much because that feels very poignant. Um, but that I’m, that in the, um, in the sharing of the, of the option to, to, uh, can I put one back down? it goes. Um, oh, zoom, um, in the sharing of the option to engage, um, without judgment. So I, there’s not a judgment on my part that they don’t care. It’s a, it’s an awareness of, I’m inviting them to share in this as much as. wanted They can.

Laura: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I think.

Renae: And I’ve been very, you know, I’ve been very, on social media, I’ve done three updates, I’ve done three posts that say here, and I purposely kept it on, you know, on Facebook, where if you have the pretty background, you can only have so many characters. And I did that on purpose to keep it very succinct. Not to allow myself to use too much detail or too much information, but just very, very, very succinct. And so that’s just a, this is happening, vague, you know, but please pray. And people, it was like, actually kind of beautiful how many people responded and have continued to respond. And then the next was like, update, here’s. The critical situation that we’re in, and then update, here’s the next piece that we’ve moved to, and I think that, you remember back when we had, what, 140 characters for Twitter?

Laura: Yes. And we had to be very succinct. Yes.

Renae: And I think there is something to that that is, how do I encapsulate this so that people can approach it? Like, oh, how can I encapsulate this so I’m telling a truth that manages it for me so it’s not like a trauma dump or a vomit, but it’s sharing information in a way that gives people the option of how much they want to engage.

Laura: Yeah. Right.

Renae: So I think that’s just honoring of both of our, of both mine and other people’s experiences of what’s happening. So again, I, I, I need to like, write it all out and draw it out. And, um. um. them. Hold that for myself so I don’t lose the lesson in this, right?

Laura: Yeah, and I think that writing for me, writing things out always helps me understand it better than I did before I wrote about it.

Renae: Yep. Well, that’s good stuff. We’ll link the books. I have them all in my bookcase.

Laura: Yes, highly recommend.

Renae: I have Richard Schwartz and Internal Family Systems, and I have not, I have it, but I have not dived into the most recent, which is you are the one you’ve been waiting for, been looking for, whatever that is, and I think that’s the, there’s a lot of, a lot to unpack in that for sure. So thanks, Laura.

Laura: Thank you.