Paula Houseman's Blog - Posts Tagged "self-help"
Psst! How to Curb Your Inner Critic’s Rubbishing
SHUUUT UUUUUUUP!
And that, my friend, silences the inner critic!
As if …
Crit does not take directions well, not even with a ‘Please, I am begging you’ tacked on the end.
Hiding under the doona doesn’t work either. It’s wormed its way into your head and, ergo, into your bed.
Blocking your ears? Nooo … that godawful noise isn’t out there. Stressing: INNER critic.
All writers have to contend with one, but writers don’t have the monopoly.
For me, reasoning with it, ignoring it, overlaying its blah-blahs with positivity did rien, ništa, niets, semmi, gornisht, nada, which mean ‘nothing’ in French, Croatian, Dutch, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Spanish, respectively. The inner critic is fluent in every single language.
So. Grasping at straws, I turned to the advice du jour—the gurus’ ‘how-to’s’.
‘Don’t wait for it to blindside you,’ they said. ‘Face it. Give it a name.’
Tried that, but it didn’t warm to ‘Hey, Arsehole’. What can one say? Years of being bedevilled leaves one resentful, no? Anyway, consulting the self-appointed experts provoked the critic. Of course, it did: ‘See, you can’t even figure it out for yourself!’
Then, one fine-but-tearful day I heard the wise part of me. It whispered, ‘Let the critic have its say.’
You’re kidding, right?
‘Letting it have its say is not the same as letting it get its own way,’ said Ms Inner Wise.
Why the Critic Will Never Shut Up. Ever.
I took my sage’s advice because I got that this critic is an innate aspect of the psyche (as much as the sage is).
I got that the same social forces that feed it also promote ways to obliterate it. But I’ve learned that by giving the critic a voice, it no longer needs to have authority over my psyche and life.
Speak up … then SHUUUT UUUUUUUP!
A goddamn challenging approach, with the crit no less snarky! Through giving it permission to speak, though, I discovered it serves a purpose:
And so, because this beast is ingrown (albeit much like an ingrown toenail), and because I’m working at accepting all of me (and ‘no one’ likes to be left out), I have formed an unholy alliance with it.
Where it used to be at its very best–worst when I was being creative, when I was being me, letting it slag off intermittently means it no longer needs to block the flow to get my attention, and it doesn’t need to attack anywhere near as often.
How do you manage yours?
And that, my friend, silences the inner critic!
As if …
Crit does not take directions well, not even with a ‘Please, I am begging you’ tacked on the end.
Hiding under the doona doesn’t work either. It’s wormed its way into your head and, ergo, into your bed.
Blocking your ears? Nooo … that godawful noise isn’t out there. Stressing: INNER critic.
All writers have to contend with one, but writers don’t have the monopoly.
This bitchy, nit-picking predator of the psyche isn’t picky and choosy. It beats up on everyone.
For me, reasoning with it, ignoring it, overlaying its blah-blahs with positivity did rien, ništa, niets, semmi, gornisht, nada, which mean ‘nothing’ in French, Croatian, Dutch, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Spanish, respectively. The inner critic is fluent in every single language.
So. Grasping at straws, I turned to the advice du jour—the gurus’ ‘how-to’s’.
‘Don’t wait for it to blindside you,’ they said. ‘Face it. Give it a name.’
Tried that, but it didn’t warm to ‘Hey, Arsehole’. What can one say? Years of being bedevilled leaves one resentful, no? Anyway, consulting the self-appointed experts provoked the critic. Of course, it did: ‘See, you can’t even figure it out for yourself!’
Then, one fine-but-tearful day I heard the wise part of me. It whispered, ‘Let the critic have its say.’
You’re kidding, right?
‘Letting it have its say is not the same as letting it get its own way,’ said Ms Inner Wise.
Why the Critic Will Never Shut Up. Ever.
I took my sage’s advice because I got that this critic is an innate aspect of the psyche (as much as the sage is).
The critic was not constructed by disapproving parents, or by a society that promotes unrealistic standards of perfection. It was, and is, only fed by said parents and society.
I got that the same social forces that feed it also promote ways to obliterate it. But I’ve learned that by giving the critic a voice, it no longer needs to have authority over my psyche and life.
Speak up … then SHUUUT UUUUUUUP!
A goddamn challenging approach, with the crit no less snarky! Through giving it permission to speak, though, I discovered it serves a purpose:
When it assumes the guise of the charmer (one of its many) and tells me how fab, fantastic, phenomenal I am, it cuts me down the second I soak up the pseudo praise. Not a bad thing. Keeps me humble.
Its jibes can be demoralising. Not a bad thing. Lapsing into moralism stops me from seeing that some of what I’ve claimed as my straitjacketed values and attitudes aren’t mine at all.
Its relentless trash talk can drive me to frozen despair. Not a bad thing. At the darkest point, I uncover hope in the hopelessness, which inspires me to continue free-falling through the bullshit and towards realness.
And so, because this beast is ingrown (albeit much like an ingrown toenail), and because I’m working at accepting all of me (and ‘no one’ likes to be left out), I have formed an unholy alliance with it.
Where it used to be at its very best–worst when I was being creative, when I was being me, letting it slag off intermittently means it no longer needs to block the flow to get my attention, and it doesn’t need to attack anywhere near as often.
How do you manage yours?
Why the Lure of Horror Is a Good Thing
A Nightmare on Overwhelm Street
The man’s bloodied forearm dangled limply outside the door of his horribly smashed-up car.
I slowed down to get a better look at this accident on the other side of the road. The drivers in front of me had also reduced speed, but the stretch ahead of them was clear. No congestion; no need to brake. And yet, an unstoppable need to gawp at this disturbing scene.
Like a clip from a slasher film, it would rewind and replay on a time loop, and creep me out when I was alone. Usually, in the dark.
Still, here and now, I didn’t feel alone. My fellow motorists and I were connected through compassion. My tribe. But there was more to it.
We rubberneckers had also connected through ghoul. Sick much? Not so much. Why?
Gene Pool; Ghoul Pool
When you dig through the layers of theories about morbid fascination, I dare say the bottom line is the archetypal POV.
Archetypes are the earliest universal patterns of all our thoughts, feelings and activities. Ancient myth is home to the archetypes. And our primitive brain is the habitat for ancient myths.
Oh. Dear. God.
That’s scary, especially when you consider the crazy, perverse, macabre stuff that went down in ancient myths. Deliberate—no accident. In today’s civilised world, you’d classify it as ‘criminal pathology, moral monstrosity’.*
Out, Damned Spot! … Or Not
It’s why myths were overlaid with stories scrubbed clean of the filth, and in the case of fairy tales, populated with cardboard cut-out characters. A moral of the fairy tale reinforcing the sanitising process: Kill that wicked witch!
A few little problems, though, with such stories that are amongst the first you hear:
1. The she-devil we’re hell-bent on nixing in the interest of self-improvement represents what’s considered ‘undesirable’ aspects: negative thoughts and feelings and impulses. But these negatives are all eternal, innate parts of our humanness.
2. You can’t eliminate what’s natural. Can’t. At best, you’ll squash it. Or so it seems …
3. You don’t just hear, read or tell stories. You live them.
Growth Mythconceptions
For me, life had felt more like a Greek tragicomedy, and I needed to know why.
It’s in my nature to ask lots of questions. Curiosity is in everyone’s nature. (Much of our kiddie-speak ends with a question mark, right?) But I’d lost myself when I stopped asking important questions.
‘Does my bum look big in this?’ is not a searching question. The important ones question reality. ‘What makes me care so much that my bum might look big in this?’
Self-inquiry seeks the kind of answers that can’t be found in the processed, straitjacketed fairy-tale’s fabric. Or in an agony aunt’s column. Questioning can rock the boat; self-inquiry can capsize it and send you plunging into the deeps.
Village of the Dammed Up
These dives used to leave me feeling like I was drowning in a cesspool of black, sludgy emotions. But I learned to stop fighting them. And one day, I remembered to keep questioning my way through:
Where am I? Who am I?
And then …
I got it!
With each fall, I’d landed in the messy archetypal terrain of my psyche where patterning had started. This time, though, I made like the ancients. Yet … I didn’t need to know a single myth, or the names of mythical characters.
That’s what ancient storytellers did. They gave human form to thoughts, emotions, actions, and conditions. Made them multidimensional characters—divine and profane; made them relatable.
Personifying animates. It thaws painful frozen feelings, bursts dams, and dredges up shot-down and shutdown responses to past injustices; it gives momentum to the once-smouldering, mutant resentments, hatreds, jealousies and such.
Why Poke the Bear?
Look at it this way: As a small child, you were curious about and fascinated by your own poop (literally). Childhood curiosity becomes overlaid with civility and morality. Too much moralism can make for constipated psychic poop, which may be stinking up the unplumbed depths.
But once there’s movement in the bowels of the innermost self, the direction of the story starts to shift. Life starts to shift. And little personal shifts make little ripples through the collective. They need to …
The World Has Gone Mad!
Our stories are almost a study in ancient mythologies. Foul stories that used to be occasional, sensational front-page headlines are now becoming evergreen content.
The crap is imploding or exploding. Consider the proliferation of cancer stories, of terrorism stories, of sexual abuse stories. It’s as if the disowned forces are becoming increasingly bent out of shape about having been bent out of shape.
So, could it be that the urge to look at the horror out there is really a call to look at the horror within?
Something to think about. Or should that be … someone?
*Hillman, James (1992) Re-Visioning Psychology, New York: Harper Perennial (p 150).
The man’s bloodied forearm dangled limply outside the door of his horribly smashed-up car.
I slowed down to get a better look at this accident on the other side of the road. The drivers in front of me had also reduced speed, but the stretch ahead of them was clear. No congestion; no need to brake. And yet, an unstoppable need to gawp at this disturbing scene.
Like a clip from a slasher film, it would rewind and replay on a time loop, and creep me out when I was alone. Usually, in the dark.
Still, here and now, I didn’t feel alone. My fellow motorists and I were connected through compassion. My tribe. But there was more to it.
We rubberneckers had also connected through ghoul. Sick much? Not so much. Why?
Gene Pool; Ghoul Pool
When you dig through the layers of theories about morbid fascination, I dare say the bottom line is the archetypal POV.
Archetypes are the earliest universal patterns of all our thoughts, feelings and activities. Ancient myth is home to the archetypes. And our primitive brain is the habitat for ancient myths.
Oh. Dear. God.
That’s scary, especially when you consider the crazy, perverse, macabre stuff that went down in ancient myths. Deliberate—no accident. In today’s civilised world, you’d classify it as ‘criminal pathology, moral monstrosity’.*
Out, Damned Spot! … Or Not
It’s why myths were overlaid with stories scrubbed clean of the filth, and in the case of fairy tales, populated with cardboard cut-out characters. A moral of the fairy tale reinforcing the sanitising process: Kill that wicked witch!
A few little problems, though, with such stories that are amongst the first you hear:
1. The she-devil we’re hell-bent on nixing in the interest of self-improvement represents what’s considered ‘undesirable’ aspects: negative thoughts and feelings and impulses. But these negatives are all eternal, innate parts of our humanness.
2. You can’t eliminate what’s natural. Can’t. At best, you’ll squash it. Or so it seems …
3. You don’t just hear, read or tell stories. You live them.
And just who is living the (airy-)fairy tale?
Nobody.
Except on Facebook. Heaps of people are happily-ever-aftering on Facebook.
Growth Mythconceptions
For me, life had felt more like a Greek tragicomedy, and I needed to know why.
It’s in my nature to ask lots of questions. Curiosity is in everyone’s nature. (Much of our kiddie-speak ends with a question mark, right?) But I’d lost myself when I stopped asking important questions.
‘Does my bum look big in this?’ is not a searching question. The important ones question reality. ‘What makes me care so much that my bum might look big in this?’
Self-inquiry seeks the kind of answers that can’t be found in the processed, straitjacketed fairy-tale’s fabric. Or in an agony aunt’s column. Questioning can rock the boat; self-inquiry can capsize it and send you plunging into the deeps.
Village of the Dammed Up
These dives used to leave me feeling like I was drowning in a cesspool of black, sludgy emotions. But I learned to stop fighting them. And one day, I remembered to keep questioning my way through:
Where am I? Who am I?
And then …
I got it!
With each fall, I’d landed in the messy archetypal terrain of my psyche where patterning had started. This time, though, I made like the ancients. Yet … I didn’t need to know a single myth, or the names of mythical characters.
It came down to personifying. A word—a label—is like a sword. It can cut you. You can’t engage with it, though. Make it the swordsman, it’s a different story.
That’s what ancient storytellers did. They gave human form to thoughts, emotions, actions, and conditions. Made them multidimensional characters—divine and profane; made them relatable.
Personifying animates. It thaws painful frozen feelings, bursts dams, and dredges up shot-down and shutdown responses to past injustices; it gives momentum to the once-smouldering, mutant resentments, hatreds, jealousies and such.
Why Poke the Bear?
Look at it this way: As a small child, you were curious about and fascinated by your own poop (literally). Childhood curiosity becomes overlaid with civility and morality. Too much moralism can make for constipated psychic poop, which may be stinking up the unplumbed depths.
That psychic poop is the subtext of the story of your life. Just because you don’t (want to) hear it, doesn’t mean you’re not living it.
But once there’s movement in the bowels of the innermost self, the direction of the story starts to shift. Life starts to shift. And little personal shifts make little ripples through the collective. They need to …
The World Has Gone Mad!
Our stories are almost a study in ancient mythologies. Foul stories that used to be occasional, sensational front-page headlines are now becoming evergreen content.
The crap is imploding or exploding. Consider the proliferation of cancer stories, of terrorism stories, of sexual abuse stories. It’s as if the disowned forces are becoming increasingly bent out of shape about having been bent out of shape.
So, could it be that the urge to look at the horror out there is really a call to look at the horror within?
Something to think about. Or should that be … someone?
*Hillman, James (1992) Re-Visioning Psychology, New York: Harper Perennial (p 150).
