Every Criticism is a Longing

holy jacuzzi, crybabies! what if the criticisms we experience and feel (in our relationships with others, the world, and with ourselves) is actually our deepest longings & needs trying to be known?

in this jacuzzi-verse layer, we tend to our inner critics with curiosity and compassion—unlocking a potential for more profound inner-allyship & understanding. we also untangle some tired-ass stories linking self-criticism and being a high performer. byeeeee! and as per yooj, we wrap with a nourishing and simple guided exercise! c’mon down and join the tub club 😭♨️

~ shownotes ~

• dr. kristin neff, self-compassion
• for more on agency of our tissues, find jules pashall @fat.as.the.sea on ig
• the robcast, ep 303: south star
• esther perel on we can do hard things
• deb dana, befriending your nervous system (a crybaby HQ book club fave)
• enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). DM (@danablix instagram) or email a screenshot of your submission—take it right before you hit submit—along with the review name/title. winner announcements will be made across platforms!

/// sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock, theme song ~ kat ottosen, podcast art ~ natalee miller///

Chapters

• 0:00 Inner Critic and Self-Compassion Journey
• 15:55 Navigating Inner Critic Relationship Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I once heard Esther Perel, the famed beloved relationship therapist, say every criticism is a longing, and she was saying it in the framework of intimate romantic partnerships and how we can take criticisms or what feel like criticisms from each other and get really caught in those and not really able to hear what the other is saying because we feel like they're criticizing us and and all that critique can, for many of us, trigger old stuff from our earliest caregivers and other partnerships and our over culture, which is always sort of a pressing down on us and has designs for how we need to, you know, move through the world to be proper and effective consumers, because the systems we live inside of need us to be in a consistent state of of critique and self-critique and critiquing and comparing others in in. You know, in order to participate in capitalism and separation, most of us are pretty consistently zooming along a spectrum of hypervigilance, a trauma response. So we're scanning for threats to our stability and security, aka critiques, and have wholly forgotten the tender, ancient language of longing and true desire. Ancient language of longing and true desire Any who, every criticism is a longing, and those criticisms or what feel like criticisms are actually expressions of longings, longings that we have for those we are in relationship with, for how we want to feel and how we want to feel with them, longings for our needs to be met, longings to meet the needs of others. I want to bring this into our inner worlds with your inner critic.

Speaker 1: 2:32

What is your inner critic longing for? I promise it is not to fuck you up and be a d-hole and ruin your life. That's not it. It's an important part of you who's gotten real good at slicing through the noise and getting your whole self your whole self and presences attention. It just does it in this very particular way. Like its entire vocabulary is extremely specific and cutting Again, attention-getting. It's like it only watches Seinfeld that's what I imagine Like your inner critic just only has that channel, that show. Ugh, my nightmare. Observe critique, observe critique, just over and over forever and ever. So let's take a deep dive, put on your scuba gear or your mermaid tail and let's swim and swirl all the way down to the deep little crevices of your twisty little weirdo souls, those deep, dark caverns where your inner critic lives, and let's see what they really long for. See what they really long for Crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi.

Speaker 1: 4:41

So I grew up watching my dad be really hard on himself. He's an amazing man and I do feel really grateful in the dad department in this lifetime. There was a lot of violence and alcoholism and abandonment in his childhood and I know there were some truly horrific things that he experienced as a soldier in Vietnam and he got some therapeutic support later in life for that PTSD and again I just have so much gratitude for his willingness to do that in our work. And you know, I just I think all the time like it could have been so tough on me and at this point in my life I would maybe understand if that had happened, because I understand him and I know him and I know it hasn't been necessarily easy for him and I know it hasn't been necessarily easy for him and I can really feel his agency in choosing not to be hard on me in the ways that people were hard on him. And even though he wasn't hard on me, I saw him being hard on himself and I inherited some of that and I was really hard on myself for a very long time because I learned through him and again, through our culture, our over culture, the one that that is built on never enough. That worthiness came through doing and ambition and achieving and accomplishing. And the way that you did that was by being hard on yourself and pushing yourself.

Speaker 1: 6:34

And it turns out that goal achieving and high standards and lacking self-compassion and high standards and lacking self-compassion Like those don't actually go together very well. Dr Kristen Neff in her book Self-Compassion she quotes a bunch of different studies which are super fascinating, where they examine how people react when they fail to meet standards and their own standards for themselves and how high their standards were in the first place. And findings that self-compassionate people were just as likely to have high standards for themselves as those who lacked self-compassion and they were a lot less likely to be hard on themselves when they didn't meet those high standards but they didn't then give up on those standards. And additional studies that self-compassionate people are more oriented towards personal growth than those who are in that sort of constant cycle of self-critique. And that self-compassionate people are more likely to formulate specific plans for reaching their goals and for making their lives overall more balanced goals and for making their lives overall more balanced. Anyway, all that to say that there's no real correlation between being really, really hard on yourself and achieving more in life.

Speaker 2: 7:56

Self-criticism is based on fear. The harsh criticism that comes from failing or perceived failing motivates us to escape our own self-judgment. Fear as a motivator will increase anxiety and undermine performance. Research indicates that self-critics are less likely to achieve their goals because of these unconscious self-handicapping strategies.

Speaker 3: 8:20

Oh yikes.

Speaker 2: 8:22

Yikes is right, Janet. Self-compassion is a more effective motivator than self-criticism because its driving force is love, not fear. Love will pump our oxytocin and we'll feel more confident and secure. Fear can send our amygdala into overdrive and flood the system with cortisol.

Speaker 3: 8:42

Poor meatbags. Sometimes it seems like it's really something to be human.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Poor meatbags. Indeed, janet, it is really something to be human. Thanks for always getting that. And I kind of feel like that framework is a bit of what the baby boomer generation, like, really brought the world and that will all be undoing for quite a long time.

Speaker 1: 9:15

My more conscious relationship with my own inner critic really didn't start until I was doing more conscious healing work in my mid-twenties, starting with the Landmark Forum, if you know. You know, did you get it? I got it. But I did a lot of work in my you know through my late 20s into my early 30s and building my relationship with myself and certainly my inner critic was a huge part of that and there was a lot that in looking at that relationship and addressing unmet needs. That took some time and took some work and is also the work that I now do as a coach right. So I was learning the work by being a student of the work.

Speaker 1: 10:22

Over time I really began to see that my self-criticism was hindering, not helping, much to my surprise, and I also came to really understand that it was learned from our overculture, which filtered all the way down my ancestral line to my family and then to me, and over time through my practices and awareness building, tending to my needs and unmet needs and emotional body and all the things, I really came into relationship with my agency and could experience, feel, no, deeply believe that agency to decide whether I wanted to keep choosing that pattern or not. And I began a lifelong practice of being kind to myself yes, kind. And then come global pandemic times and something shifted. So I'd gone from a really unconscious relationship into a pretty conscious, functional, healthy relationship with this part of myself, what it looked like or sounded like in my mind, what it felt like in my body, my behaviors like. Whenever I would start to get into that critical mode for various reasons, meeting various needs, the inner critic would like to come forward and I knew it and I felt it and all the things. And so then around pandemic time I fall flat on my face and I want to be clear here that I actually believe my inner critic has agency. I believe all things have agency. My tissues have agency, like my fat has agency. The part of myself that I address as an inner critic. That part has agency, which means I'm not the boss of it but I get to be in relationship with it and so something was happening to me I mean to all of us but the way that I was internalizing, processing what was going on in the world left me feeling destabilized, and one of my coping mechanisms and this is a popular one for many of us is when I feel destabilized, when I feel unstable, when I feel uncertain, I try to grasp and control and hold on to things and make sense of things. You fold in the cheese then make sense of things. You fold in the cheese then.

Speaker 1: 13:24

So this inherited hardness on myself was coming back up and, because it had been so long, I didn't even really recognize it. I didn't even really feel it when it entered the building. I didn't recognize it and I started again to just be so hard on myself. The quality of my inner life was changing. I was destabilized, like so many of us were, in ways that I hadn't really experienced before.

Speaker 1: 13:54

Global pandemic and everything that arose around and through that, and then, of course, 2020, systemic racism. I mean there was a lot happening. Plus, I personally had some super fun. Midlife. Planetary transits doing their work shout out, planetary transits doing their work. Shout out. Neptune, pluto God, that was a little fucked up.

Speaker 1: 14:30

And so, with so much happening in the external world, my internal world was shifting from that self-compassion that I had been practicing pretty vigorously back into an old pattern of self-critique For what it's worth. My beliefs didn't change. It wasn't like all my work over the years and tending to myself and listening and all that conscious relationship building etc that I've been talking about. It's not like that went out the window, but it's really important for all of us to remember that old patterns will come up. Old rhythms that were born of destabilization will show up when you feel destabilized. It's written in your nervous system, in your muscles, in your body, in your heart.

Speaker 1: 15:29

I think it's Rob Bell.

Speaker 1: 15:30

He talks about the South Star, which I love, and it's a concept that I work with and have been for many, many, many years, but I never called it the South Star, but now I do because I love it, where it's a concept that I work with and have been for many, many, many years, but I never called it the south star, but now I do because I love it, where it's like, yeah, there's the north star, the thing we're always working towards and that guide us and and the vision and we're compelled and moved and all of that that you might associate with the north star, the south star.

Speaker 1: 15:55

Think of it as like the equivalent of, like your deepest, darkest sort of old patterns that are painful and have been around and were born of trying to process painful, destabilizing let's just actually say destabilizing, because I think that's a little more neutral and I think that matters here so from destabilizing experiences that you had at young ages and shaped you, and so when they come up, when those patterns come up this is the primary work I do with folks it's about your relationship to them, like that you can have agency with. You don't want to just stuff those down or cut them out of your life. They can be your South Star.

Speaker 3: 17:04

Hi everyone. It's me Janet. This is not an ad, because there is nothing to buy or get. Just take your right hand and caress your left forearm Elbow to wrist, elbow to wrist. Be soft and loving. Your brain doesn't actually know it's not someone else gently touching you. This is very soothing to your nervous system. We also really loved Ed Dana's work on polyvagal theory, especially her book Befriending your Nervous System. I will put in the show notes for you.

Speaker 1: 17:32

And I think, in that paradigm of being hard on yourself and that being the that's gonna, that way of being is going to get you somewhere in your life, somewhere really good, where you are gonna feel good and things are gonna be easy and satisfying. You know, if you have probably listened to any of my other episodes that, like, are not going to to to get there, from here you are not going to get to expansiveness and satisfaction and feeling really good and whole and fulfilled and lit up and turned on by what you're doing by being really hard on yourself. By being really hard on yourself Right, by letting that inner critic really run the show and be and like being in an unconscious relationship with it, the twain shall never meet. It's like this. It's not, uh-uh, not gonna happen, sorry about it.

Speaker 1: 18:35

And then what if You're being hard on yourself and you're just pushing, pushing, pushing in ways that you have learned to push, and it has nothing to do with your actual unmet needs, with your actual longings, those longings that your inner critic is trying to make known.

Speaker 1: 18:56

So let's again imagine it's not just some inner jerk, oh my God, ew, david, it's a part of you trying to communicate, trying to get a need met, trying to feel something, and if you don't know what that is and you're not willing to listen, you're going to just keep trying to do things, maybe built on other people's imagination for you to try to get those needs met and it's it's.

Speaker 1: 19:29

That's a that's a real crapshoot way of doing it, of living. But what's important about tuning into those is the actual unmet needs. Those true longings is because you might be able to access those things in so many ways small, big, medium size, all different sizes and shapes and colors if you're really tuned in to what they are right, and it's not just a oh, I need validation, or oh, I want to be famous, or oh, I want people to remember me when I'm dead. There are deeper longings underneath those that are asking to be known, to be truly seen, to be heard or the need for stability, or to experience shared reality, or have space for self-expression, or to have order.

Speaker 3: 20:26

Oh yes, or the need for appreciation or affection or a sense of independence, or even the need for harmony. I'm not entirely sure I have unmet needs, but I guess I could be open to the experience, because when needs are unmet we experience feelings, and when they are met, we also experience feelings. I'm pretty into feelings.

Speaker 1: 20:47

And, like your inner critic, just like many different parts of you has like what I call kind of a limited vocabulary, something stinks in here.

Speaker 1: 20:58

Or they've learned that a certain approach will get your attention and get you to sort of slow down and pull back, and you know, you pull back into something that feels like a little bit more of a safety zone Because, remember I said, they're not inner jerks, they're actually usually trauma, protect you from some perceived potential pain and you can believe it or not, ask them, but only if you're willing to cultivate a more conscious relationship. But you can ask them to come in not so hot. Less of a fiery ball of jerkiness, less a bag of extra spicy beef jerky jam, maybe more of a mild flavor, maybe a mushroom jerky, something a little lighter, something a little more chill. I mean, unless you really hate mushrooms, then that's probably not more chill. But you get, hopefully, what I'm picking up, what I'm putting down here. You can make the request to hear what your inner critic really wants to tell you, what it really wants to convey to you, what it's really trying to make sure that you hear and understand. With its limited vocabulary and delivery system. That feels a lot like, you know, like Mission Impossible. It's like you. You get the message and then it like explodes a second later. Anyway, intense, intense relationship that we will often just be like, ah, get out of here, or we'll just be so unconscious and swan die right into it and be like, yes, I am a turd, I'm the worst, I need to do everything so much better and the work is never done. So here's a little practice for you to connect with your inner critic in more conscious, meaningful and, dare I say, productive ways.

Speaker 1: 23:39

You can just take some time, make a little space for yourself, maybe your home, somewhere you feel good and safe and quiet as you. This you can do it in different places over time, but maybe the first time you make a nice little space for yourself, you can record it, or you can take out a notebook and write, or you can do neither of those things, right, you know, like, if you don't need to document it, don't worry about it, but just take the space, set the tone and always light a little candle if that feels like that drops you in. For me that's always a lovely, a lovely little key invitation to myself, acknowledgement like, oh, yeah, we're doing a thing. You can just get quiet, breathing, eyes closed, if that feels good, and turn towards that part of yourself. Invite forward the inner critic and maybe that's not the name you give to it. Maybe it's like the one who and maybe there's a specific vibe it has for you. But just turn towards it and say hello. You can say hello, I see you, I hear you, I'm willing to listen. I'm really willing to listen to what you want me to hear, what you're trying to tell me. I want to hear it and I need you to say it again and a little nicer, a little kinder, soften that up a little, please. I'm listening and then you're opening the conversation and if they come in real hot again, just say like, okay, I'm hearing you and lighten it up.

Speaker 1: 25:33

Most times it that comes through, the request is met. Then you can go on and say okay, so what are you trying to tell me? Or you can reflect back to yourself Okay, what I think I hear is you're trying to tell me that I need more support or I need to take a little more time in my preparation for these kinds of projects or this kind of situation, or whatever the feedback, whatever it is that you hear. If you need to ask it more questions, ask it some clarifying questions and then think it. So you're getting curious with this part of yourself, you're extending some compassion, you're also setting a little bit of boundary, you can acknowledge, for how hard it's been working, in its own little way, it's been trying to get needs met Right.

Speaker 1: 26:36

Because this is what you're ultimately doing is you are trying to hear the need. It is trying to have met your need, the desire, it's longing, and you are recognizing and hearing the longing and then you are saying, yes, I will meet that longing. And you're recognizing and hearing the longing and then you are saying, yes, I will meet that longing, I will endeavor to attend to that unmet need, because it is your own unmet need. But as you make it more conscious, you make it more accessible and then you can look around your world and see the ways that you can meet that need and sometimes even just by articulating it, such a deep part of that need is met. And again, just like everything, little by little you get to meet yourself, you get to turn towards yourself and when you're willing to listen and that part of you communicates, you can be in a resonant relationship with it and say, oh, I get that, I see, I see why. I see what you're saying, I can see why you'd feel that way or why you'd have that longing, why we'd have that longing.

Speaker 1: 27:56

This is how you build self-trust. This is you extending tenderness to yourself, giving yourself a little spaciousness in this very jam-packed world, very unconscious world we are living inside of. You are bringing some consciousness, you are bringing some tender attention, some tender attention. You're breaking perhaps whatever cycle began, this unmet need, by not rejecting yourself, by turning towards yourself, by extending compassion and attention. I mean, we are our own best little experimental petri dishes, aren't we? Who knows? Maybe your inner critic could turn into one of your most trusted allies, and then you'll be in a great relationship. And then time will pass and things will float back down to the bottom of the river. And then something will happen in the world around you, in your life, and it will get kicked back up and old patterns will bring you back.

Speaker 2: 29:19

I am your South Star, as it were.

Speaker 1: 29:23

And you'll have this muscle memory. You'll have this practice to draw on, you'll have the memory of compassion in your bones. Compassion bones Sounds like some sort of softcore poppy high school band that I would absolutely go listen to. In Zen, buddhism, the concept of interbeing says that because one exists, everything exists. So your inner critic exists in an ecosystem, a perfect ecosystem inherent with belonging. Just because you were born, just because you exist. So interact, be the body in the body, the feelings in the feelings. Enter into yourself, penetrate yourself to yourself, penetrate yourself, enter into the world, penetrate all that is around you. Live, damn it live. If you enjoyed what we did here today, go over to wherever it is that you are listening to this podcast and give us a rating as many stars.

Speaker 3: 31:13

Five.

Speaker 1: 31:13

As your heart desires.

Speaker 2: 31:15

Five stars though.

Speaker 1: 31:17

Theme music and other musical bits by the very talented Kat Otteson, Sound design and editing by the effervescent Rose Blakelock. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to playing with you more in my jacuzzi. That sounded dirtier than I meant it, but you know what I mean.