🙄 Finding Peace with the Inner Critic
It's in the last place you look.
Today’s essay is about the inner critic. We all have this, but the One thinks this is the most real or authoritative part of themselves.
Don’t worry about if you are an Enneagram One, it applies to all of us. It may help you start to familiarize yourself with the archetypal signatures of each type. The Enneagram has lots of layers, so let them sink in little by little rather than trying to get it all at once.
The Enneagram One has mistakenly believed the inner critic to be the grown-up adult part of themselves.
They feel like a child who is being instructed and shaped by this inner judge, which was named the superego by Freud. In German “superego” just means the “over-I.” In my imagination, I see the superego as a creature wielding a baseball bat with razor blades. On the bat in hastily-applied black paint is some nasty insult about what a piece of shit I am.
Note I’m using words that are usually synonyms in a distinct way. I’m defining worthy as the higher octave, more functional expression of correct or right. We often categorize people or their behavior as incorrect or wrong. If you’ve done some self-worth work, you’ll already understand that you and everyone else is worthy of the basic decency and thus usually don’t label people as unworthy.
Once you put aside your stick of judgment and clean up your relationship to your superego, you will always know what is worthy. To get here, however, you must leave any sense that there is such a thing as correct or incorrect, wrong or right.
Feedback and defensiveness
As long as you let the critic run your life, it will beat you mercilessly. From time to time will put that stick to use on the hide of others who quite predictably… probably won’t appreciate your effort in doing so.
The other people in your life must consent to receive criticism from you, no matter how good your intent is or how constructive you think you’re being. This must be delivered with love to help the others around you receive it with ease instead of getting defensive.
I would think this would go without saying, but I see it so often I know that I must – don’t offer criticism when the other person is already triggered or defensive. This isn’t the moment. When you go for the jugular you do serious damage to the relationship. You may be justifying your criticism by thinking you’re doing this for their good.
Check and see if this has ever worked as you’d hoped.
Resist the temptation to bend others to your idea of rightness by insulting their character. Perhaps you think someone is lazy, dishonest, overly sexual, etc. It may get you what you want in the immediate term to tell them as much, but it rots the relationship. If that person has a developed sense of self-worth, they will set boundaries. If they don’t, they will get angry. This may or may not be displayed in any obvious way, but if you stay in the relationship and continue with the (probably unconscious) bullying tactics, you’ll find bitterness growing between you.
These character attacks are your own projections.
Look at the place in you that is afraid you are those perceived character defects. Until you’ve made peace with those qualities, you will hit others with the same critical stick you hit yourself with.
Use this brutal truth as motivation to purify yourself of the inner critic. If someone is disappointing or annoying to you, that offers you the awareness of precisely where you have a blindspot. You may need to seek the guidance of a professional to unpack these painful lessons.
Projecting judgments
Ones experience themselves always lacking, never meeting up to the expectations of the inner judge. What’s worse, no one in their life ever measures up either, most especially their romantic, business, or creative partners. I’m sure most of us can relate.
Was there a family member you nearly worshiped as a child? Perhaps you’ve looked up to bosses, friends, or lovers in a way that you put your center of knowing too much in their hands. Has that ever gone well in the long run? Resentment and toxic expectation eventually topple these Jenga towers.
Good.
The towers must be torn down to be rebuit on a new, firmer foundation of acceptance, worthiness and justice. Our relationships show us our blindspots. They show us where we’re being unintentionally cruel in our judgments. As painful as it is to look, it’s more painful to keep being blind.
I wish you bliss as you journey into this light.
Resources for integrating the belly
In Touch by John J. Prendergast – I highly suggest the audiobook as John’s voice is incredibly soothing.
Enneagram of Passions and Virtues by Sandra Maitri
Working with me
🕳 I offer Zoom 90-minute sessions 1:1 and with couples to dive into your specific portal to transformation. Inquire within by replying to this email.
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