How can your inner enemy become your friend?

What would you say if I could show you a way to be free of that harsh inner criticism you carry? And what if we could turn it into a supportive experience with which you can recover so much of your confidence and inner ease?

I don’t know anyone who does not have moments of a harsh self- criticism that tries to either fight and shame parts of oneself: specific emotions, some needs, behaviors, or when they want to express themselves.

For some of us this can be a very heavy and big part on our daily experience and for some it can be some intense short moments that are triggered .

These moments of self-criticism are the way we have internalized the rejection, criticism and harshness we met with our parents, teachers or other adults, when we were young.

Often times the criticism we have received was rooted in those adults in the same way it was given to us. They were told as well they need to fight and cut off pieces of themselves. They were learning that some parts were “inappropriate”, or may be “weakening” and “dangerous” for them.

It is sad to know that we were cradled in so much restrictions. Cradled by people who’s self-hate or shame we absorbed unconsciously.

We were cradled in wounds, and hurts and unresolved trauma.

But now it is in us to break the spell. By daring to meet ourselves, our sensations and emotions, we will be able to listen to that voice from a different place. We will be able to feel confident to meet is a friend. Give it the opportunity to give us something back rather than cutting pieces away. Like being the adult listening to a child that is helpless and raging.

When we are able to meet it as a friend and see that it simply does not know how to talk to us, that it is terrified, ashamed and hurt because it is still trapped in the past (ours or of our family).

Refusing to reduce and smaller ourselves by expanding, breathing and relaxing, is the way we set a boundary to the past and start to shift the “power structures” we hold within ourselves.

To transform that voice and be free to be there are 2 things we need to do:

1. To meet that old hurt in us and learn how not to fear it or resist it.

2. Refuse to believe the threat of the criticism and instead listen and ask questions.

Remember: whatever is within you, cannot overwhelm you. It is the fear of it that makes you believe that it is too big for you.

If you give yourself time to do so, you will be able to defuse that fearfulness that tells you, you should not feel it. By that you will be free from the need to obey or believe that criticism.

So what if it means you may cry? So what if you would feel the echo of an old need to be held and loved from those who hurt you?

Once you let yourself feel all within yourself, you can be free. Free to have options, choices and space.

When those old experiences have finally the space to be felt without restrictions or fear, they can heal and transform. They stop calling us to meet them by making us react again and again as if we are children able to deal with the moment. Or even by making us choose “bad situations and relationships” so that we can re-live them.

The next step is to turn that criticism into the supportive message it was trying to hold for you. As the “protective advice” came from despair, helplessness and so on, it got twisted.

It became harsh trying to substitute the strength or real protection that was unavailable.

It means to be able choose not to obey that voice. Not to resist as well but rather ask it: why?

Engage with questions while anchoring yourself in your body and a sense of expansion.

It may help to identify how you hold your head when that voice is turned up. Or may feel that your head is either bent down or twisted to one side as if avoiding to look to the other.

When you identify it you can start and move your head to “face that” voice or the direction it seems to come from.

Do that while continuing to ask.

With this question you create an opening in your attention that will allow you to meet it without being threatened.

Stay with this question or similar ones for a while.

What comes up?

What parts of you, aspects of you, did this internalized criticism was trying to protect?

What moments of hurt, needing help, fear and others in your childhood are buried under that criticism?

Now with breath to open your body. Feel the option of expanding as a choice that can allow you to release fear, instead of trying to protect yourself from that criticism through closing and hardening

The critical voice, when met, can suddenly reveal all the beauty in you that seemed to be unwanted or weakening in the past.

With your breath, with expanding and following the movement of opening your body to the sides and connecting to the lower part of your body, feel if you are ready to take those hurting bit beautiful and unique parts pf yourself back.

Free that voice from needing to protect you, by taking parts of those lost pieces of yourself.

The ones you thought are not good, shameful, may attract danger.

Take back the ability to feel yourself. Take back the ability to feel your hurt, your pain or your fear without dreading them.

It may be needing a while for you to undo that spell. It may take time and time again for you to meet that critical voice and experience to free its supportive message under the hurt and the shame.

But when you do, you will be free. You will discover a larger clarity and being connected to yourself and others, as you are not needing to obey that voice nor cut away parts pf yourself.

Yours

Anna

Photo by Fabian Gieske on Unsplash