Four Steps to Stifle Our Inner Critic

February 28, 2014 By
Our inner critic is harsh, cruel, and a big fat liar.

Our inner critic is a cruel callous bully, as well as a big fat liar.

We all have an active inner critic. It’s a force of human nature that I can, in whimsical moments, visualize as the leader of an outlaw trio that includes the gun-slinging desperado, Yosemite Sam, and his fellow Looney Tunes cartoon character, the ferocious, dim-witted Tasmanian Devil.

There’s nothing comic or funny, however, about having an active inner critic. It might be more accurately depicted as the leader of a trio that includes Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort. It produces much of humanity’s anxiety, fear, and depression. The inner critic can operate inside us like a cruel aggressive tyrant whose intent is to rule our life. Subduing or taming it could be the most heroic thing we ever do.

That process can be accomplished in four steps. First, we must become aware of our inner critic. A lot of people don’t even know they have one, though they might be suffering acutely from its influence. We want to notice how and when it intrudes into our life. Second, we begin to understand that our inner critic is a big fat liar. Third, we start to realize how we tend to be passive to it, how we let it get away with harassing, belittling, and punishing us. Fourth, we learn how to stand up to it. Our stronger sense of self and growing inner authority begin to subdue it. Here’s how we can make this happen:

Step One – Our inner critic dishes out self-aggression. We all have aggressive energy, and ideally we learn to channel it in creative, constructive ways. But we have to be emotionally strong and healthy to keep our aggressive energy from becoming a negative force, both in terms of how we relate to others and in terms of how, on an inner level, we relate to ourselves.  

When our inner critic is acting up and intruding into our mental and emotional life, we want to try to realize that this is occurring. People often don’t experience the inner critic in any conscious way. The stream of negativity that emanates from it can do much of its mischief entirely at an unconscious level. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Inner Critic, Inner Passivity, Psychoanalysis Tagged With: , , , ,

Indecisive No More

January 31, 2014 By
What's the real intention of chronically indecisive people?

What hidden feeling are chronically indecisive people indulging in?

There’s something important that chronically indecisive people need to understand: They’re not actually interested in making a decision. Since this statement flies brazenly in the face of common sense, let me restate it differently.

Indeed, as these individuals anguish intensely over the pros and cons of a given option, they think they want to be decisive. But they’re fooling themselves. Behind their apparent sincerity, they’re cozying up to an old unresolved negative emotion (inner passivity) which involves feeling weak, helpless, and lacking in the sense of their own authority. This old joke satirizes the emotional predicament: “Once I make up my mind, I’m full of indecision.” 

Through this emotional weakness, indecisiveness haunts a significant percentage of people. When we finally do make up our mind—after agonizing and procrastinating long enough—we’re likely to start being indecisive over some other matter.

The misery and self-defeating consequences of our indecisiveness are the prices we pay to cover up an inner conflict. What is that conflict? On the surface of our awareness, we do indeed want to be decisive. We want to feel the pleasure and sense of authority that goes with making a good decision on our behalf. Deeper down, it’s a whole different matter. We don’t want to feel decisive. It’s too tempting instead to “know ourself” through unresolved inner weakness. We want to experience ourselves through the old self-doubt, uncertainty, and sense of unfitness that is an emotional default position. At a deep level, we’ve known ourselves through that familiar frailty as far back as we can remember. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How Inner Passivity Robs Men of Power

January 9, 2014 By
Many cultural and economic influences challenge the male psyche.

Many cultural and economic influences challenge the male psyche.

An acquaintance of mine (I’ll call him Sam) was arrested recently for obstruction of justice. He was pulled over by the police because his vehicle fit the description of one that had been stolen. Though innocent, Sam, who’s in his mid-twenties, became rude and uncooperative. When he could produce only an expired vehicle registration, he was handcuffed, taken to jail, and his vehicle impounded. His case was later dismissed, but he paid a price in time, money, and misery.

I’ve spent some time in Sam’s company and I know something of his state of mind. He’s a smart, caring, and loyal person. But he has a significant emotional weakness. He’s quick to feel that people are trying to control, dominate, or oppress him, and he’s adopted an anti-authority outlook on life that can be traced back to this emotional weakness. Because of this, he interprets authority as something unpleasant or bad that needs to be resisted.

Deposits of inner passivity are contained in Sam’s psyche. Inner passivity, as I describe it in many of my posts and books, is a feature of human nature. It’s a leftover mental-emotional residue from the stages of helplessness and dependence we experience through our childhood years. When we’re not aware of inner passivity, we can fall prey to its influence and become weak, ineffective, and prone to self-defeat. Instead of possessing true power, we’re likely to react unresponsively, passive-aggressively, or with belligerent self-defeating aggression. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A New Understanding of Bipolar Disorder

January 3, 2014 By
Inner conflict may be the main cause of bipolar disorder.

Unresolved inner conflict may be the main cause of bipolar disorder.

About 5.7 million American adults experience the particularly burdensome affliction known as bipolar disorder. Psychiatric experts are uncertain as to its origins, yet depth psychology does have a theory to explain one possible cause.

Depth psychology is usually not effective for people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Yet people with bipolar disorder, while they sometimes have psychotic breaks, usually return to a fully functional state between episodes. At such times these individuals can strengthen themselves and become more stable by learning self-knowledge that pertains to their affliction. Researchers pursuing medical and neuroscience investigations of bipolar disorder can also sharpen their science by considering the influence of these psychological dynamics.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy, in combination with medications, is known to help bipolar sufferers cope with their affliction. This therapy is advice-oriented, while depth psychology tries to uncover root causes. Understanding the psychological cause of bipolar disorder can greatly help sufferers because the insightful knowledge, when absorbed, enhances the individual’s intelligence and strengthens self-regulation.  

Psychoanalysis has identified a condition in the human psyche that it calls inner passivity. This passivity can be understood as the lingering effect of infantile helplessness. All of us, not just people with bipolar disorder, are to some degree influenced by it. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Depth Psychology, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , ,

Curbing Our Appetite for Brutality

December 6, 2013 By
We become liberators, too, when we free ourselves from the darkness within.

We become liberators, too, when we free ourselves from inner darkness.

Nelson Mandela’s greatness was most visible in his power to overthrow—through his courage, compassion, and peaceful manner—the brutality and murderous ways of the Apartheid regime. He was an ordinary man, he said, as he counseled us to find our own greatness.

How do we acquire greatness? Mandela’s power to do good was rooted in his charisma and love. If we are to be liberators like him, we presumably have to shed our negativity, fear, anger, malice, and violent instincts. We have to liberate our self from the darkness within.

From where in human nature does such negativity arise? A recent article in The New York Times tries to comprehend the human capacity for the slaughter of innocent people. Citing examples this year of horrific bloodletting by terrorists in Kenya and government security forces in Egypt, the article asks: Do we all have the capacity for such wanton murder?

Experts interviewed in the article say yes. But they don’t get to the core of the question. Instead, they blame the readiness to kill on “a culture of authority and obedience that supplants individual moral responsibility with loyalty to a larger mission . . .” Also blamed are “a routinization of violence, as well as injustice or economic hardship . . .” One expert says the most important ingredient in the willingness to murder for a cause is “the dehumanization of the victim.”

These explanations are superficial. Mandela, who died yesterday, would have more to offer. He would want us to ask ourselves: “What is it about me that would cause me to forgo moral responsibility? Why do I allow myself to see the enemy as less than human? Are there people who I hate, and do I have some hidden need to have enemies?” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Futility of Compulsive Approval-Seeking

November 29, 2013 By
Approval-seeking is often a psychological defense.

Approval-seeking is often a psychological defense.

Using brain scanners, researchers have discovered that pleasure is activated in the brain when people get positive feedback concerning their reputation or character. These researchers do not appear to understand that such pleasure is not necessarily genuine or healthy. A psychological defense, for instance, feels good when it successfully covers up something important that an individual does not want to see about himself.

Few people, experts included, know or address the hidden reasons why we generate such pleasure in receiving praise and validation. Typical is this superficial explanation:

These results [from the research cited above] may explain why Facebook is so popular. It likely isn’t Facebook itself . . . it is all of the self-promoting features that it offers: posting what you are thinking, posting pictures of yourself, giving your opinion on what others post via “likes” . . .  throw in a little intermittent reinforcement (e.g., not knowing when the next time someone will “like” or comment on your post) . . . and Facebook has a winning formula . . . Or at least one that gets us hooked.

Yes, but why do we get hooked? Why in heaven’s name do so many of us feel the need to go through the day constantly assessing ourselves and looking for validation. This emotional neediness often shows up as inner dialogue in which we’re trying to establish our importance either to ourselves or to others. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Overcoming a Type of Resistance to Studying

May 28, 2013 By
Studying can be a lot easier when we understand inner passivity.

Studying can be a lot easier when we understand inner passivity.

This topic is addressed as an exchange of e-mails between me and a visitor to this website.

Reader’s comment: I have always been a studious person. Grades were important . . . I was also interested in learning and still am. However, now that I’m at university I’m avoiding studying. It’s not laziness or not caring. I feel fear. I have studied by myself all my life, so absence of family is not a big factor.

Whenever I do manage to study, I feel depressed afterwards. I feel like I have no energy, am mentally foggy, and at the mercy of my thoughts and criticism. All other life issues come back in full force, and I often cry. I also feel depressed again. I used to be very depressed, but now manage to keep it in check and mostly stand up for myself, except when it comes to studying.

Unfortunately, studying is necessary. I want to understand this reaction. More importantly, I want to feel pleased with myself after having studied for the allotted time. . . With all the inner work I’ve done, it feels as if this reaction has a strange power to put me right back to the beginning. I find it very painful.

Is it because studying is a “passive” thing to do? I feel much better after physical activity and such. But after studying, I feel robbed of the little inner strength and confidence I try hard to build every day. . . Why would this be? Do you have any ideas?

My response: I’ll suggest one possibility. Let me know whether you think it applies to you. Indeed, it appears that you’re having a passive reaction to studying. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Depth Psychology, Inner Passivity, Psyche Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Human Weakness behind Alcoholism

May 13, 2013 By
Alcoholism is caused in part by inner conflict.

Inner conflict contributes to alcoholism.

Many alcoholics and addictive personalities resist the idea that their plight is in any way due to character weakness. Any such allegation, they feel, categorizes them as substandard people who are to blame for their troubles. Weakness of character or “moral weakness” is not what causes alcoholism, one addiction website states emphatically. This is true, yet we can’t ignore the influence of a certain kind of inner weakness in the psyche.  

There’s an essential reason alcoholics are sensitive to this allegation that character weakness is behind their out-of-control drinking: Inwardly, this accusation is directed at them on a daily basis by their inner critic. The inner critic (superego) is a primitive, aggressive agency of the human psyche, and it berates alcoholics with allegations that range in intensity from “You should be trying harder to stay sober!” to “You worthless, no good loser! Look at you! You’re truly disgusting!”

Everyone has an inner critic or superego, and for many of us that part of our psyche has assumed the role of the master of our personality. It can harass and scorn us for the slightest misdemeanors. Our inner critic can attack us for a wide variety of alleged “crimes,” most viciously for the idea that we are somehow a failure or a loser. In some people, the inner critic is an absolute tyrant that causes much of their unhappiness and suffering. 

Unconsciously, we give credence to these allegations. We become inwardly defensive and absorb emotionally the negative charges directed against us. As alcoholics struggle defensively to deflect these charges, they might say, “It’s not that big a problem” or “I’m trying, it’s not my fault, I don’t know what comes over me.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Addictions, Depth Psychology, Inner Critic, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Achieving Inner Freedom

April 29, 2013 By
Depth psychology opens a passageway to inner freedom.

Knowledge from depth psychology opens a passageway to inner freedom.

We’re not as free as we think, even if we do live in a democratic country. People who have achieved substantial political freedom can still be sorely lacking in psychological freedom. We’re likely to feel like prisoners of fate when emotional conflicts limit our creativity and potential.

How can we be free if we don’t even have free will? Neuroscientists say humans are just puppets dancing to the brain’s unconscious tunes. Philosopher-neuroscientist Sam Harris writes in his recent book, Free Will:

Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

Harris is right when he says we don’t have as much freedom as we’d like to think. But he’s wrong in other ways, notably his implication that the “background causes” of our thoughts and feelings are beyond our conscious influence. He says at one point, “No one has ever described a way in which mental and physical processes could arise that would attest to the existence of such freedom [of will].” With this statement, Harris apparently dismisses depth psychology. A discussion of that subject goes missing in his book.

Depth psychology, which dredges up unconscious content from our psyche and makes it conscious, becomes our means to acquire a higher range of free will and inner freedom. We become more conscious as we uncover the ways that our unresolved negative emotions have been producing our suffering and self-defeat. We’re indeed lacking in inner freedom until we’re able, at a deeper level, to break free of our compulsion to recycle and replay these negative emotions that are unresolved from our past. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Mysterious Allure of Kinky Sex

April 22, 2013 By
Behind kinky sex are remarkable facts about human nature.

Behind kinky sex are remarkable facts about human nature.

Sadomasochistic consensual sex play may be gaining some acceptance as a socially or culturally sanctioned sexual orientation. The New York Times reports in a featured story, “A Hush-Hush Topic No More,” that a significant effort is underway in the United States and Canada to “defend the rights” of kinky-sex adherents and to acknowledge the practice as an expression of freedom and normal sexuality.

The recent best-selling books in the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy have achieved their wide popularity (70 million copies sold worldwide) by exploiting the strange, mysterious human weakness to “libidinze” (eroticize or make pleasurable) the experience of being dominated, violated, abused, or otherwise mistreated. One popular website reports quite seriously that the books are introducing youths “to a brave new bondage-loving world.”   

Kinky sex in a playful setting doesn’t have to be a big deal in itself, providing one can take it or leave it. But behind the scenes, deep in our psyche, sexual arousal that is sadistically or masochistically produced tells a remarkable story about human nature. If adherents to sadomasochistic sex play were to examine these psychological dynamics, many would find their kinky pleasures less appealing. With greater understanding, we prefer real love to cheap thrills.

Pursuing sexual pleasure from sadomasochistic practices cultivates a deeper problem. Many people extract unconscious nonsexual gratification (a third-rate kind of pleasure) from their unwitting, stubborn allegiance to painful old hurts, memories, regrets, and sorrows. When sexual sadomasochism is practiced, this dark side of the psyche is awakened and stirred up. The consequences can include considerable emotional disturbance and disharmony, along with the possibility of psychological regression. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Consciousness, Depth Psychology, Inner Passivity Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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