The internal critic

[khatalyst]

One of the first things writing teachers tell you is to shut up your internal critic. Just tell it to take a hike. Or promise it that it can have its say later, if it will just take a snooze now. Or just keep a mental cancel stamp handy to eliminate its influence

Comments

[khatalyst]

That, sweetie, is not yourself.

At least, it's not myself. Or not exactly.

It's my mother, my paternal grandmother, a bunch of nuns, innumerable book reviewers and film reviewers (who mostly seem to me to be people to avoid), articles from women's magazines and pictures from billboards about what women are supposed to be, and a lot of cultural imperatives and "advice" that basically add up to reasons to second-guess myself.

That piece of mind has good reason to be there. It's the big sponge of externally sourced wisdom that is supposed to be protecting us.

But it's such a mishmosh. I mean, we're supposed to be tolerant, open-minded and compassionate. And we're also supposed to be able to protect ourselves. And we're supposed to understand that men (well, maybe everyone) have tender egos, and basically need a lot of praise and appreciation to feel okay. But we're also supposed to be responsible for drawing lines and telling people how we don't want to be treated.

And whatever you're doing, that voice doesn't applaud. It rifles its files to figure out if you're doing anything wrong, and then comes up to discuss that little problem with you.

I was just on the Kripalu website and saw they had a weekend on dealing with your inner critic. I wondered if it came with a sock you could stuff in it.

And then I realized that I have a bad attitude, a problem with authority. (Thanks, inner critic, for alerting me to that.) Except I don't even have to go outside my head to be rebelling.

So maybe Hawk's Second Law applies here:

The only appropriate response to feedback is, "Thanks for the feedback. I'll take it under consideration."

I don't know if it will work as well as "Cancel, cancel, cancel." But it certainly sounds more grown-up.

[justlikepoetry]

what i hear are the voices of a few professors of mine that pulled me aside and told me that i couldn't write. nearly every time i start to write something, those are the voices i hear. they yell "that's SO cliché" every time i try and write something that isn't straight up prose, and when it is straight up prose, they tell me i have no authority to state what i'm stating and that no one cares.
i'm not very adept at telling those voices to go soak their collective heads....

[khatalyst]

Hmm. You remind me of when I was trying to deal with all of D's comments about how lucky I was that an ugly, old bag like me had a flashy guy like him, and besides if I wasn't smart enough to get rid of him, it wasn't his fault how I felt.

Yikes.

First if these people said those sort of things, they misused their positions and betrayed your trust and intellectual dependence. Bad, bad people. Deserving of smacking. Not you, them.

Second, you sound altogether too beaten down. I mean, if you can't tell your own superego to shove a sock in it when it's being obnoxious and unhelpful, who can you tell? It's there to help you, that's all. If it's not helpful, it's your choice to shut it off. It's part of you, so you don't need to be nasty to yourself. Just pat it on the head and tell it to come back when you're not so busy.

Why don't you call me sometime?