Free Your Mind (and Inner Critic)

And the rest will follow

Rule #19: “Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That is the hardest part and that is what you are responsible for. Once you take that step, let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow.

Don’t go with the flow. Be the flow.”

- Shams of Tabriz, 40 Rules of Love

My 40 days of meditating on the 40 rules of love continues, and here is where I am, as I make this latest offering. Thinking about all the conflicts I see around me, among the teams I know, out in the wider world, and in my own life, I am feeling how hard it is to be the flow when my/our inner critic gets in the way.

A few months ago, I wrote about forgiveness and how vital it is to my own practice of conflict transformation. Today, I want to reflect on the inner critic and how it not only disrupts forgiving and being forgiven, but also generally warps any conflict transformation journey. Without awareness of my inner critic — and that of others — I find it nearly impossible to move through struggle and come out the other side clearer, lighter, and in deeper connection. Under its heavy gaze, I get increasingly anxious about the contours of the road ahead (and behind), and miss the power of taking a first humble step. It’s like I have blinders on and can’t even see my feet at all.

What do I mean by inner critic? It’s the voice inside my head that is judging, blaming, and/or constructing a fixed story of right and wrong. You know the one, right? The inner critic usually focuses on quantity (not enough or too much) and quality (good or bad). Sometimes, it’s myself that my inner critic is judging; sometimes, to escape its attack on me, I direct it towards judging others. Still other times, I might be bargaining with it, to try and ‘explain’ what happened. For example, I get into a conflict, and my inner critic starts to blame me for what happened, and so I respond by giving it an explanation for myself — which it undermines as flimsy, and so I give a different explanation, which it again bats away… I use up a lot of time and energy in this fruitless negotiation. Mainly because I haven’t come to the heart of the matter (aka, the matter of my heart) and am instead hosting a moshpit of in-fighting in my mind. Unfortunately, I can’t win a negotiation with my inner critic, so if I stick with it, I eventually end up blaming myself or someone else.

I sometimes think of the inner critic as the best lawyer in the world, because it comes up with a mountain of airtight evidence to prove its case, all in a matter of seconds. It’s also great at serving as judge, jury, and executioner. My inner critic can be so loud that it drowns out the sound of my heart and my gut. It can incessantly replay my past — which is over and cannot be changed — or anxiously anticipate something of my future — which is unpredictable with infinite variables. Either way, it keeps me from the present moment and from accessing the full range of my humanity and wisdom.

I have to remind myself that my inner critic is part of me, part of being a human, and it’s there to protect me from danger. Just as it is for everyone else. Saber-toothed tigers were real, and humans needed that protective voice to get them to safety. However, in this modern disconnecting world, the inner critic operates way out of proportion to its original design. Those truly dangerous situations are few and far between, for most of us. Now, the inner critic is emboldened by factory-schooling, mainstream and social media, and the dominant economy, as well as our highly competitive/comparative social and workplace ranking systems. In the face of these real/perceived threats, the inner critic grows and expands.

In that sense, the inner critic’s short-term focus on protection is actually very understandable. It only becomes dangerous if we let it run the show for the long-run. Then, it has a detrimental effect on our hearts, spirits and bodies — and on our abilities to stop these inner-critic-feeding systems. When the inner critic takes over and becomes THE source of guidance in my life, it has fairly negative consequences for who I am and what I do. That’s because it can take a moment and make it a story — and even worse, act as though it’s ‘the truth’ — which prevents me from looking deeper, listening more, being curious, and making healing connections. Blocking out forgiveness, for myself and others, is but one of its major casualties.

I saw this impact in a conflict with a friend a few years ago. Because Nadia’s* announcement about leaving our work together came out of left-field for me, I responded with shock and anger and asked for some space so I could sort out the repercussions of it. My inner critic came up and blamed her for all the instability I felt with this change happening so abruptly. It also blamed myself for relying on her and not seeing this coming. A few days later, after I had received some support, re-grounded, and made space from my inner critic, I reached back out to Nadia. I felt able to extend an exit interview to listen to her feedback and also held a collective appreciation process to wish her well on her next journey. I felt better and complete, so I thought things were okay between us and we could now re-build.

Nope.

Almost a year later, I found out Nadia was still angry with me. She had been holding onto my initial response and felt it was a betrayal to her. Her inner critic had come up and taken over. First, it blamed her for making the big and unforgivable mistake of not telling me sooner that she wanted to move on from our work together. Then, it blamed me for reacting to her and not immediately understanding her need to leave. It added more to blaming me because I didn’t invite her to a larger meeting where she could explain herself and say goodbye, and only offered her an exit interview and an appreciation session with our co-workers. In Nadia’s mind, my mistakes were so big that she couldn’t trust me anymore, and I had to be punished. There was no other way forward, aside from one where I was out of her life for good.

When I heard all of this, I felt angry again with Nadia. How could she have frozen me in a moment and missed the opportunities for closure I had shared? How could she have not understood how much it hurt me when she withheld the truth and left me high and dry in our work? How dare she put me on a pedestal where I couldn’t have any reactions aside from the ones she wanted? How come she didn’t make space to tell the truth, talk things over, and truly resolve them? My inner critic came back and was ready to crush her. It also turned on me. How could I be so naive as to not see this gap between us? Why didn’t I do more to make things better?

The machinations of the mind are strange and brutal and heartbreaking.

Thankfully, a trusted friend stepped in and made space for us to both break free from our inner critics. When we slowed down with Anya’s* support, Nadia and I could see the vulnerability underneath. Our friendship, as well as our work collaboration, meant a lot to both of us, and the breaking of the trust was difficult. We each were feeling loss and sadness. Our ‘mistakes’ were missed understandings, blocked because of our hurt and enhanced because of our inner critics. Without slowing down, and that support from Anya, I don’t know if we would have come to heart of the matter — which was the matter of our hearts — and not just continued the cycle of hurt-making with the inner critic machine.

When working on conflict transformation with organizations and communities, I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of the words ‘harm’ vs. ‘hurt’. It often comes up as ‘So-and-so caused harm’ vs. ‘I am hurt by what so-and-so did.’ Those two expressions land very differently in my body. The former feels more like inner critic speak, while the latter feels more like vulnerability in the stretch zone. When I hear ‘I am hurt’, I sense the power remains with the expresser, the one who felt hurt by the actions/words of another. When I hear ‘so-and-so caused harm’, I sense the power is given to the other person and carries a sense of intentionality that is rarely at play in most situations I have seen. Perhaps it’s because the modern definition of harm includes ‘deliberate injury’ (although, interestingly, the Germanic root of the word signifies grief and sorrow). Hurt, on the other hand, can be defined as anguish or suffering, and can be externally- or internally-generated.

I have to remind myself I walk through this world being hurt by and hurting others, even as much as I aim to love, support and cherish them (and receive the same). My hurting others is largely unconscious, unintentional, and happens unknowingly, just as their hurting me does. What compounds the hurt, I think, however, is to let my inner critic get involved and flip the script from hurt to harm.

Let’s say I am hurt. Someone did or said something, or didn’t do or say something, and it didn’t feel good to me. What can I do? Here are some steps I can explore:

• Notice my responsibility: I have an ability to respond, to listen to and acknowledge myself and my feelings.

• Check my inner critic: Do I want to win? Do I want to punish? I can see my inner critic’s propensity to make myself right and the other person wrong and to seek punitive justice. I can slow down and make some space from my inner critic, so I can hear the vulnerability underneath for me, and eventually for the person, too.

• Share the impact: I aim to be honest with myself and the other person and share the impact that the person’s words/actions have on me.

• Explore accountability: I have the ability to account for my words or actions that might be part of the dynamic.

• Get curious: I wonder about the other person’s intentions and try to step in their shoes and see from their perspective. I open myself to the possibility of multiple truths co-existing in the same moment.

• Unfreeze: I zoom out to the wider picture and don’t freeze myself or the other person in that one moment. I seek to be the flow.

• Brainstorm repair: I share what I need for resolution and completion. I may accept an apology, forgive, and/or ask for something to further repair the situation. If we have another next step that we agree to, we both also agree to how we want to follow up and check in on the proposed change.

• Let go: I release and move forward and don’t use this moment as ‘evidence’ for a future case, with that person and/or with others.

On the flip side, let’s say I have hurt someone. They let me know directly, or I sensed that I something I did or said didn’t land well for them. Now what? It’s pretty similar.

• Notice my responsibility: I have an ability to respond, to listen to and acknowledge their feelings and become aware of my own.

• Check my inner critic: Do I think I am a terrible person? Do I want to defend myself? Do I want to punish back? I can notice my inner critic’s tendency to collapse onto me, project onto others, and/or negotiate a way out that isn’t really a way. I can slow down and make some space from my inner critic, so I can hear the person and still retain my own dignity as well.

• Get curious: I offer myself humility and gentleness. I can offer myself compassion and see the difference between that and ‘excusing’ myself. I try to understand more of where they are coming from, as well as see where I was coming from.

• Explore accountability: I have the ability to account for my words or actions, to name and notice them and see/hear about the impacts they have had.

• Unfreeze: I am willing to learn and grow. I recognize I make ‘mistakes’. I don’t freeze myself or the other person into a story.

• Practice repair: I am willing to ask for forgiveness and co-create any next steps that can support repair and completion.

• Let go: I offer myself release and forgiveness and take the time and space necessary for that to happen. I don’t take this experience forward as ‘evidence’ in a future case — against myself and/or the other person and/or others.

Being aware of my inner critic and how it shows up in conflicts is a game-changer for me. Recognizing it and making space from it helps me move through the conflict with much more ease and capacity. I am not drained by the machinations of my mind-field. Similarly, when I am supporting others, I also have to notice where their inner critics are coming up and try not to get caught in their entangling swirls.

The tricky part is that I am the only one who can create space from my inner critic. No one can do it for me. And neither can I do it for anyone else. I can’t negotiate with their inner critics or offer affirmations to help them get out of it. All I can do, for myself and others, is to become more aware of it by slowing down. Then, I can get into some of the steps outlined above. It is so easy to wind ourselves into a gnarly tangle of judgement and reactions and get further from our hearts and more trapped in the mind. I have seen so many groups struggle with conflicts, cycling over and over, taking on each other’s critics and amping up their own. It doesn’t stop until the people involved realize that they need to get out of their (and each other’s) inner critic’s snare. As a friend once shared on social media, “At some point in my healing process, I have to face how much of my own suffering I have caused.”

It helps me to remember that the inner critic comes up for self-preservation. It wants structure, order and control for safety. Constructing stories fills the mind’s function of meaning-making. In moments of fear and stress, these stories reflect the logic of the dominant system: a zero sum game, with winner and losers, in group and out group. The sense of safety comes from building walls of blame, instead of building bridges of understanding for ourselves and each other.

In a restorative approach to conflict, the person who feels hurt wants to be acknowledged. They want their suffering to be seen and cared about. If the inner critic has not hijacked them, then, at some point, they want to also hear and understand what the other person was thinking, what led them to those actions or words. This is not to condone and not to defend. It is simply for flow — to move beyond the moment and to understand the bigger context that contributed to it. So that we can unfreeze the moment, and the person, and re-member the whole again. When the mind doesn’t allow this movement, when it keeps repeating the same story, it’s a sign to me that the inner critic is involved and the person and/or people need to slow down and free themselves from it, to come to the heart of the matter — which, invariably, is the matter of the heart.

I wish I could share this understanding with our world in this time. To recognize the global inner critics at play, to slow down and be freed of them, so the violence and suffering can stop. Could we take that first step to be the flow? That is one of my prayers for this holiday season and the New Year ahead.

How do you see your inner critic showing up in conflicts? What helps you to make space from it? Please share in the comments if you’re willing.

Happy 25th Substack to me! Thank you for being a part of my journey this year.