Inner Critic: What Does That Mean To You?

[just me here]

What's the name of that game I played as a kid- it's all wood, and you put colored sticks into small wooden wheels the size of a quarter? An erector set? That's what I envision it's like. -Gcat

Here we called them tinker toys. wooden dowels of various lengths, joint peices you inserted the dowels into, some wooden wheels, some pulleys, some plastic parts like little fan blades so you could build a windmill. My granparents had a conglomeration of maybe a dozen sets that all got dumped into a box and us grandkids would pull them out and play with them in the middle of the floor while our parents and aunts and uncles talked and watched. My Uncle showed me how to build a working rack and pinion front axle for a car, another home from the Airforce helped me build a turbo fan airplane engine model, and I remember building a model of the Lunar Module in 1969. Great memories- thanks.

I agree that traumas definitely change our perception of the world around us and our defense mechanisms and survival instincts are constantly being upgraded to meet the new threats we perceive. Thats what life is in a nutshell: trying to be prepared for and aware of threats we perceive, and trying to find our way to the place in the maze where the cheese is kept.

The traumas we face all teach us something new to deal with, sometimes we grow, but sometimes we just shrink away from the threat or let it rule our thoughts and thus our lives.

When our "self talk" style is forming in our young minds, when we are crystalizing who we are and who we will be, we are vulnerable to outside forces that can start us in a direction that leads to negative self talk and negative self concept and an abnormally strong inner critic.

Thats what CPTSD is for me, a result of early bad parenting followed by traumatic events that really got my defense mechanisms going. Unfortunately those defense mechanisms were based on being extremely self critical and self blaming for anything that happened to me. That is the foundation that all the symptoms of my disorder are built upon.

My schema is faulty, it was built in a time when I was looking for help from adults and unfortunately the adults I went to were much better at helping me build a tinker toy windmill than a workable view of the world and how I would fit into it.

 

[seedling]

Do you think we will ever be able to view the maze from above and easily see where the cheese is?
That would be nice.

 

[Gcat]

Thats what CPTSD is for me, a result of early bad parenting followed by traumatic events that really got my defense mechanisms going. Unfortunately those defense mechanisms were based on being extremely self critical and self blaming for anything that happened to me. That is the foundation that all the symptoms of my disorder are built upon.

My schema is faulty, it was built in a time when I was looking for help from adults and unfortunately the adults I went to were much better at helping me build a tinker toy windmill than a workable view of the world and how I would fit into it.

Right...Tinker Toys! That's it. Though I'm not sure what you mean 'the adults helped you build a tinker toy windmill than a workable view of the world and how you fit in it'...I guess you mean they gave you some tools or guidelines, but not the manual. Thanks a LOT, big-adults-who-are-supposed-to-know-everything-and-I'm supposed to trust! So as kids adults REALLY left us drifting. I often remember feeling I "fit" more with adults than kids my own age, but I really should have been allowed to be an innocent kid in a safe and fun world. I had snatches of that, playing with toys, reading comic books and being with animals, for example. I suspect I have c-ptsd, by the way- not a blatant attempt to self-diagnose, but after many years of research.

I think what we're trying to do now as adults is see the maze-and the cheese- from above.

Something weird has been happening as I've been responding to these posts...it's like I start to get triggered, then I feel like wait...this is an opportunity to express myself to people who understand this "schema", so maybe I can make sense of my own. I'm feeling a lot of pain but I hope I cycle through it. I wonder, all the people who have healed from this, how do you know you're healed or almost healed? I guess you just 'know'. Then again, this has taken me places I feel I have never been before....

 

[just me here]

Right...Tinker Toys! That's it. Though I'm not sure what you mean 'the adults helped you build a tinker toy windmill than a workable view of the world and how you fit in it'...I guess you mean they gave you some tools or guidelines, but not the manual. ....

Forgive my lack of clarity and overstretching the metaphore.

Actually, I was always able to go to my aunts and uncles and parents for help with anything right up to the day my mother was buried. After that I had my father and his side of the family wich meant I had to fit into a very strict religion or be ex-communicated in my own home. After that and to this day, I get nothing from any of them but advice to repent and find Jesus. And a whole load of reasons why I am so unhappy and why I will never be happy and why I can't ever be happy until I stop living my evil life of devil worship and debauchery. Hoo-boy.
But dad did teach me how to make a tinker toy windmill for real. I did get something out of childhood from him. I got that and the voice of my inner critic carrying on his criticisms long after he has forgotten that he uttered them.

 

[SunnyHelen]

Wow, this thread has got me bawling my eyes out. I get it exactly and I realise I have let every person who has critised me jump on board. After 35 years of hoarding this negativity, it's no wonder I am a mess! I am truly enlightened and beginning to realise I am not crazy. Ty xxx

 

[just me here]

Wow, this thread has got me bawling my eyes out. I get it exactly and I realise I have let every person who has critised me jump on board. After 35 years of hoarding this negativity, it's no wonder I am a mess! I am truly enlightened and beginning to realise I am not crazy. Ty xxx

Same here, I have been aware of PTSD for about six months now, and I am constantly finding that people here get it and that my symptoms that have baffled me are now making sense. Unfortunately thats not all it takes to be better, but it does make it easier to beleive you are working to a goal instead of flailing around without direction.

 

[mamachick]

My sister reminds me of all shortcomings on a regular basis-she is my inner critic even when Im asleep

 

[freakofnurture]

My Inner Critic is a Monster, and not in a positive sense. It tells me that I only ever achieve things that are easy, or that were handed to me. If something is hard, I cannot achieve it. When others tell me something that I achieved was hard to achieve, my IC tells me that these people either don't know what they are talking about, are lying to make me feel better, or to make themself feel better about their own achievements. Also I sometimes get lucky and manage to exploit a loophole or something. Standards around me are too low anyways - says my Inner Critic.

So, to me, the Inner Critic means that I can never perform well in an absolute sense. I can never be happy with something I did, never be proud of myself. I will always feel inferior to other people who did the same thing I did, because they sure did work hard for it, while I... I'm here by accident. Woops, don't belong here, sorry.

My T said that the Critic Monster is actually my friend. It started to say these things to help me survive in a very dangerous and stressful situation. It gave me an explanation for why I was treated the way I was, that didn't mean that I was dependent on horrible people who hated me/didn't love me the way I should been loved. The Monster helped me to grow up in a world where things were alright - not meaning they were comfortable, but they were appropriate.

The Monster is slow, though, and it doesn't stay up-to-date with the things it says. So it's still whispering these things that helped me survive as a child, although I don't need to hear them anymore. I have to try to get the Monster to listen to me for a change, and to see that its help is very much appreciated, but that it needs to say different things now.

I have to teach the Monster to start being more observant, rational and current in its whispering. The help I need now is encouragement, kind words, constructive, loving criticism that helps me to get along with myself and others, without destroying every bit of self-esteem as soon as it pops up.

I thought about drawing it, and all the other Monsters and Hurt Children that are within me, you know, like in a movie poster: All the parts of me that can fight are armed and angry and ready for battle, lined up as an impenetrable wall in front of the parts of me that need protection, as well as those able to provide comfort and loving nurture.

 

[OKRADLAK]

Maze- the formation of personality.......so true and so scary!

One false move,even unintentional, and you are altered.

One belief taken a little too far, and you are altered............this is not even to mention the terrible things that lead to PTSD.

 

[Sethe]

I hate my inner critic.

It holds me back from the life I was meant to have.

If I could find some way to manifest it as a tangible thing, then I would probably kill it. I have some pretty descriptive ways of 'destroying' it, but I'm too afraid to share them. I don't want to be labeled as a total cuckoo.

 

[liv now]

A really deep and thought provoking topic.... this has been my experience... My inner critic tells me I am not supposed to amount to anything, and sabotages anything good in my life. I accept my inner critic is part of me and my life and is just trying to protect me and stop me from getting hurt. I also see that it is probably made up of projections from my caregivers whilst growing up. The more I work through trauma in therapy and the more I challenge self limiting beliefs, the harder my inner critic holds on. For me personally, I believe this is because I am getting to my core issue or fear. I am hoping that if I continue to process stuff in therapy then I will begin to defrost this frozen inner critic, slowly melt away the amnestic barriers that prevent my inner critic from growing up.

 

[just me here]

In the past week I have had to deal with some very important issues with my father, there has been some family tragedy that resulted from my sister in Alabama and her house being lost to a tornado (everyone is fine, but everything they own is now either missing, dirty, or being worn) Dad was forced to face some hard facts about his relationships with us, what my sister needs right now, and what he is willing to do for her and how that implies the level of what I could expect if I had a similar need.

Everything is going to be OK, but we skirted some issues that allowed me to hear the origins of the inner critic once again, in the original voice, with the original intent. We can't pick our parents. If you are young and impressionable and don't have a lifetime of experience to draw on, you can't pick what gets in to become your consciounce and sense of right and wrong. If it is strong non constructive criticism that breaks you down to a nothing, and it gets in early and often, it becomes a lifetime of echoed criticism, the inner critic.

I am thinking the conflicts and arguments of the past week or two have been similar to immersion therapy for a combat PTSD sufferer. I am able to see the past in a new light now because it has been repeated for me in the present and I can see it with experienced eyes instead of the childs eyes I saw it all with the first time around. No fun at all, but it has changed the voice of the inner critic and thats a good thing.

The fact that dad still thinks the only tool he has in his box that will get other people to act as he would have them act is witholding approval and open criticism is just plain sad.

A lifetime of people getting tired of it and leaving him behind has not made him aware that it doesn't work