If You've Been Through Trauma - How To Work With Your Inner Critic - Complex PTSD

If you have been through trauma the chances are that you have a very powerful and often negative inner critic.

This is one of the ways that we cope with trauma.

Our inner critic comes online to protect us.

And on one level it did protect us.

The question is does it protect us still or does it keep us in our trauma?

This same voice can be so hateful, cricitcal and blaming of ourselves.

Especially when we are triggered, tired, unwell or someone is criticising us.

So today I wanted to share some of the teachings of Pete Walker in his book Complex PTSD or CPTSD and how he recommends that we challenge the inner critic.

These are techniques that I have used for many decades to great effect.

Any questions please do let me know,

Warm regards,

Piers

#innercritic #trauma #complexptsd

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. He also runs online men's groups, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times.

Many blessings,

Piers Cross

[TheMantaRae]

I clicked on your video bc your kovely eyes spoke to me. Greetings and thanks from US

[kimlec]

To be gentle on yourself can be challenging, but sanity saving. Thank you.

[richardrickford]

One thing I have had to watch out for is that when I was growing up my parents would very often compare disfavourably my progress in all sorts of things (from not being able to tell the time properly to not being able to completely dress myself after a nursery gym class) to other children who they thought were mastering these things better. The scenario was "child x can tell the time - why can't you do that yet" or "child Y has neat handwriting why is yours not neat like theirs". After having gone though many layers of trauma at home and at schools and at university these parental voices can come on again comparing me disfavourablly to others. For instance I have really wanted to publish a novel but had it rejected by an agent. The inner critic will say "Zadie Smith has had many novels published and she is younger than you are in terms of age" Through trial and error I have found the best way to deal with these voices is not to be upset and attack them with some defensive counter claim. It is to pretend they have not spoken and just get on with what I have been doing - whether that is tidying my kitchen, doing my work, or writing a poem or a piece of prose. In the long term this "rattles" the voices for more. I know I have a lot to offer this world and I simply don't have time for these silly ne-er do wells.

[katreades-ktjv]

Brene brown says unless you are showing up and courageously getting in the ring, you don’t get to judge….maybe that applies to our inner dwellers as well as outer ones! Thank you Piers for your courage ! You offer great food for thought ❤

[ranc]

When there is inner critic (trauma actually) - the inner critic is not the only symptom.
Chances are there are trauma responses such as fawning as well and toxic shame as well - where we will be stuck in feeling incompetent and not taking chances, not taking actions and not gathering experiences - but instead immobility and deep core belief we are not good. As long as toxic shame is inside us, inner critic is keep coming back. Weeding out works only when the root is plucked out.
Plucking toxic shame would mean paradoxical situation for us - and that is embracing inner critic and not changing it. When we go into battles with inner critic - we are signaling our brain that we are inept, abnormal - and this fuels toxic shame, hence giving more of inner critics in turn.
Trauma at its core is invalidation and desire for perfection - that there are no errors nor any kind of excitement about something that we cannot get but we want it. Healing trauma would be total validation which paradoxically means accepting and validating our errors, and bad sides and validating anything we don't like about ourselves.

To make this easier to explain, let's see example from the world politics:
This accepting inner critic is the same as validating Russia. Third prophecy from 1971's Portugal Fatima says that Russia will become aggressive in the future - and that Russia will become aggressor harming and hurting nations causing immense destruction to the world - not only through wars but through famine and economic difficulties as well. 100 years ago Catholic Church interpreted this as prophesized danger as fear of communism - and unwittingly brought Putin into power through the wrong battles against USSR regime. Putin is criminally insane due to obsession over USSR collapse where he had a role of high ranking secret agent and probably commit many hidden atrocities for the sake of regime.
Now we know that the Fatima prophecy was talking about Putin, not communism.
Well anyhow - the Prophecy from Fatima itself clearly says that we must accept and validate ("consecrate") Russia in order to avoid wars and destruction which Putin is committing.

This is something to think about -
how can we allow inner critic to exist while it is harming us in the process?
With narcissistic abuse - we know we must ultimately abandon the narcissists in order to stop narcissistic abuse. But how can we leave some invisible entity which lives inside our mind as inner critic? We cannot go to rocket ship and abandon Earth by leaving crazy Putin on its own.
This analogy with Fatima prophecy - means that we are contributing to the rise of inner critic through wrong interpretations of alarm systems and sixth sense. We unwittingly create more trauma on the top of existing one, simply by trying to avoid danger and harm and hurt - through wrongly interpreting the danger where there is none, or at least not as critical as it appears in our minds and explanations.

I think with inner critic - this is a side-effect of our inability to process data, inability to analytically perceive objectively reality and our egotism trying to make ourselves comfortable yet by destroying other ideas and processes which are not harming us in any way - yet we over-react to them and see danger where there is none.

When we don't act from love - we cannot hide our suppressed anger and hate. We think we can cover it up and mask it away through over-compensation - but really we cannot hide it well. If we have rancour inside us - it will come out eventually and through domino effect it will irritate other processes inside and outside of ourselves and eventually we will be harmed by our own hate and fear and bias and selfishness and egotism.
With inner critic - it is a sign that we have rancour inside us which is extremely covered up, suppressed, put away from our consciousness - all in the trial to be moral and ethical perfect person without errors - and then inner critic will spring up for punishing us for not being perfect. As we learned to think in childhood when we were exposed to alcoholic abuse and dysfunction from our toxic ambient.

When inner critic springs up - I would take it as a sign there is hidden rancour inside us which needs to be melted and transformed into healthy anger, healthy boundaries and true desire to learn, know and educate ourselves about reality - instead of blindly trying to be saint and good person just to please others and ourselves by being "good".
Trauma will set us up to be good in order not to be dysfunctional and hysterical like our caretakers in childhood.
But this dysfunctional delusional hypnotized and programmed trial to be super human without emotions and without errors will end up as inner critic.

Quote:
Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)