Outer critic thread: Shutting him/her up.

[Dutch Uncle]

I only recently stumbled on the article on the outer critic by Peter Walker. http://www.pete-walker.com/pdf/ShrinkingOuterCritic.pdf

I could only find this thread ( http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=664.0 ) on it. I got the "older than 120 days" warning when I tried to respond there, so I hope I will not trespass on any forum rules if I start a new thread on the topic.
I'm not sure however, so I apologize for any infractions on the rules. The red warning was frightening and this has been a safer option for me.


I've found the article enlightening, as I have been struggling with "Inner Critic" issues, and I was sure that only dealing with those would not bring me healing. So I actually thought of myself: what about an outer critic? My whole FOO (and the occasional others) are a bunch of outer critics who will simply not leave me alone.
Practically all meetings/encounters I have with them are filled with criticism. We simply cannot agree on anything, it seems, even if we agree. Or I should better say: even if I agree with them, they'll find something else to disagree with me on, or they even disagree that I agree with them. It boggles the mind.

The reason I went NC with one of my FOO, and have entered LC with the others (in a downward spiral) is because of the inachievability of agreement with them.


Peter Walkers article did address that issue. As a 'solution', or at the very least a "therapeutically" tool, he suggests:

Angrily saying "No!" to the critic, the sabotaging proxy of our dysfunctional caregivers, therapeutically externalizes our anger so it is not internalized against us or used destructively against our potential intimates. Psychodynamically speaking, angering at the critic helps us to work through unresolved transferrential anger that emanates from the past and gets destructively displaced onto present relationships.

I do find that going NC (or LC for that matter) is a way for me to express my anger towards my FOO. Being angry in their face has never helped a bit, and now I can at least vent my anger towards them in my own privacy.
And 'doing' NC or LC is in essence a very big "NO!" to them, a NO that tells them: "You're out. NO, I don't want to spend time with you, NO I don't like your company."

So, by going NC with my real-life outer critics, I may free up space and courage to kick my brain-child-outer-critic out of my life too.
The real-life outer critics only keep feeding/reassuring/resupplying my 'imagined'-outer critic.


Long story short:
I do think Peter Walkers article just reinforced my decision to go NC and LC with the critics who are out there.


Reflections on this are welcome.
Stories/experiences on how you deal with your outer-critic(s) are welcome too.

[woodsgnome]

Ah, the OC/IC dance. A familiar one when I was young, but I was lucky enough to escape the dance hall via some good fortune. Physically I may have found the exit, but the emotional aftermath wasn't so easily discarded.

For me, the FOO was bad enough, but it was only one side of a sharp two-edged sword--the other being an awful high school I attended (supposedly religious/idealistic, but really it just covered their hate and spite). Making matters worse, I ended up there on my own volition...double whammy--I chose the place myself (the parents couldn't have cared less), and it was Critic City, so my OC/IC dance involved transferring all the negative emotions around in a cruel circuit--them to me, me to them (mostly inward/silent, as showing true sadness/anger etc. was dangerous).

Graduation was the ultimate escape hatch there, but the OC/IC issues have continued to thwart my emotional life. It seemed like all trust of people has been gone ever since--hyper-vigilance reigns supreme. Another after-bomb was the guilt--I'd chosen that woeful place...all by my silly self. I would drag that emotional guilt and self-hate around for years. I was ashamed to the point of not telling anyone I'd attended that cesspool, and steered all talk of my FOO well to the side as well.

One FOO person has tried to get to me over the years, but I've stuck with a NC/LC stance that's worked for the most part. Along the lines of enough-is-enough, I had to honor my feelings and stay distant--helped in large part by a job which brought me to better circumstances but didn't eliminate the ingrained people issues either (although it was a people-oriented job). Those problems seemed to fester over the years, although it wasn't so obvious why, having left the FOO/school monsters in the rear-view mirror. My a-ha moment occurred when I realized that looking in that mirror had been the problem all along. When I could tear my view away from staring in the mirror, I'd avoid going in the ditch.

Following Walker's suggestions, I'm better able to handle the extreme anger I still have; the other equation--the grief--has always been there, but I avoided the anger part. What a crock--denying the anger just keeps it tucked in, where it pecks away at your progress and you end up in a loop that gives your power away again, and you turn the anger on yourself, and here we end up repeating the OC/IC dance.

Oddly, a lot of my painfully slow recovery from the dance has involved more giving up than overtly trying new steps. I guess what helped the most was just surrendering to the attitude that I'm free, always have been, always will be, and it's real and true, and key to the peace I've always sought. And I've left the dance floor; the only thing pulling me back is habit, and that's receding if I truly accept my freedom to do so. Sounds simple--until the next EF or bad dream or plain old fear shows up and says "hi there--me again".

It's never easy to sort out the complications thrown our way via the FOO scenarios. It flies in the face of social norms that emphasize family at all cost. So "they" say--but it wasn't true for me, so I wandered off the expectations radar, if not fully out of the emotional turmoil left in its wake. I wish you well as you sort out your path. 

[Butterfly]

Coincidently I was rereading parts of Walkers book this week and the OC was one part. I like the idea of saying NO to my IC and OC both. Whenever I look to my self with a 'too critical' eye verbally saying NO helps. So I find that if I'm critical of others (mostly actually uPDm and enF) that yes even for them I must say NO so as not to ruminate over the past and present hurts. I say NO to current toxic exchanges and, yes, exit. But I do not have to pick the exchange over, examine it, obsess over what I could have or should have done differently, what I wish others would do differently. It's done, it's over, did my best. Say NO to both IC and OC and move forward.