Anxiety And Inner Critic

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Author: Anastasia Rubtsova

I read a psychological article, there they again offered to "turn off the inner critic" and promised for this eternal bliss.

In such cases, I am worried about the inner critic, and a little about the fate of humanity. Because it's like the idea of turning off the TV to defeat Putin and human stupidity. Guys, before you disconnect something, check that you have not messed up with the cause-and-effect relationships.

In fact, the “inner critic”, this criticizing inner being that you cannot please, is an absolutely ingenious invention of our psyche that allows us to cope with anxiety. Now I will try to explain.

Anxiety is one of the basic affects of the psyche. In general, anyone, not only human. There are always good reasons for anxiety - starting from the basic "as it were not devoured" and the horror of death, forcing you to constantly scan the space outside and inside the body, and right up to subtle social anxieties - do we occupy a worthy place on the social ladder, does it threaten us to slide down and perish unloved and unironed.

Alarms do not stop for a minute and create a complex cacophony inside, like at the Kursk railway station at noon. Endless clanging, chaos, shouts, "Masha, Masha, don't forget your bag!" - "Dear passengers…".

The degree of anxiety in a modern person is always somewhere high, between "while I'm holding on" and "aaaaaaa !!!". This, oddly enough, is not because the world has become monstrously dangerous - on the contrary, it has never been so safe for humans as in our blessed times of antibiotics, feminists and soft coatings in playgrounds.

But anxiety is growing - because there are practically no legal loopholes left for us to display aggression.

It is impossible to shoot someone with impunity under the guise of a revolutionary tribunal, you cannot get drunk and play a tambourine with your neighbor, have a good fight at school, and yelling is also not good. Open conflicts - fu, ugly, don't spank the child, and even tired silence is now considered passive aggression and traumatizes everyone terribly.

But the fact is that the same parts of the brain are responsible for aggressive reactions as for anxious ones, and they have direct competition. The more we suppress one, the more room we make for the other. So we paradoxically pay with anxiety for the fact that the modern world is kind and non-aggressive.

It would seem, what does the "inner critic" have to do with it?

Hope you haven't lost the thread yet.

Because I have lost a little.

So, if you do nothing with anxiety and leave the Kursk station in our head, it makes us rush, then paralyzes, eats up a lot of energy and makes us completely ineffective.

If you blind the figure of an “internal critic” inside, then he, as it were, draws in our (mainly social) fears - and thus frees up space on the internal stage. Now some more figures are placed on it. Like in a fairy tale, where not only the Gray Wolf fits, but also Little Red Riding Hood, and the forest, and cabbage pies, and a grandmother in a cap, and in general there are many cute characters.

For the psyche, this is much more profitable than when anxiety is spread everywhere, and the world is drowning in nameless horror.

Besides, look - here he is, an inner critic, comes on stage, settles down on a chair and begins to scold us for everything that we have done and did not do. A nasty, but at the same time reassuringly familiar voice of my mother, grandmother or Leah Akhedzhakova. We can, of course, shrink with shame listening to him. That we put on some not such a dress, we are disgraced. That we write idiotic and look like fools. We haven’t made a career and we cannot bring up children normally. But at the same time, this voice creates the illusion that the world lives according to some understandable, well-studied laws. It is known exactly which dress is correct. How to bring up children. What is "making a career".

In the modern world of universal uncertainty, it is not a pity to give up the left ear for this illusion.

Because with her you are at least for a little while on an island of tranquility.

In a red cap.

In general, if suddenly you think that the inner critic must be removed from the inside, keep in mind that the psyche will not just give it up. And he will do the right thing, because this is one of the supporting structures.

First, come up with what figure will you put your fears into next? Throw out the romantic idea "and I will explain to myself that there is nothing to be afraid, everything seems to me" - immediately throw it away. Such ancient parts of the brain are responsible for anxiety that they will not even listen to you seriously.

In addition, sometimes it turns out that there is no inner critic, the imaginary spectators have left - and we are left in a ringing void and terrible loneliness.

Nobody else evaluates us. It doesn't matter how we are dressed and how much we weigh, and how we raise children, and whether we have children. Our English accent doesn't bother anyone either. No one follows our every step, does not worry about where we work, what we spend money on and whether we are wearing a hat.

Nobody.

To put it mildly, not everyone likes this state. And not everyone can stand it.

I do not mean that you have to put up with your inner critic as it is. We must educate him, of course, as we bring up children. You just don't need to "turn off" anything right away. Suddenly it's a life support system.