Speaker 0 00:00:03 Welcome to the doctor's week show where I show you how bad States of mind, difficult life issues. Aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen. All right, let's get into it. Hey people, how are you? I hope you feel well today, but I'll bet, regardless of how you feel.
Speaker 1 00:00:37 I got an inner critic that shows up once in a while, right? I mean, who doesn't, if you think you don't, you just aren't aware of it. Well, today I'm going to get into some interesting things about the critic that you may not know. I'm going to tell you all about this little devil, this nasty creature from the underworld that invisibly slithers unnoticed into your mind, that intangible trickster that can undermine you, define you and cause a crime in you. It can make you feel like crap, and it can make a person in a position of power, start a war, but that's just the surface description. When you get past that, there's something really important happening in episode 33, how to process your inner critic. We got into this. The critic is a natural part of the psyche. It's the expression of an unconscious part of you trying to get your attention when something isn't part of consciousness, it behaves in a crazy out of control way because it has nothing to guide and steady it.
Speaker 1 00:02:00 This is the purpose of consciousness to give your subconscious form and to translate its expressions into conscious, constructive, usable messages. Unfortunately, before this happens, you might have to deal with some pretty nasty inner characters, psychology and self-help teachings. Have it wrong by viewing the inner critic as a purely negative feature of the psyche. Something to get rid of by silencing it. They view the critic as only bad as a poison of the mind, a pathology of the soul, a sickness of your psychology, and they give you various methods to try to zap it away, use this or that mind technique, reframe tough. Self-talk loving, self-talk positive, rational self-talk and so on and all that's great because as I said, the critic, it's a Royal pain of fucking asshole. Excuse my words. But this is only its initial presentation. It's unconscious crazy expression. It's actually the seed for your process.
Speaker 1 00:03:24 The beginning of your personal growth in some area of your life. It's not a static entity to just try to Berry, it's a meaningful and purposeful expression of your growth, trying to happen. And it's designed to spark transformation. The critic is the voice of your subconscious, trying to wake you up in some way, even though it makes you suffer, that's not its deeper goal. It's trying to bring your attention to the changes that need to happen in your life. It's an unconscious energy and therefore doesn't know what it wants. It's simply driven to irritate you. It's an obnoxious ignorant Sage poking you where you need to change and grow. Its words are hurtful, but the underlying process contains gold. Think of it as a child, trying to communicate something without being conscious of what he needs. You're the parent who has to decipher the meaning of his words and behavior.
Speaker 1 00:04:37 To do this with your critic, you have to engage with it, not try to zap it away. Start by distancing yourself from yourself, critical thoughts by imagining them being spoken by another person, visualize this figure. Then talk back to it. If it's mean and hurtful, fight it, tell it to shut up, but don't stop there. Go further into the dialogue and try to determine if the critic has any kind of valid message search for what's motivating it and explore what it really wants from you. Is it there to provoke you to step into your power by fighting its power? Is it there to show you what you need to improve about yourself? Is it a fearful part of you that criticizes as a way to get your attention and hopefully your help guidance and reassurance. Is it putting a spotlight onto a specific issue you need to process.
Speaker 1 00:05:44 For example, if your critic says you're behind everyone alike in your career, relationships, having children accomplishments and so on, don't just let this beat you down. Take it as a sign that you need to wake up about something in this area of your life. You may need to take more action towards your goals, or you may need to get stronger in standing against ideas of what you should do that are wrong for you. Behind the critic process is actually your personal liberation and power. Just trying to get rid of the critic means throwing out an important part of your growth. The goal shouldn't be to just make it go away. So you can go back to your status quo, but not grow at all. The goal should be to connect with the meaning and purpose of the process. Your critic brings up in you and use this to transform who you are working on.
Speaker 1 00:06:51 It should lead you to become a different, more conscious person, not just relieved of the critic. There are two aspects of the critic. One is what it says to you. This is it's content and it's what the exercise focused on the other is how it says it to you. This is its personality and energy, and that's what I'm going to show you how to process in the next episode, the content of the critic ranges from mild negativity to extreme, outrageous nonsense that tries to injure you. This can make you depressed and anxious and drive you to distraction addiction, blaming others, or even to become the critic. It's like the old adage. If you can't beat them, join them mean nasty, abusive. People always have wicked inner critics. They aren't aware of, or simply can't deal with. The only thing that relieves their pain is to be the critic.
Speaker 1 00:08:05 Because if you are it, you can bypass being a victim of it. But it's a pretty sad way to deal with your process. You end up hurting others so you can pretend you don't hurt inside a more conscious and common method people use to deal with the critic is physical exercise. Besides the health benefits. One of the reasons people do it, although they may not be aware of it is that it helps shield you from the critic, build up your muscles and you tap into your inner strength. At least on a physical level. This alone can reduce the critics power over you, but it's not really enough. And if you become a workout junkie without processing your critic at all, you can actually end up repressing it to the point of forcing it into your subconscious. From there, it influences you without you realizing, for example, by making you depressed.
Speaker 1 00:09:07 I mean, it's not absolutely necessary to know the real reason why you bench press 500 pounds on a regular basis since it makes you feel good, but you can get so much more out of the process. If you aim to actually integrate this strength into who you are as a person and use it to stand up for your whole self, including the vulnerable parts of you. That's real power. I remember working with a six foot five bodybuilder massive dude with a super hard exterior, tough guy, angry, aggressive. I accused him of being on steroids and he threatened me anyway. It didn't take long to discover that when I poked around his psyche a bit, he actually felt like a weekly deep down layer. One, two and three was Mr. Tough guy and layer four, five, six to infinity was a scared, sad, weak victimize, little boy with an abusive inner critic.
Speaker 1 00:10:19 His muscles were his protection. I'm not saying this is purely what having muscles is about. I'm saying that your drive to feel strong. Isn't only physical, it's psychological too. And the more you obsess over your weight training, the weaker, you probably feel on some other level. This is true in a sense for any physical activity that gives you a high sports skydiving or whatever. It's a drive toward a certain experience that you need to become more conscious of. In some way. I remember once pumping more and more iron until I injured myself, I worked on the feeling of wanting to lift heavy weights and the strength that gave me. Then I asked myself how I need this strength in my life. And I suddenly became aware that I needed to fight an illusive inner critic. I hadn't been aware of. I say elusive because we don't always hear the critic talking.
Speaker 1 00:11:26 It's just subtle background talk. You may or may not sense. It's like a vague mood in the background. You just feel like something is off. In fact, this quiet critic is often deadlier than the loud one because the loud one can be engaged with. Whereas the quiet one works on you without you knowing it's a bit like how it's easier to respond to a real direct racist than someone who's racist in a more subtle underhanded and unconscious way. Most of us are conscious of some aspects of the critic and unconscious of other aspects, but some folks aren't aware. They have an inner critic at all. Instead, they just feel the effects of it. Depression, anxiety, phobias, and so on. Something in their psyche, devalues them on every level. But it's so general, all pervasive and undifferentiated, it's experienced simply as an oppressive mood, their body and psyche react to it without awareness of what's going on.
Speaker 1 00:12:37 It's like when someone suffers depression, but has no idea why everything seems to be okay in their life. So why do they feel like this? They're reacting to an invisible, silent enemy when I have clients like this, or if I feel lousy and have no idea why I ask, what would you have to do or say to make someone else feel like this, this is a way to uncover the hidden critic. For example, you might say to make someone feel like I do. I'd say you're a piece of shit. You suck awesome. Now you've identified the critical voice and can respond to it. You can process it before you just felt bad for no reason. Now you feel bad for a reason, but you have a way to work on it. Unfortunately, psychiatry and traditional psychology have very little understanding of how the critic actually works.
Speaker 1 00:13:43 Psychology may give you some ways to try to silence it. But a lot of the focus of both of these fields is to get rid of your reactive symptoms. So you don't feel them. There's a powerfully, clear reason for so-called mysterious, unexplained, bad States of mind. And it's very often tied to the inner critic. Sometimes the critic challenges you to fight in order to become stronger. And other times it has a specific message for your life direction, but you have to fight through the nasty BS to get to it. When a critic talks at you, there's a deeper purpose behind it than just to hurt you in its totally screwed up way. It's trying to raise your awareness, but you have to approach it as a process, not as a static condition. Self-critical thoughts are the beginning of a meaningful process to unfold, not an end condition.
Speaker 1 00:14:48 That's simply there to mess you up. There's also an impersonal aspect of the critic. The critic is a general archetypal theme in the collective human psyche. Look at the oldest myths, legends and fairytales, or look at a modern Hollywood movie. And you'll always run across some form of the evil one, the dark Lord, the devil Mephistopheles beasel bub, the beast, the tyrant, the dictator, the abuser, the mean nasty character who wants to create havoc and do harm. Your inner critic is your personal expression. Your own version of the shared human process. The work is to process your own critic, your relationship to judgmental people in your life and also to contribute toward the fight against unconscious negative power in the world. Conscious power expresses itself in people who strive to do good in the world. Whereas unconscious power manifests as a critic in the world.
Speaker 1 00:16:02 For example, when a political leader puts down and oppresses minorities, social activism and progressive politics are our collective way of confronting the critic spirit in the world. But working on your own critic and working on the world's critics are two different types of processes. First, your personal work goes much faster. You can do a lot in one lifetime. Whereas social change takes many generations and second, your inner critic changes as you change. Whereas an oppressive leader, for example, isn't engaged in the process of change. This is why social movements often aim at an eventual overthrow of a leader or a leader's party. Eventually a tipping point is reached and the collective of humans won't tolerate a certain world critic anymore. Change also happens when awareness arises within a leader's own group and slowly undermines it. Status quo. The history books tell us that this is how Soviet communism fell as the new leader. McKell Gorbachov challenged his own comrades and ushered in change or so it seemed now here's where it gets. Interesting people say the Berlin wall fell as a result of political changes in the Soviet union, but that's not the real reason. The true cause of the end of the cold war was drum roll. Wait a minute. I got to get to my drums.
Speaker 1 00:18:16 Okay. I'm back. Are you ready for this? The Beatles? What? That's right. My friends, here's a mind blowing quote from McKell Gorbachov the last president of the Soviet union before it fell, quote more than any ideology, more than any religion, more than Viet Nam or any war or nuclear bomb. The single most important reason for the diffusion of the cold war was the Beatles Ken quote. I'm going to do a whole episode on this and how it relates to personal growth and the evolution of the human race. So I don't want to spill the whole can of beans yet, but for now I'll just say that the Beatles were viewed as an evil influence and they were banned in Russia, but an entire generation grew up on smuggled cassettes of their music. And while you can't be into the Beatles and how they alter your consciousness in terms of love, freedom of expression, gender awareness, fashion, religion, politics, art film, et cetera, et cetera, and also be an obedient Soviet communist.
Speaker 1 00:19:38 I'll put it that way. It's so strange though, because rock and roll was originally a revolution, an extreme, rough and tumble challenge to the world. It changed how everything was prior to its inception. In the 1950s, the world we live in with its views of personal freedom to dress, behave, relate, love, consume, believe, and live more or less. How we want to is a direct result of rock and roll cultures loosening up of society's rigid more as in traditions, but over time, a lot of it got co-opted into being mainstream light entertainment, complete with band camps, TV, talent shows, and sanitized computerized, marketized. Kid-friendly non challenging musical presentations to compensate for this. We now have that typical go-to over the top. Sensationalist
Speaker 0 00:20:48 Porn and violence, every creator or producer resorts to when they don't have anything
Speaker 1 00:20:53 Beautiful to say, of course the truth,
Speaker 0 00:20:57 Spirit and art of rock and roll
Speaker 1 00:21:00 They'll lives. As Neil young said, Hey, Hey, my, my rock and roll can never die. See you next time. Stay aware.
Speaker 0 00:21:17 You can follow me on social media at Dr. Swig, and you can sign up on the mailing
[email protected] where you'll receive discounts on private coaching events and merchandise starting 20, 21 weekly personal growth tips and lots more be well.
