If You Want To Be Happy, You Must Be Willing To Give This Up
“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner. ”
We all judge ourselves to some degree or another, as judgment is part of the human condition. For those of us who have suffered trauma in our lives, we most likely judge ourselves mercilessly and frequently. Judgment is the main thing that the human ego does. This part of ourselves loves to tell us why we aren’t enough or why we’re too much, and it tells us why other people are not enough or too much, and that life itself is not enough or too much. It is pervasive, and for survivors of childhood trauma, it is insidious and almost constant. Our inner critic, who went along with the program taught in childhood in order to help us to survive the untenable abuses we suffered, has now run rampant and is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of more pain and more abandonment. In an effort to achieve healing and to feel loved and accepted, this part of us is hyper-focused on receiving acceptance and love from other people, and when it does not arrive, we take it in as further proof that we are unlovable. Ultimately, the love and acceptance we so desperately crave must come from us, and us alone. We are starving for our own love, and it only seems as if we need it from others.
When we are overly critical of ourselves, we automatically anticipate judgment from other people, and we will automatically perceive judgment that seems to be coming from them even though it is usually coming from us, a source of our own inner critic. Now, I am not at all saying that other people do not judge us. Of course, they do, as we all, to varying degrees, have an inner critic that judges us and then therefore also judges others. This is true. However, if others seem to be judging us, it is absolutely never about us, as much as it seems as if it is. No, when we judge another person, it is a direct result of our own self-judgment that we do so. Think of it this way: if you were wearing glasses that were tainted with judgment, then everything you perceived would be subject to that lens of perception. When the ‘‘dirty’’ lenses are cleaned or the glasses are removed, one sees things more clearly. The issue is with the perception of the observer, not in the value of the one observed.
‘‘Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”
Don Miguel Ruiz
When we fear judgment from others our natural impulse is to protect ourselves from that feeling of vulnerability, and so we automatically hold back our self-expression, shrinking ourselves and hiding to avoid the pain of being seen and judged harshly, even before it comes. Raised with a need for hypervigilance that once saved us and preserved our wounded psyche, now the protective mechanism has taken on a life of its own and rules our lives in a destructive way that generates untold pain and distress. It seems ‘safer’ to hold ourselves back than to risk being criticized or ostracized by people we care about, and while it was very effective in a short-term sense in childhood as a survival strategy, ultimately it creates a lot more suffering for us. The result of this fear-based emotional state is of course disastrous in terms of our ability to create the life we desire because fear and judgment are very limiting states of consciousness, pinching off our ability to be the conscious creators that we truly are. When we give in to fear habitually, the fear grabs hold, hijacking our lives and our personal power, paralyzing us, stunting our growth and potential, thereby keeping us stuck and small, a prisoner to fear.
“What you resist persists.”
Carl Jung
Whatever we judge, we resist, and what we resist always persists. If we focus on what is lacking, we tend to see more lack, if we focus on feelings of fear, we tend to feel more fear, and on it goes. Since we have to operate within this law, we must learn to harness it in order to make positive changes in our lives. The place to start is to come into presence as much as we can, living our life in the present moment so that we can be the observer of our thoughts, this way, we can work to stop negative thinking patterns before they gain too much power and take over our thought processes, deregulating us in the process. This kind of mindfulness practice is an ongoing practice and is fundamental to the healing of trauma and personal empowerment. Once we have become present, we want to notice when resistance has arisen, without judging it, as heaping judgment upon judgment creates a log jam effect, locking us in even more.
How do we recognize resistance? Resistance shows up as any kind of “no” response to what is happening, internally or externally, and is a push back to reality. It may take the form of “this is too much, I can’t handle it” or “I don’t like______.” It may also feel like an energy block, a constriction in the body, or a feeling of “I don’t want to do this.” When we are resistant, we shut down our life force and we shut down our connection to our true selves. Whatever form it takes, in order to counter resistance, we want to say “yes” to whatever is happening at the moment, even if it is something painful. This willingness to meet ourselves and our lives with openness and care has the power to move us into a state of surrender and receptivity, allowing us to become co-creators of our own experience, no longer slaves to the past.
We have been incorrectly taught that vulnerability is a bad thing, and if we had traumatic or abusive childhood experiences, we have been taught this in spades. Our normal response to vulnerability is to instinctively protect ourselves from it, but the truth is that vulnerability is our true power. Our power lies within our deepest wounds and parts of ourselves that we have typically hidden away from the world. When we allow ourselves to be who we are without censoring ourselves, it can be scary, because we have to face the fear that maybe others might reject us, but hiding from life and playing it “safe” is never going to give us the outcome we desire. Instead, we must continually face our deepest fear and forge ahead, allowing the fullness of who we are to be front and center. What is the first and most important step in this process of coming to peace with who we are, so we can show up in the world in all our glory? It is to make peace with ourselves, to love the wounded child and tame the inner critic, this is our most important work in healing trauma, and this is the work of achieving the freedom to be all of who we are.
