When we look at the differences that were the source of childhood shame from an adult perspective, we can often write a new script. Remember the story of the ugly duckling? Difference is not necessarily bad, even though it is an important aspect of why children reject one another. Think about other people you have discovered in your adult life who share and enjoy those things that made you “different” from other children. By embracing those parts of yourself, you are undoing emotional memories that have the power to make you reexperience unwarranted shame.
Exercise 2: Challenge Splitting
Taking the risk of wanting to be loved or chosen automatically raises the question “Am I good enough?” Too often we idealize a person or project and thereby give others too much power over determining our self-worth. Devaluing someone who has rejected you is not the answer and is just another signal that you are splitting. Think of a recent incident where you were rejected, then explore the following questions in your notebook or journal:
Name three things that made this job or person attractive to you. What wonderful things did you dream might happen if this had worked out?
Name three things that you weren’t comfortable about. If these concerns or problems had gotten worse, what might have happened?
Remember, no one is perfect, but sometimes we want something so badly that we tune out or ignore the downside. If you had difficulty thinking of three things that were wonderful about that person or job, maybe that person or job isn’t wonderful enough to warrant the intensity of your pain over the loss. But if you had difficulty coming up with three things that you weren’t comfortable with, you are most likely idealizing the situation. Most things in life have pros and cons. When we see things as all good or all bad, we know that splitting has taken over.
Chapter 8
Criticism
While no one likes to be scrutinized and judged in an unfavorable way, the experience of being criticized can be a trigger that, for many people, unleashes extreme emotions. Consistently living up to expectations we have set for ourselves or that have been set by others seems almost impossible, and yet many people find it unbearable when they are told that they haven’t done something well enough or need to do it in a different way. The rage, blame, and depression that can be produced by criticism rarely help resolve the situation. Often, the root of intense reactions to criticism is tied to narcissistic vulnerability.
Narcissistic Issues
When people hear the word “narcissistic,” they usually think about someone they know who is stuck-up, selfish, arrogant, or all of the above. But when therapists think about narcissism, they look at it in an entirely different way; the narcissistic person isn’t someone who has too much self-confidence but someone who has taken on a certain posture to protect herself from feeling “less than.” Under the exterior of entitlement and superiority, there is a cavern full of self-doubt and fear of failing.
A child’s need for approval and acceptance is fundamental to overall mental health. Whether it is the way parents react or the way a child interprets her parents’ responses or a combination of both, a child who feels that she is only loved when she does things that please her parents will be at high risk for developing narcissistic vulnerability. If she grows up believing that when she does something well her parents are delighted, but when she fails to live up to their standards they will reject or humiliate her, then the seeds for splitting have been sown. Rather than learning to accept herself as an imperfect person who has both talents and shortcomings, she will strive to focus on only those parts of herself that had been good enough for others. Her shortcomings and other qualities that didn’t earn the family’s approval are pushed out of sight, and the memories of failing are filed into the “bad” drawer of her emotional filing cabinet.
There are several problems that are created by this solution. First, the child becomes dependent on other people to judge her self-worth. Just as she needs her parents to recognize and applaud her achievements in order to feel securely connected, she will go through life looking for other people to provide her with a sense of well-being rather than supplying that for herself. Second, even when she tries to ignore it, she senses that there are many aspects of herself that she must keep hidden. Rather than learn to judge for herself whether or not these traits are so terrible, she avoids acknowledging them. This leads to troubling feelings that include self-doubt, shame, and a sense of being a fraud. The effort it takes to keep these weaknesses concealed will make it intolerable for her to accept them in another person and resentful of the pressure to always be perfect. Third, if she ever gets criticized or fails to live up to her own standards, she is at risk for splitting and flooding, which create a downward spiral where the problem seems far worse than it really is. If weakness or failure opens the “bad” drawer of her emotional filing cabinet, she will be overwhelmed by the harshness of old emotional memories that compound how terrible it feels to fail. These dynamics put her at risk for being excessively critical of others and highly overreactive when someone criticizes her.
Adam’s Story
Adam had worked hard to build his company from the one-room office he had inherited from his father into a highly-respected firm with over eighty employees. He told his new hires that he demanded the best and that they would be rewarded for excellence. Adam liked to believe that he was a good mentor but had difficulty letting go of responsibility. He needed to review each proposal before it went out to make sure that it was thorough, accurate, and clear. If he found a flaw, he would simply correct it himself but hold the error as “strike one” against the employee. If something similar happened again, he would often erupt in a screaming tirade aimed at that employee and everyone associated with that project. Even after a few close associates commented to him that he was getting a pretty bad reputation, Adam clung to his right to demand perfection. He would occasionally try to make amends by joking and saying, “I don’t say anything to another person that I don’t say to myself,” and decided that if people couldn’t take the heat, they didn’t fit into his company. One day, a business trip was unexpectedly canceled at the last moment, and he let himself in through the back entrance of his office suite. He was stunned and deeply upset to hear a group of his most trusted employees mocking his latest rage attack. They joked about his abysmal leadership skills and shared stories of errors that Adam had made that somehow were excused. Adam felt humiliated, betrayed, and overcome with a profound sense that their criticism was justified. It took days for him to shake the sense of shame and guilt he had for having become such a pathetic figurehead. What Adam had wanted the most was affirmation and respect; what he had earned was the opposite.
External Critics
Whether at work or in private life, there will always be people who judge us unfavorably. Sometimes we react as if a critic is intending to hurt us, and we become defensive or go on the attack. Our ability to distinguish the motives of those who criticize us is important but complicated.
Loaded Criticism
Often, criticism is loaded with forces that are intended to reduce you rather than help you. In chapter 6, I spoke about the sibling rivalry and childhood competition that come from the need to be recognized. The wish to be the best may begin in childhood, but it certainly doesn’t end there. Just as the leader of an animal pack is the one who is able to demonstrate strength in order to dominate, certain people also strive to capture power by diminishing the competition. Working closely with others evokes the kind of competition that exists among siblings and can unleash aggressive envy if a coworker is promoted or recognized (Vecchio 2000, 2005). Criticism from a peer may reveal a layer of competition that you were formerly unaware of, providing you with important information about the system in which you are operating. There is a difference between honest feedback from a peer offered in a supportive way to help you improve or advance and comments that are intended to reduce you in the eyes of others.
Top-down criticism may also be more aggressive than i
s necessary. Drs. Jenny Hoobler and Daniel Brass confirmed a trickle-down pattern where recently criticized supervisors tended to pass that on to the people who reported to them. Even worse, supervisors who felt disenchanted with their company or thwarted in their personal progress were found to be hostile and even abusive toward employees who reported to them. Researchers also speculate that narcissistic employees may become aggressive when their performance evaluation isn’t confirmed by senior management. Since they are not able to resolve problems with their own superiors, they act out against the people who are below them on the ladder (Hoobler and Brass 2006).
Loaded criticism may also be related to a larger problem within the company or system. There is a history of events that occurred before you came onto the scene, and that history may persist in spirit. If, through affiliation or personality, you come to represent one side of a former conflict, then you may receive residual disapproval or condemnation for a problem you had nothing to do with. This can occur in families as well as companies.
Elaine and Jeffrey’s Story
Elaine and Jeffrey worked hard to make their marriage strong. It was a second marriage for both, and they realized how lucky they were to have found compatibility, humor, and shared values. Both felt very comfortable sharing their most honest feelings and thoughts, so Elaine was shocked when Jeffrey started to criticize her for being rigid and a fun killer. Jeffrey explained to me that he had a small extended family but had a few cousins who liked to spend time with him on the weekends. The couple had fought when Jeffrey accepted a cousin’s invitation for the couple to spend a day at his beach home. Rather than be happy with this plan, Elaine had asked, “Why would you want us to spend a whole day with him? Didn’t you tell me that he was being investigated for insurance fraud and hadn’t paid any child support for two years?” Jeffrey had burst into a stream of criticism and complaints and accused Elaine of trying to prevent him from being close to anyone but her.
When I asked Elaine to talk about her comments, she explained that she had only met this cousin twice before and certainly didn’t want to prevent Jeffrey from being close with any relative he wanted to. “But,” she continued, “Jeffrey talks about this cousin quite a bit, and all I ever hear is the bad stuff. From what I hear, he is not exactly reputable. He certainly hasn’t done the right thing with his children or his business. I’m only basing my opinion of him on what Jeffrey has told me.”
As Elaine explained her perspective, Jeffrey could see how his comments had, in fact, been one-sided. He explained that the stories that had unfolded in the past year didn’t undo the countless wonderful memories of the fun the two boys had shared growing up. While Jeffrey had a hard time figuring out what had led his cousin to do the things that he also disapproved of, his love for his cousin went back to the good times they had accumulated over the years.
Jeffrey’s mother had been critical of his cousin and just about everyone on his dad’s side of the family. She seemed to think her side of the family was better and sabotaged Jeffrey’s plans to hang out with his father’s brothers and their sons. This theme had been repeated in his first marriage, as his ex-wife had been critical of almost all of his friends The worst part was that both his mother and his ex-wife made it seem that if he didn’t share their opinions, there was something wrong with him. Instead of wondering what Elaine was basing her comments on, Jeffrey had experienced her as being the same as two women from his past who had imposed their judgments on him for too long. Elaine had simply stepped into a loaded situation with little information to guide her.
Reenactments
Just as children repeat a theme in their play until it somehow no longer holds interest for them, adults tend to act out their predicaments with people who give them that opportunity. Self-esteem and self-confidence are tender aspects of well-being and can easily be damaged. People who feel diminished may try to reverse that feeling by viewing another person as the one who is diminished. By blaming or devaluing another person, they can feel better about themselves. They are reenacting a situation where someone is perceived as incompetent, but in this version, they get to play the opposite role.
Helpful Criticism
Although the word “criticism” has come to mean “judgment” and to imply failure, criticism is often offered as a way to make things better. Although it is true that being criticized means that you are being evaluated, the criticizer may be seeing you as part of a larger situation that needs to change.
Criticism as Feedback
Often, a comment that feels like criticism is actually a form of feedback, or information that helps a system regulate itself. A thermostat, for example, helps “inform” the furnace of the temperature of a dwelling. When the house has reached the desired temperature, the thermostat supplies feedback to the furnace so that the furnace can shut down at the appropriate time. When the house becomes cold again, the thermostat provides information so that the burner “knows” that it’s time to kick in again. The thermostat is providing information that is vital to the successful work of the furnace. The thermostat isn’t criticizing the furnace as being too strong or poor a performer but only providing the information that is required for appropriate cooling down or heating up.
This kind of information is particularly useful to have when we are working closely with others, whether that be at home or at work. It is also important to be receptive to feedback when we are trying to learn a new skill or take on new responsibilities. Simply deciding to do something doesn’t make anyone an expert. There’s always a learning curve, and starting out means starting at the bottom.
If you are the kind of person who bristles when anyone has a comment about your performance, you might ask yourself whether there’s a discrepancy between the way you evaluate yourself versus the way others view you. If the criticism concerns an area you feel confident about and you have narcissistic tendencies, then you are quite likely to have an emotional overreaction. This was shown in an interesting research study in which subjects went through two related but different scenarios (Rhodewalt and Morf 1998). In the first part of the experiment, the subjects were given a task that was easy to perform correctly. They were asked to rate themselves and they received outside evaluation as well. Obviously, this part of the experiment was a win-win scenario. But in the second part of the experiment, the task was purposefully made impossible, and the subjects became extremely frustrated. Suddenly, they weren’t able to get the results they had before or to live up to their own expectations. The combination of failure following success also made them more reactive to the evaluation of the external viewers. Subjects who had no expectations of how well they were going to do struggled with the difficult task but did not get upset with the outside evaluations.
In other words, if you see yourself as a beginner, you might be receptive to feedback that will help you improve. You expect to make errors, and you can forgive yourself when you make small mistakes. As you gain expertise, your evaluation of your progress in combination with the positive feedback from others makes you feel more secure and confident in your ability. These may be the situations for which it becomes most difficult to receive critical feedback. If the external review focuses on things you believe you can do well enough, the discrepancy in how you perceive yourself versus the way you are viewed by others may make it difficult not to feel bad.
Criticism as Useful New Information
In any situation that involves other people, there will always be a need for new information. Our worlds at home and at work are constantly changing, and we need to change along with them. Sometimes you may perceive a comment as unfair criticism when it is actually a request for change. The person providing the criticism is really asking you to comprehend that circumstances have changed and that he needs you to do something differently for his sake. In this kind of situation, you need to focus less on defending what you are used to doing and more on the end goal. If you ultimately want this relationship or situation to succeed, then the inf
ormation you are hearing is truly an opportunity to make things better for everyone involved.
Melanie’s Story
Melanie thoroughly enjoyed being a mother. Even though there were days when her two daughters were at each other’s throats or very demanding, she believed that she had raised daughters who possessed the values that were most important to her. Even though Brenda, the elder of the two, would be entering high school in two months, Melanie had confidence that Brenda would make healthy decisions and keep a good balance between schoolwork, sports, friends, and community volunteer work. She was thrown off guard when her younger child Julia, almost eleven at the time, responded sarcastically when Melanie asked her if she had put on sunscreen as they headed to her tennis lesson. While Melanie was accustomed to Brenda’s tendency to want to do things for herself, this comment from Julia had a hostile flavor that Melanie wasn’t used to. Melanie was even more shocked by what happened next. After she casually responded that she only had Julia’s best interest at heart, Julia got even angrier: “Mom, you always need to be in control and make sure that everyone does things exactly the way you want. I’m getting sick of it.”
Melanie felt like she was being kicked in the stomach. She felt a surge of anger and was tempted to tell Julia that she was an ungrateful brat. But while she was trying to compose herself and think of what to do, Brenda stepped in. “Mom, please don’t get angry. Julia is trying to tell you something that I feel too sometimes. We know you only want the best for us, but if you constantly check up on us, then it makes us doubt that we can do the right thing all by ourselves. We’re just not little kids anymore, and we don’t like it when you treat us like we are.” Melanie’s anger turned into shame, but then she was able to think about how wise her daughters were. She looked at them with pride, recognizing that they really weren’t little girls anymore. This conversation was exactly what she had needed to prepare herself for moving on to the next set of parenting challenges: providing her children with the space they needed to learn how to fly on their own. Chances are that Julia had put sunscreen on, and second-guessing her wasn’t going to be helpful. Better to have a daughter with red cheeks than a daughter who has no self-confidence and needs to depend on other people to make decisions for her. Better yet is to have a daughter who believes in herself and knows how to stand up for herself in order to express her feelings and request change.
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