Stop Overreacting

by Judith Siegel

  Internal Critics

  People who work or live with individuals who are demanding know how relentless and critical they can be. What they don’t understand is that the intolerance of failure isn’t just reserved for others. People with narcissistic tendencies can be just as vicious to themselves when they don’t perform well.

  Children who grow up in homes where one or both parents were demanding and critical have a higher chance of developing a strong internal critic. Unlike others, who eventually make peace with their imperfections as long as the good qualities outweigh the bad, children from narcissistic families must be vigilant in guarding against the humiliation and rejection they believe their imperfections will evoke. I have worked with many people who only remember earning their parents’ approval and love. At the same time, they can tell me about one or both parents displaying terrible tempers in dealings with other family members.

  When a child unconsciously identifies with a parent, he takes on many qualities that in later years he might question or even regret. Even parents who offer love and security can at times be dominating and demanding. All these qualities will be absorbed into the developing child’s sense of self, leading to an internal voice that mimics parental beliefs and expectations. If that critical, demanding voice is one that you are familiar with, then you may find that it has the power to induce unbearable disappointment and shame. Even a minor setback or failing can open the “bad” drawer of the emotional file cabinet and unleash extreme feelings of worthlessness and even self-loathing.

  Creating Your Own Glass Ceiling

  A demanding inner critic has the potential to help you set goals and work hard to reach them, but a punitive inner critic can have the opposite effect. Because even small failings can lead to splitting and episodes of depression and hopelessness, you might decide to give up altogether and not even try. Or you might create a glass ceiling so that you never have to face the test of your own potential—another common solution. People who compromise this way tend to use excuses and procrastination in order to create a lowered set of expectations. Rather than devote their full energy to a situation that may reveal them to be inadequate, they have a ready excuse if they don’t quite perform up to par. Their goals are far less than their talents deserve, but the glass ceiling prevents them from having to face a punitive inner critic who can punish them if they should fail.

  Being Overextended

  In my private practice, I work with many couples who have become disenchanted and disconnected from each other. Often, one partner is trying to request that something very important be changed. Rather than hear that as new information, the other partner’s response is ­frequently a defensive explanation or a protest against being criticized. It is not unusual for one partner to say, “I never hear about all the good things I do, just the one or two things that aren’t exactly right.” I have learned that this response really means, “I do so many things that are taken for granted and I get so little recognition or appreciation. I give so much more than I get back. And now you want even more.”

  This is as true in the work world as it is at home. Dr. Daniel Coleman (1998) notes the damage that comes with burnout, particularly when it is accompanied by isolation, unfairness, and skimpy rewards. Even without a challenging economy, building a successful career requires commitment and long hours. In an era of layoffs and cutbacks, things are even worse. Most employees are asked to take on more work with little or no additional compensation and no job security. The result is a high level of burnout and disenchantment, which can breed cynicism and emotional withdrawal at work and at home.

  Time away from work used to present opportunities to replenish and renew, but a new set of standards and expectations has been created there as well. Working parents struggle to meet the demands of children, work, maintaining a home, relationships with extended family, and marriage. Parents also find that the time they assume is theirs for relaxation or personal interests is actually consumed with responsibilities that must be shared to keep home life in order, making for child-centered and schedule-dominated families. The result is that adults are overburdened and emotionally undernourished.

  If you have allowed yourself to fall into this cycle of endless giving, then you will have little tolerance for any complaint. In truth, you have given more than you should be expected to give, and at enormous cost to your own well-being. If you are operating from an overextended position, then what you need the most is to have someone acknowledge your efforts and give you opportunities to restore your strength. Chances are that you will automatically resent anyone who seems to be placing additional burdens on you or who devalues what you have produced at enormous effort.

  Many of us have set standards for ourselves that are exceedingly high. At the same time, we view asking for help as a sign of weakness or incompetence. If we find ourselves in an ongoing situation in which there are multiple demands and few resources, we will eventually become depleted. In the absence of balance and nourishment, any criticism can seem unreasonable and cruel. The trick is to identify these trends so that you can prevent the circumstances before they lead to the perfect storm.

  Tolerating Criticism

  Criticism has the power to activate intense and uncomfortable feelings. When we are criticized, we may feel vulnerable, exposed, unfairly picked on, exploited, put down, humiliated, or rejected. Criticism can create anxiety by challenging our security, our right to belong, our sense of self-worth, and our self-image. As in any situation that involves group and family membership, the threat to our well-being will be perceived by our amygdala as an immediate danger. Sometimes the instinct to detect danger is actually justified if the person who has criticized us is not acting in our best interest. More often, we are being offered important information that provides us with useful feedback about the system we are a part of or a request for change that it’s in our interest to acknowledge. To sort it all out, we need to check our urge to react until we can get grounded and respond thoughtfully.

  Oversensitivity

  As much as you may find this difficult to acknowledge, it is important to know if you are predisposed to oversensitivity to any criticism. Ask yourself these questions:

  Does any kind of negative appraisal tend to put you in a bad mood?

  If you can’t learn a sport or hobby quickly, do you tend to just quit?

  Do you find yourself making excuses so that people won’t think badly of you?

  When someone criticizes you, is your first thought to blame someone else?

  Did you grow up with a sibling or parent who was put down for weaknesses?

  Are you too focused on what other people think of you?

  Do people tell you that you are too sensitive?

  Do you tend to beat yourself up whenever you make a mistake?

  Do you ruminate and have a hard time letting go of situations in which you were critiqued?

  Do you tend to procrastinate or set up excuses so that no one expects too much of you?

  Do you secretly think that you are smarter or better than most of the people you interact with?

  If you answered yes to most of these questions, your inner critic has taken too much power over your life. As a child, you learned about standards by living in a world that was created by adults. As an adult, you have the option of deciding for yourself whether the dance of perfection is worth all the angst and pain it is costing you. Chances are that even a small failure can push you into the “all bad” emotional drawer, and your efforts to ward off the damage that criticism wreaks prevent you from getting the benefits that new information can provide.

  Processing Criticism

  Although there is an initial sting whenever you hear something about yourself that isn’t positive, it is important to sort through the defenses and emotional memories that may be adding to your level of discomfort. Splitting and flooding can make you generalize and exaggerate so that a simple failure is no longer about one incident but about you as a person. If o
ne incident, evaluation, or comment has the power to put you in the “all bad” drawer, then you need to identify the generalizations that are likely adding insult to injury. Ask yourself the following questions.

  Is this feedback about one thing you do that isn’t working for others or about everything you do in that role?

  Is this person asking that you change in order to fit in better, or are you inferring from what was said that you will be removed or replaced?

  Do you really believe that you are so perfect that you never make mistakes? If you can admit to messing up on the problem that was brought to your attention, does it mean that you have no value at all?

  Are you so focused on explaining or justifying the past that you cannot imagine how to use this information as feedback that can make things better in the future?

  If you are overly focused on explaining the past, you will not be able to see how much better things could be going forward. If you are mainly concerned with locating fault, then it will be impossible for you to comprehend the lesson that could help improve your life (Stucke and Sporer 2002).

  Thoughtful Responses

  A thoughtful response to criticism begins with acknowledging the nature of emotional discomfort that it has stimulated. You identify feelings that have erupted in order to help you sort through the different components of this experience. If you know that you have a tendency to be too harsh with yourself or if you are fatigued or emotionally depleted, you can remind yourself that seeing the positive will be challenging but is ultimately more important than trying to defend yourself.

  To put the criticism into context, take a moment to consider the source. Is the person offering criticism someone you trust and who typically wants you to succeed? If so, is this an attempt to offer you valuable information? If the message seems negatively charged, is it possible that the delivery has more to do with circumstances that extend beyond the two of you? Is something about the way the message is being delivered making it difficult to focus just on the information?

  If this person is not someone you know well, or is someone you have no reason to trust, ask yourself if this exchange is a form of anger or domination. Is this someone who views herself as competing with you in some way? Is this person closely aligned with a subgroup that you have not been able to join? Does your status or recognition of you by a third party create envy or a threat to someone else that you might not have been aware of? If your amygdala has signaled danger, ask yourself if there may be more going on behind the scenes than you are aware of.

  Most criticism contains important information. A thoughtful response allows us to look at the feedback and new information in ways that might actually help us to do a better job. If we respect that the source of the criticism has valid experience and is invested in making things work out, then our ability to absorb the useful part of criticism will make it easier to shift our perspective away from shame and blame.

  End-of-Chapter Exercises

  Most people tend to believe that the way they have handled situations in the past is due to inherent personality. Instead of viewing behavior as something they could change, they assume that the way they have responded in the past is the way they will continue to respond in the future. However, many of the ways that we learned to deal with criticism are related to experiences we had while growing up. The following exercises can help you look at patterns you might have learned when you were too young to know that there were alternatives.

  Exercise 1: Challenging Splitting

  In your notebook or journal, write down your answers to the following questions. Take as long as you need and use as much paper as you require.

  Part 1

  The parts of myself that I am most proud of are:

  The parts that I like least about myself are:

  Count up the number of virtues and flaws that you wrote down. Look at the ratio of good to bad. If your ratio was close to 50:50 or 60:40, then you seem to be comfortable with accepting both your assets and your limitations. If your ratio for good to bad is closer to 20:80, then you are viewing yourself through the eyes of a punitive inner critic. You have given in to a worldview and expectations for yourself that were created when you were too little to understand what was being asked of you. Your preoccupation with fault may lead you to become self-doubting and unable to stick with opportunities to reach positive goals. If you were only comfortable writing about your strengths and your ratio is 80:20, then you are under a lot of pressure to live up to high standards. You have difficulty tolerating weakness in yourself and others and may be so uncomfortable with your faults that it’s hard to focus on improving them.

  Part 2

  Learning to forgive weakness in others is an important step.

  First consider the traits or weaknesses you like the least in yourself. Write down one characteristic that you are ashamed of. Do you think one or both of your parents had a problem with this characteristic of yours? If so, think of a memory that made you come to that conclusion. What made it difficult for them to lighten up? Did either of your parents also have that characteristic that was judged so harshly in you? Were your parents able to forgive weakness in their children and other people, or did they tend to hold on to minor transgressions?

  Now focus on yourself. How easily do you forgive others who have let you down? How easily do you forgive yourself for the weaknesses you just wrote about? Often our push for perfection and our difficulty accepting weakness in ourselves and others is absorbed along with other family values that were modeled by our parents. We may never challenge this pattern or know that it is possible to choose a different option. If difficulty forgiving transgressions is a family pattern, then it’s time to evaluate if it is a strength that brings happiness and success or, in itself, a weakness that should be corrected. Challenging the past will be explored in more depth in chapter 13.

  Exercise 2: Acknowledging Unmet Needs

  Write down your answers to the following questions in your notebook or journal. Once again, take as much time and paper as you need.

  What are the challenges, pressures, and responsibilities in your life right now? How many hours are you working or worrying about these responsibilities?

  What are the things in your life that make you laugh or feel restored? How many hours a week do you get to do these things?

  Look at the ratio of your challenges to the opportunities you have to replenish yourself. Do you think that you give yourself enough time to build the restorative energy required to balance your burdens? If not, answer the following questions:

  Is there anyone who could help share some of the load if you asked them?

  Do you have an opportunity to delegate but find that difficult to do?

  Do you tend to do for others without asking them to take over responsibilities they are capable of?

  Do you find it difficult to put your needs ahead of the needs of others?

  Do you find that you have said yes to too many commitments but can’t back out?

  Does asking others for help make you uncomfortable? If so, think about reasons that might be behind your self-sufficiency: You don’t want to owe anything to anybody.

  You don’t want others to see you as being inadequate.

  You couldn’t stand being turned down, so it’s better not to ask.

  You just don’t believe that the people in your world would do much for you.

  You value your ability to live up to your responsibilities.

  You have never taken the easy way out and don’t intend to start now.

  If people really cared about you, they wouldn’t need to be asked to help.

  You just have a hard time asking for help.

  Your emotional health can’t fully recover unless you learn that it’s okay to request help and to reconfigure the ratio of obligation to restoration so that you are not operating out of exhaustion. When you are emotionally or physically depleted, it will be almost impossible for you to hear a request for change as anything ot
her than harsh criticism. Remember, some of the criticism that is difficult to hear is being offered as a form of feedback that could lead to improvement. When you are operating from a balanced posture, you can be more able to hear and respond to it that way.

  Chapter 9

  Control

  Even though we live in a technologically sophisticated world, our emotional response system was created eons ago. We are primed to react intensely and immediately to perceived danger, which includes threats to our emotional security as well as to our physical safety. We are also hardwired to compete in order to establish our relative social status. These forces complicate our lives because we depend on group membership for survival, but we fight each other to get and keep what is best for us as individuals.

  Personal Control

  There is a difference between having control over ourselves and needing to be in control of others. However, the two positions can overlap when the things that we want involve making others participate or comply, or when others make demands on us that we’re not comfortable with. Having control usually means having the power to allocate resources and determine outcomes. Often that means having the freedom to get what we want and protect the things that matter to us. While it is not possible to always get our way, we each have aspects of our lives that are central to our sense of safety and well-being. When we are unable to preserve control over these areas, we can stumble into feelings of helplessness and depression. In extreme situations, a lack of control can even strip us of the will to live. With stakes that high, it is no wonder that even a relatively minor loss of control can evoke an intense emotional response.