But the need to belong doesn’t stop there. For our now attached and belonging selves, maintaining good standing with the group is the top priority. To protect us, the Inner Critic amps up its surveillance and actively scans for the threat of a loss of good feelings from the group in the form of rejection.
Know Negativity Bias and the Nature of Fear
“We are something of a tragic species because our minds are easily taken over by ancient brain systems that give rise to fears, passions, and desires for...self-protection.”
— Dr. Paul Gilbert, founder of Compassion Focused Therapy
Even though he proved Mr. Jones wrong, Eliott can still recall with vivid detail the moment when his high school guidance counselor told him that he didn’t think he was college material. He can almost hear the shouts of the students in the gym next door, smell the slightly damp odor of the small, windowless office, feel the rough texture of the plastic chair under his moist palms that he had sandwiched underneath his thighs to contain his sense of shock as his hopes for the future evaporated in front of his eyes.
Interestingly, Eliott doesn’t remember the same level of detail from another event that same week. His shop teacher complimented him on the oar that he had honed from salvaged wood. Through college, he constantly battled the feeling that with his working class background he didn’t really belong in university. But he worked through his misgivings to get his MFA, with a specialty in found object sculpture.
The first experience, but not the second, embedded itself so thoroughly into Eliott’s memory because of the brain’s tendency to focus on the negative. Evolutionary psychologists refer to this as “negativity bias.” Rick Hanson, author of Wired for Happiness and Buddha’s Brain is fond of saying “the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.”3
According to Hanson, for a positive experience to transfer to our long-term memory, we have to put effort toward holding the experience in our minds. In stark contrast, when a negative experience does happen – particularly early in our lives – the brain lights up like a like a sports arena scoreboard. Then fear conditioning, an evolutionary self-defense mechanism that enables us to acquire and store information about de facto or potentially harmful circumstances, kicks in. The mind embeds the experience into long-term memory, easily accessible for future need and indelibly marked in our minds. We tend to overlook the positive in our lives, and focus on the negative as if our lives depended upon it – because back hundreds of thousands of years ago, it did.
In the natural environment, negative information typically signifies a threat. Imagine yourself as a hunter-gatherer, out exploring a new area for food. Ahead of you, just off to the right, you notice a slight movement in the bush, and then a brightly colored snake emerges and slithers across the path. A while later, a lovely winged butterfly flits in front of you. Which do you think your brain will catalogue and then remind you of the next time you are in that location and how do you think you’ll act? Because the snake is considered a threat, it is far more important than the ephemeral beauty of a butterfly to a brain bent on survival. If you returned to that spot, you’d be on the lookout for snakes and would exercise caution or even be afraid. You probably would not, however, look for butterflies.
These days, most of us don’t have to worry about de facto snakes in the grass. But living in the modern world and dealing with people means we are strongly influenced by the need to belong. As social beings, we are most alert to threats that come from those with whom we are closest. Through the ancient circuitry of negativity bias, our brains nonetheless find the emotional equivalent of “snakes” and react to them: when looking at and evaluating ourselves as well as others, we tend to weigh negative facts more heavily than positive ones.4 Then fear conditioning facilitates our ability to remember criticism and judgment far more easily than we do praise.
To be able to protect us in an effective way, we need to upgrade the ancient circuitry running the Inner Critic “system” with the latest update on our present lives and our present emotional needs. To facilitate this upgrade, we’ll employ the more recently evolved part of our brains and utilize the new habit of mindfulness that we are starting to build. Hanson elaborates our goal in a recent online article: “...a mind that sees real threats more clearly, acts more effectively in dealing with them, and is less rattled or distracted by exaggerated, manageable, or false alarms.”5 Being more aware of what your brain and mind do when sensing a potential threat in the form of being judged and receiving criticism will encourage the development of a calmer part of the mind.
With this new information and guidance, our brains can start to respond only to true threats instead of potentially fabricated ones.
Creative Dose: F.E.A.R.
Purpose: To challenge the fears that underlie fears of being judged
The purpose of fear is to protect us from danger in the form of a perceived loss of safety or personal security or a threat of physical pain. In order to not feel fear, people work to avoid threats. The problem is that a strong tendency towards negativity makes us see threats everywhere, and instead of dealing with them, we go into avoidance.
Indeed, the acronym F.E.A.R. is sometimes described as meaning F*ck Everything and Run. Let’s be honest, this is actually pretty accurate – this is what we often do when faced with a situation that scares us, intimidates us, or holds the potential of our being judged or criticized. We’ve all done it at some point in our lives. We’ve abandoned a project because we felt overwhelmed or out of our league. We’ve let a strong potential business prospect languish into nothingness. Or we’ve preemptively shot down every idea we have for fear that others will think it’s stupid. The popular expression “I can’t EVEN” is a strong indicator of a trend for us to turn away from anything that seems to be too much. The problem is much like the 1970s horror movie When a Stranger Calls.6 The threat is not coming from the outside world, it’s coming from inside of our own heads – and try as we might, we can’t run away from ourselves.
There is a great quote from the movie After Earth7 which I feel is a great tool for helping us to put fear into perspective. The character Cypher Raige says this: “Fear is not real. It is a product of the thoughts you create. Do not misunderstand me. Danger is very real. But fear is a choice.”
The better-known description for F.E.A.R. is False Evidence Appearing Real. In contrast, this way of looking at fear is empowering. Combined with the wisdom of Cypher’s quote, we have a powerful tool for becoming more aware of our reactions and beginning the process of reframing them. Through mastering our fears, we can begin to conquer the Inner Critic, and in particular, our fear of being judged and criticized.
The next time you are feeling afraid of something like showing your work to others to get feedback or even a big client presentation, take a mental step back from the situation and really assess it.
Ask yourself this question:
Is there actual immediate danger? In other words, will your safety be compromised, will you be hurt physically, or is your security at risk?
If not, then realize that your fear is coming from thoughts you are generating about events that have not happened yet.
Therefore, instead of feeling fear, you can start to feel hope, because you are in a position to affect what will happen in the future. If you feel like you are in a hopeless situation, it’s the perfect time to get help from friends or professionals.
Let’s take “False Evidence Appearing Real” to the next level with an even more positive spin on F.E.A.R.: Face Everything And Rise. By facing the fears that exist solely in your head, like the fear of being judged and criticized, you create the opportunity to move yourself to a completely different place, triumphing over the limiting thoughts of the Inner Critic.
Don’t be tricked into believing there is a threat when one truly does not exist. You have options: you don’t have to sit in fear.
“Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe enforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn’t just psychological, it’s biological.”
— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Because of his father’s international career, Matthew grew up on multiple continents. Conceived in Africa, born in Australia, and then flown back to Africa at the age of 6 weeks, he lived in Gabon until the age of 2. Although his childhood memories from that time are hazy, he clearly remembers his nanny, whom he adored. She would sing and dance all day with Matthew on her hip, practically treating him as her own son. When Matthew started talking, unsurprisingly, it was in Swahili. And when music came along in his life, dancing with his nanny not only gave him a deep sense of complex rhythms, but also the ability to perfectly imitate any dance step someone was doing.
Dismayed that their son was completely out of touch with the culture of his heritage, his parents moved the family back to Australia. They bought a property on the edge of the outback in Western Australia that was lovely and sprawling, but the natural environment had its dangers, including snakes. To keep Matthew safe, his father instructed him to sing as he walked in the bush to alert the snakes to his presence. Matthew spent countless contented hours wandering through the bush and singing his heart out.
When he got a little older, he started attending a private all-boys school, and teachers discovered his talent. They asked him to perform at assemblies in front of the whole school, which Matthew would throw himself into wholeheartedly. All was well until one day after school on the bus home, when a group of boys attacked him. Tying his hair to a pole on the bus, they beat him up while teasing him about singing and dancing. This went on for months. Each day when he got home, he was a mess physically, but he was in even worse shape mentally. He vowed to never perform again – it was far, far too dangerous.
Throughout his teens and early adulthood, a rage simmered, emerging as abuse to those close to him. His behavior was driven by fear and no longer by joy. Matthew finally decided to look at his fears of expressing his creativity in the way that was most natural for him and heal this wounded part of his soul. He started dabbling in improv, which led to him to sing again and to begin performing poetry to audiences all over the world. Doing Kung Fu helped him to gravitate back to dancing. Now Matthew is a creative powerhouse who is a published author, owns two creative businesses that have been succeeding for over a decade, has spoken at TED and several other of the world’s premier thought-leadership conferences, and coaches individuals to awaken their innate creativity.
Thankfully, most of us had not had such a physically violent experience to deter us from expressing our creativity, but when we feel judged by or receive strong criticism from others, it can feel incredibly threatening nonetheless. Why? Because of contempt.
People are shown contempt when they are not only disliked, but also deemed less than, worthless, and undeserving of respect. When people are shown contempt, their position in the group is in the most jeopardy, because contempt leads to a person being considered the “other,” then considered not to be valuable, and ultimately outcast from the society. To the older parts of our brains, contempt equals rejection, and thus difficulty surviving. Contempt is the antithesis of belonging.
Contempt is communicated overtly by verbal insults, name-calling, and physical violence. However, it is frequently conveyed more subtly nonverbally, especially through tone of voice.8 Thanks to negativity bias combined with our deep need to belong, our brains are subconsciously on constant lookout for threat in the form of contempt, and we learn to read people incredibly quickly, also known as thin-slicing.8 That’s right: whether we know it or not, subliminally we are tuned into every micro-expression, every subtle gesture and change in body language, every intake of breath and other subtle verbal communication cues. Back in the day, lacking awareness of these cues made our chances for survival very slim, so we developed and finely honed these skills to maintain our good standing with the group.
When positive feelings toward us seem on the decline or no longer exist, we feel vulnerable and threatened – and rightly so. In the older part of our brains, the prospect of rejection is equated so strongly with perishing that it immediately triggers a fear response. The problem is that this primordial drive to avoid contempt is still alive and well in modern times.
Much like Matthew vowing to never perform again, at some point in our lives, we’ve avoided putting ourselves into situations where we will potentially be judged and criticized to avoid this form of rejection. In the name of protection, the Inner Critic takes all of the criticisms and comments that we’ve heard over the course of our lives, internalizes them, and uses them to try to modify our behavior to avoid rejection. We learn to relate to ourselves as others have related to us9 – we start to self-judge. Given this, Judgment Dread’s effect of shutting down our creative efforts makes total sense. Since being unvalued by the group is such an innate fear, this form of the Inner Critic is set on obstructing our creativity, works really hard to hold us back from sharing our ideas, and further pushes us to become our own worst judges and our own harshest critics.
Fortunately, our access to the “tribe” these days is in many ways better than ever. With the ease of communication and the advent of being able to travel practically anywhere in the world, the concept of “the group” or our “tribe” is greatly expanded. Even if we don’t fit with our family, town or city, country, culture, or religion of origin, many of us now have the freedom to set out into the world and find the people with whom we do fit: people who will accept us, who will fulfill the need to belong that is an inherent part of our being human, and who will also help to support our creativity.
Raising our awareness of our deep-seated need to belong and avoidance of rejection will transform it from both overtly and subtly influencing our behavior. We can’t control people’s tone of voice, but we also read a lot from expressions. Let’s take conscious control of the need to feel validation from others by reading it on their faces. Instead of letting our search for the threat of contempt run in the background, we can hack our brain’s tendency to thin-slice and instead create a situation in which we see the face of validation and confirmation when we need it.
Creative Dose: A Face of Approval
Purpose: To trigger a sense of safety in the brain
Charles Schwab has said “I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.” It turns out that these are not just empty words. One study showed that people are better able to cope with setbacks and challenges when they were primed with an approving face of a professor.10 Our brains respond immediately and positively to reading approval on the faces of those we respect. This is great news – it means that with support we can leverage the brain’s propensity to do better as a way to mitigate rejection.
Imagine the face of someone you care about who has been consistently supportive of you during your whole life. Imagine that you have a photo of the person smiling at you with an air of, “You’ve got this!”
You can also use an actual photo if you have one. Another powerful option is to draw a picture of this person, if you’re so moved. As you’re drawing it, infuse the experience of feeling supported into the process of creating the image, which will further strengthen your mental and emotional association when you look at the picture.
Post the photo or picture where you do your creative work if you can. If any fears of rejection come up while you are attempting to create, take several moments to either envision that person’s face in your mind’s eye, or to gaze at the photo and imagine the person’s approval of you and confidence in your capabilities.
You can also use this tool whenever you experience any kind of setback. For example, you didn�
�t make the improv team tryouts, they chose another candidate for the job you really wanted, or your book proposal got rejected – again. See your face of approval and know that you’re going to be all right.
See Reality More Clearly
“You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill — you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”
— Morpheus, a character in the movie The Matrix
We’ve already seen how negativity bias influences our perceptions and makes us more sensitive to judgment and criticism. But the Inner Critic’s way of operating is also influenced by two other forms of our inclination to depart from rational thinking and good judgment, otherwise known as cognitive biases. Cognitive biases are like filters on the real world that create an alternate reality of sorts, a distorted perception of what’s real and the realm of what’s possible for us. There are actually multiple versions of reality; it just depends on which is influencing us and coloring our thoughts.
The thoughts generated by the Inner Critic appear to be rational, based in fact, and therefore unquestionably true, but that’s their danger. The deceptively logical nature of the Inner Critic persuades us to follow its restrictive rules without even being aware of it. But the messages of the Inner Critic and the thinking that it encourages – particularly with regard to the fear of being judged and criticized – often couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead of seeing situations as they are, we start to see them as we fear they could be. Much like looking at an object through water, although you’re seeing the item, you’re not seeing its clear, true shape.
Banish Your Inner Critic Page 9