The Critic and the Perfectionist

We all tell stories. It’s possibly the most fundamental things about our psychological lives: they are made up of elements of stories we tell ourselves about other people and about ourselves. In fact, there’s a whole network of brain structures that is in charge of this continuous storytelling. This activity is very important because it’s the stories we tell about the world that give it meaning. We behave as if we are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves – these stores are the fundamental pillar of our reality. Because we have stories, we have an interpretative framework to understand what things are and what to do with them, what actions we have available to us.

The trick is that not all of these stories are good for us. If you struggle with anxiety, then you’re no stranger to weaving catastrophic stories about yourself and you know how powerful a bad story can be – a story in which you play the role of the villain, how easily these stores trigger spiraling anxiety, threat and guilt.

Very often, we refer to certain storytelling methods by names. Before psychologists began talking about “subpersonalities” or “internal family systems” or forms of therapy like narrative therapy, there was the original seed of this kind of thinking: Miller Mair’s narrative interpretation of personal construct psychology. According to Mair’s way of thinking none of us is a completely unified person, as this isn’t always very adaptive considering the wealth of contradictory experiences we all have, and a multitude of roles we have to play. Instead of having just one self, we have what he called “the community of selves”. That’s right, you are not one, you are many, just as Walt Whitman once proclaimed!

Today, I want to introduce you to two specific parts of you that may reside in your brain, responsible for much of the excess anxiety that you feel: the Critic and the Perfectionist.  You can think of them as two sides of the same coin. One hates you, the other loves you. One wants the worst for you, the second wants the best. But they both cause suffering and an abundance of anxiety.

The Critic

The Critic is that part of you that’s in charge of lowering your self-esteem as much as possible and ultimately crushing any self-worth that’s left. It’s that little nagging voice that judges everything that you do and that inflates all your flaws to the point of seeming like grave character defects that overshadow every good thing you’ve ever done. The Critic makes you anxious by making you out to be a horrible, incompetent person or by making you believe you have to depend on other people for every little thing. He likes to tell you things like:

·        “You just can’t do anything right!”

·        “Well, that’s dumb!”

·        “You are such a disappointment!”

·        “Why are you always so lousy?”

·        “Don’t even bother, you’ll fail at this like you fail at everything else.”

·        “There’s something truly wrong with you…”

At first, you may resist and understand that some of the things the Critic aims at are small things, irrelevant in the larger scope of things. But as Critics tend to be persistent, soon enough you may start believing them. And then, suddenly, the “you’re good for nothing” narrative becomes the central element of the story about yourself that you weave, weaving anxiety along with it.

The Perfectionist

Whereas the Critic is easy to vilify, since the Critic’s goal is to destroy your self-worth, his counterpart, the Perfectionist is a tougher nut to crack. Whereas the Perfectionist is your outright enemy and that’s clear enough, the Perfectionist is seemingly your ally.

The Perfectionist doesn’t want to put you down for the sake of putting you down. No. The Perfectionist wants to help you get better. Even better than better – perfect! Mind you, the Perfectionist  doesn’t know that perfection doesn’t exist and isn’t attainable, so it’s hard for that part to know where to draw the line, so (s)he adopts one repetitive approach: whatever you do, surely it could have been done better. If it’s not perfect, it simply isn’t goot enough, reality be damned. The Perfectionist is perpetually blind to contextual limitations so (s)he isn’t aware of what can realistically be done.

As your Perfectionist is reading this, you may hear him/her scoffing: contextual limitations, what a load of crap – you can and must do better! The perfectionist doesn’t have time for setbacks or being tired or flawed or uninterested or having too much on your plate. Perfection is the only thing that a perfectionist sees. Everything else is not good enough.

When you hear me or another shrink talk about self-worth being inherent and how you don’t have to do anything to love yourself or to deserve love, the Perfectionist isn’t convinced.

A few years ago, a client of mine said a sentence I can’t get out of my head because it so clearly illustrates how the Perfectionist operates. We were discussing self-love and she said: “I could easily love myself if I could just be everything I want.” In other words, of course I would love myself if I were perfect but since I’m not, then no self-love for me.

When the Perfectionist speaks, (s)he likes to use musts, have tos, and shoulds:

·        I must do this perfectly.

·        I should be able to handle all this work.

·        I have to get straight As.

·        I could have done this better.

·        I should have done this better.

·        I haven’t tried hard enough.

Putting a name to the voice

It’s not very useful to argue with these two. Think of them as online trolls and the last thing you want to do is feed them. For every response that you come up with, they will come up with ten more questions and ten different ways in which you’re absolutely horrible, or at the very least, could have done better.

Instead, try to get to know them.

When the Critic or the Perfectionist rear their annoying, demanding heads, say their words out loud. Say them carefully, try saying them in different ways, different speeds, different tones of voice. Ask yourself some questions that may help you visualize them:

·        Is this part of me male or female or nonbinary – or something else entirely, perhaps even genderless?

·        How do you imagine their tone of voice?

·        Do you know anyone who speaks that way or has talked to you like that?

·        Try visualizing those words coming from a person: tall or short?

·        What kind of clothes would a person like that wear?

·        Don’t call them the Critic or the Perfectionist. Come up with a name? Is it a George? A Mona? A Susan or a Karen?

If you know how to draw – draw them. If you prefer to write, then imagine their entire life story and write it. Add as many details as you possibly can, until the image of this person is vivid in your awareness. I once had a client who majored in creative writing and she created a journal where she wrote about her Perfectionist’s days in first person. She gave him a name, a biography, a job and imagined what it’s like to be that voice who always says “this isn’t good enough”. Through the journaling experience, she learned how to view that part in a way that she never thought possible – she discovered that she became very empathetic and could relate to the suffering of that “job”. After all, imagine spending your days inflicting suffering upon others? Not the sexiest job you can imagine doing! What a bitter, cynical person you must become?

This is not just a futile exercise to pass the time. By imagining that part of you, you’re getting to know yourself too. After all, it may be a small part of you, but it is, nonetheless, a part of you. It’s also a part that is disproportionately important, since it’s a major source of your anxiety. At the same time, you’re visualizing a person, so someone else, at least metaphorically speaking so it makes it easier to step away from those difficult thoughts and you start becoming less affected by them.

Once you can see the critic as someone you can talk to you start establishing a relationship too.

Parts such as the inner Critic or the inner Perfectionist are often internalized voices of our parents or important authority figures – people whose love and good intentions are shown in a way that comes across as critical or uncaring. Instead of saying “I want the best for you” they somehow end up saying “You’re not good enough” – or at the very least that’s how, young, inexperienced, and eager to please our parents, we understand their words.

It’s not my intention to justify anyone’s actions or words – that’s beside the point. The point is that someone’s actions or words, whatever their intention may have been, gave birth to a part of our personality that we now carry along and have no choice but live with. And if we are going to share mental space, then we might as well know our roommates and get along.

Observing the Critic/ Perfectionist in everyday life

Once you are able to imagine that part of you, see how it operates in your everyday life. See if you can notice the following:

·        What triggers this part to show up?

·        Do you ever make a mistake or do something that’s never criticized or evaluated? (Think even the weirdest areas of your life – hobbies, walks, yoga, sex, afternoon naps – anything even if it’s small and rare.)

·        What’s considered evidence that you’re not doing well?

·        How well does that part of you assess the situations you find yourself in?

·        Are there any good things in those situations that this part perhaps misses?

Entering the dialogue

Slowly, over time, you may engage in dialogue with that part. I say slowly and I say over time because it’s very tempting to fight with it, to resist, to try to beat it by appealing to logic. None of that is useful.

Remember: we don’t change psychologically because it’s logical. If logic were all there was to us, this world would look very differently. No one stopped being anxious because they suddenly discovered their anxiety doesn’t conform to rules of good thinking set up by a bearded Greek two and a half millennia ago.

Debating is rarely an art form that leads to meaningful change and isn’t helpful to do. We debate to win, not to understand or to get someone else to understand us. The same goes for our internal dialogue. Logic is not going to make your Perfectionist change because (s)he has its own logic, its own reality and its own truth.

When we enter into dialogue with someone, it’s best to do so with the attempt to understand, by asking question like:

·        Why is this important to you?

·        How do you know that this is true?

·        How does it make you feel when I do X?

·        What is the worst thing you think that can happen if I continue to do/think like this?

Find out the “real” agenda behind the senseless pontificating and criticism. Is it for you to be happy? Is it for you to be successful? Is it to live a meaningful life? It can be many things…. Once you find that agenda, examine what it means for you and is that the agenda you want for your life. And if you do – what’s the next best step you can take in your imperfect way, in this imperfect world.

In psychotherapy, we act out dialogues. We get another chair and then you have a conversation with your Perfectionist or your Critic, a respectful, fruitful conversation mediated by the therapist, a conversation that leads to mutual understanding. If you’ve ever been to couples therapy – something along those lines. This is rather helpful because it tends to end with more self-compassion, more understanding and backing of on all sides. That is to say, not only does this slowly start to change the Perfectionist or the Critic, it also starts to change other parts of you. And that’s an important thing about change: when you change, you can’t just change what you like and have everything else stay the same! In other words, it’s not just the Critic or the Perfectionist that is the problem, it’s also the rest of the framework which provides conditions for them to continue to exist.

Establishing dialogue is like having diplomatic talks. You will have to understand what the other side wants to achieve, give up on something only to get something in return. It’s through these kinds of conversations that true transformation comes about.

The future of your anxiety

Changing those parts of our personality that make us anxious is a long-term project. A “problem” that has evolved and that has been with you for years won’t go away in a matter of days or even months, for that matter. There are many things that you can do to make that process easier for yourself and to ease your anxiety in your everyday life:

·        Learn defusion techniques to deal with anxiety-inducing thoughts and you can, in fact, start doing that right now if you click here

·        Learn meditation and reduce your baseline anxiety levels with regular practice

·        Start practicing breathing exercises

·        Use relaxation exercises like progressive muscle relaxation

·        Practice grounding

·        Identify triggers and proactively manage them to the best of your ability

·        You can use herbal supplements that may help you and even medication if your psychiatrist deems them necessary

·        Exercise regularly

·        Pay attention to your food and lifestyle choices: reduce caffeine intake, for example

Keep one thing in mind, though: anxiety will never go away completely, and this is not because of your Critic or your Perfectionist. Anxiety is there because it’s a normal part of life. It’s not good when there’s too much of it, but in and of itself, anxiety as a feeling invites you to expand your horizons and find meaning in a particularly challenging situation.

As a normal part of life, we are faced with situations we couldn’t have predicted or situations that we don’t fully understand and anxiety is, in fact, what tells us that we don’t have appropriate tools to deal with something. It invites us to set better boundaries, deal with our co-workers, partners, children or parents in a different way. Anxiety can alert us that we perhaps aren’t OK with an arrangement we agreed to. One could, in fact, say that negative emotions have more to teach us than positive ones, and as such, should be cherished and appreciated.