Inner Criticism

  One of the interesting things we have seen recently is the spate of self-help books which describe how to 'silence' one's 'inner critic'. But can and does criticism always necessarily serve a disparaging, negative function? I suppose the answer to this question depends on the context in which the criticism is framed. If the criticism becomes very damning, it can be so easy to forget one's own strengths, and this kind of criticism can even weaken the will to live or survive in the world. A very self-critical stance toward actions one committed in the past can create a huge and almost insurmountable regret. By suggesting that what was done is all my fault, I am carrying a heavy burden of guilt on my shoulders, and it makes my steps heavy as a result. If I find myself getting that way, then chances are that I am globalizing a single moment into an incredibly huge judgment about myself. And this can tend to make me feel extremely heavy and even hopeless about the future.
    I am continuing to read Ian Suttie's Origins of Love and Hate, and I resonate a lot with the idea that people tend to reject sentimental or warm feelings, on the grounds that they don't feel 'deserving' of those feelings. I agree with Suttie that part of the taboo on tenderness probably arises from early childhood, when one's parents may not have always been emotionally available or so eager to embrace their child, due to all sorts of responsibilities as well as the existential reality that we are separate (even though intertwined). The price of becoming an individual is to suffer intermittent disengagement with others, and I even wonder if perhaps that early tenderness one felt as a baby could ever be fully recovered in adult life. I think what later happens is that when a child no longer feels nurtured, she or he interprets this to somehow mean that they did something wrong or bad. Thus, the loss of love in life is associated with a kind of punishment for being somehow inadequate or doing something wrong. The deleterious result of all this is that a child can tend to associate gaining love with the threat of losing it all over again. The result is that the child might start to disengage out of anticipation of a future rejection.
   To bring me back to the topic: I wonder if perhaps the function of a lot of self-criticism is in fact to guard oneself against the desire for forgiveness or nurturing from others. How this works is that a person feels needy yet does not want to take too much from others, for fear that they will then have to pay it back again. We internalize the idea that love is a series of 'points' that are given and taken away, as though it were so conditional. And that explains the reluctance to engage, for fear of taking too much away.