Critical Voice

Recognizing how our psycho-emotional stance affects our perceptions and relations

As I delve into topics such as psychological visibility and interpersonal relationships, I've rediscovered a concept from therapy and self-help literature.  The concept is so incisive.  Critical voice is a term many use to describe a stance that is fault-finding.  We can operate from a critical voice most of the time and not know it.  I sure do sometimes.

We can look at others from this place: distancing, blaming, critiquing and judging their choices.  This behavior is repellent to lovers and friends and family.  But we can also turn this critical eye towards ourselves, and we often do.

We may have learned it from a parent who criticized us.  We may have learned gossip and downloaded that behavior into our social routine.  Gossip, I suppose, would be the use of critical voice on someone not present or spoken for.

As an aside, I've recently been reminded of the destructive nature of gossip.  I don't like it and yet it seems to seduce us.  Perhaps the ego enjoys the downward comparison or not being the one that is criticized for the moment.

And that critical voice can be our semi-permanent state and stance.  In talks with a friend recently, we discovered the critical nature of his self-talk and that it came from a close family member.  So it's easy to, upon discovering that we've downloaded one of our parents to...you guessed it, criticize ourselves.  But we really need to love ourselves.  We must forgive ourselves for being human.  It's natural to unconsciously model behaviors as children.  It's how we survive both physically and psychologically.

Maybe if we can love and forgive ourselves for the error, we can eventually forgive the person who taught us this destructive behavior.

I also notice that when people have been manipulated, they tend to project that critical person onto others.  They apologize to us as if we were mad at them when they make a small mistake.  They may even assume we are mad at them when we are not.

So we can play the hero and soothe them and say everything is ok.  And we should.  But what's equally important is that we don't allow them or our critical inner voice to start making the blame-game the new modus operandi.  We must redouble our efforts to notice when we are in critical voice towards ourselves or others.

We can break this spell within ourselves and our relationships.  We do so via the awareness that we have a critical voice/stance.  Also by recognizing when we are in it and then by choosing to leave this place and enter one of love and openness.

If and when we can't or won't, perhaps we are holding onto some fear, some complaint, some hurt or some misunderstanding.  These can feel like blocks to love and peace and flow and connection.  The simplest ways to clear these are to communicate.  Maybe we journal to ourselves.  Maybe we tell them how we feel.  Then we let them clarify or apologize or leave or ponder.

Maybe we attempt to relate to them and imagine how it must be to embody their lives and struggles.  This is humanizing.  And once the air is cleared, it just feels different.

As a sensitive person, I experience a sense of feeling blocked or disconnected very profoundly.  When the air is cleared I feel it in my guts too.  More and more lately I experience a felt sense of connection or disconnection with a person I haven't seen or spoken to in days/weeks/months if there is/was intimacy or the potential for it.  I've only noticed this recently.

I guess I couldn't previously separate this felt bodily sense from the cacophony of other thoughts, feelings and sensations in my body.  For me it's between the solar plexus and heart: the knot of vishnu in yogic terms. 

How do you feel those felt senses of connection and their absence?

And can you recognize when you’re in critical voice?