Being Too Hard on Yourself

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Being Too Hard on Yourself

(Estimated reading time: 1 min, 10 sec)

Why are you so hard on yourself?

The introspective correspondence continues with Iris’ response to Lucia’s question about why she is being too hard on herself. Read the previous e-mail

Hi Lucia,

First, thank you for your e-mail. I have read it with great pleasure because it is rich in content; you raise many issues and all of them deserve to be explored. One of them touched me the most: that of the “inner judge (inner critic)” — the part of us that stands as the supreme judge of all our actions and choices and is much harsher than a court judge would be.

The Inner Judge

In fact, words like “perverse,” “monster,” “humanly unacceptable,” harshly condemn your choices. Moving from the “inner judge” to a good and strict judge of the court, the words would be different — I think “complicated” instead of “perverse”. The same goes for the questions you ask, like the question: “Am I a monster?” It could be “What part of me is seeking this experience?” or “What’s under the mask?”

2 Ways to Solve a Problem

My idea is that when we try to solve a problem or understand a situation, we can ask “fictitious” questions or “intelligent” questions.

The first, the fictitious ones, do not lead to understanding, but to a right-wrong loop in which it is difficult to find a solution — we are stuck in a situation. We create such a loop when we rely on our inner judgement to make choices.

Curiosity is the key to the latter, the “smart” ones; the ones that lead to understanding our inner dynamics.

When we analyze our patterns, mechanisms and intentions, we can evaluate costs and benefits; and then we can choose an action without judging ourselves too much. You don’t have to control everything.

Iris