In this post, I want to introduce you to a character you probably know quite well, at least on the subconscious level.

He / she / it is called: YOUR INNER CRITIC.

Five years ago, when I was still buying into the idea that making a ton of effort would finally get my books to sell, I got quite good at doing infographics.

Here’s the one I did for the Inner critic:

==

To cut a very long story short, in our narc-shaped world, most people today have quite a big and nasty ‘inner critic’ to deal with.

And this is also why the advice of just ‘cutting all narcs out of your life’ doesn’t work so well in practise, because if we’ve internalised all the horrible criticism and harsh judgement that was bombarding us from the outside, we basically now have a NARC in-house with us, whispering its poison into our ear, 24/7.

So there are no shortcuts.

And the first place we have to adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to poisonous, soul-destroying harsh judgment and criticism is…. Within ourselves.

==

So then tachlis, how do we do this?

As I keep explaining, the non-Jewish world is great at dissecting the problems, but it’s totally less great at coming up with real, workable and helpful solutions.

Fortunately for us, we aren’t stuck with just the stuff in the non-Jewish world.

We have Rebbe Nachman.

And Rebbe Nachman knew exactly what problems we’d be facing at this stage in history, and filled his books full of practical advice to get us out of the hole we are stuck in.

==

Rabbenu’s advice for starting to tame the NARC-shaped ‘inner critic’ is AZAMRA, or the practise of looking for the good point.

In Lesson 1:282 of Likutey Moharan, he says this:

Know: one must judge every person favorably.

Even if the person is totally wicked, one must search and find in him some bit of good, regarding which he is not wicked.

By finding in him this bit of good and judging him favorably, one actually elevates him to the direction of righteousness, and is able to bring him to repentance.

==

This is is alluded to in, “Just a little bit and there is no wicked; you will contemplate his place and he is not there.” (Psalms 37:10). This verse is warning us to judge everyone favorably….By finding in him a bit of good in which he is not wicked and judging him favorably, one actually elevates him from the direction of wickedness to the direction of righteousness, until he ultimately repents as a result…

==

Similarly, one must find the same in oneself.

It is common knowledge that one must be very careful to always be joyful and to keep extremely far from sadness.[1]

And even when one begins to look into oneself and see that one possesses no good and is full of sins, and the forces of evil want to cast one down on account of this, into sadness and despair – nevertheless, one must not allow oneself to fall because of this.

On the contrary; one must seek and find some bit of good within oneself, for how is it possible that one has not done some mitzvah or good deed in one’s entire life?

==

We’ll pick up more of Rabbenu’s advice about AZAMRA in a moment.

Before we do, let’s just address something about the lesson of AZAMRA.

Because many people misunderstand how you apply AZAMRA.

==

Following the advice of AZAMRA doesn’t mean we whitewash evil, excuse all the bad things that yucky people do, or play down, minimise and ignore ‘bad actions’.

Not at all.

What AZAMRA comes to do is to refine the mistaken concept that there are ‘only good’ or ‘only bad’ people in the world.

The truth is, we are all an admixture of good actions and bad actions.

What makes us ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – at the end of our lives, when everything can truly be weighed up by Hashem – is what we were spending the  majority of our time doing.

Were we spending most of our time doing ‘bad’ actions, and thinking bad thoughts, and saying bad thing – or the opposite?

====

(Apply this idea to wasting time online…. And you’ll quickly start to get more clarity about why smart phones are so very bad. Because nothing is ‘neutral’. Either, we are doing something ‘good’, or we are doing something ‘bad’. There is nothing in-between, no matter how much we want to pretend that there is.)

==

A very good person with a very good heart can also sometimes act mean, make mistakes and do things that are bad and evil.

And a very bad person with an evil heart can also make teshuva, and have some area in their life when their God-given holy, good and pure soul is still shining through in the world.

==

These are perhaps new concepts, new ways of thinking, for many people who have been stuck in the narc paradigm of ‘good people who can do no wrong’, and ‘evil people who are totally evil’.

So I’m just going to keep reinforcing the basic messages as we go along in these posts.

NARCs: Criticise and harshly judge the whole person, globally.

You make one mistake (in their eyes….), one error, have one area where you aren’t living up to the NARCs expectation or want – they will throw all of you under a bus.

They don’t talk about ‘bad actions’, bad thoughts, bad words – because even ‘good people’ like they believe themselves to be do that stuff, too.

Instead, they just make you ‘BAD’.

You aren’t allowed to ‘make a mistake’, you ARE the mistake.

==

So.

We don’t want to be acting like NARCS with this stuff.

Which means trying to ‘unlearn’ the NARC way of dealing with others, and ourselves, especially when we fall, fail, make a mistake or doing something that objectively is wrong and ‘bad’.

(This is also the fundamental basis of all ‘politics’ and ‘political parties’ and politicians, by the way. They all operate out of this NARC PARADIGM that ‘they are the good people’, while the opposing team are ‘the bad people’.

This spoof ad by Remi does a good job of pointing out that they are all just as bad as each other, no matter what color tie they sport:)

==

Tachlis, a key way of stopping the NARC PARADIGM in its tracks is to stop talking about ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’, and instead, just to stick to a discussion of ‘good actions’ and ‘bad actions’.

No action, (word, or thought) is ‘pareve’. It’s either good or bad, from a Torah perspective.

It’s either building the world, or destroying it.

==

When you adopt a mindset of dealing with ACTIONS instead of global statements about PEOPLE, it gets way, way easier to start developing some clarity about what is really going on.

Especially with ourselves.

But also, with other people.

And in particular, with starting to catch who is pushing the NARC PARADIGM of ‘good people’ vs ‘bad people’, instead of discussing good actions and behaviors and traits vs bad ones.

==

So.

You’ve stumbled across a NARC in the office, or in the queue at Rami Levi, or in shul, or in the comments section of your blog.

And that NARC is giving it their best shot to try to convince you that YOU ARE BAD!!! YOU ARE CRAZY!!! YOU ARE OVER-EMOTIONAL, A DERANGED CONSPIRACY THEORIST, DOING NOTHING BUT SPEAKING LASHON HARA ALL DAY LONG!!!!

Until we do the work or ‘taming our inner critic’, what usually happens next is that our own Inner Critic joins in with the bashing – and is often way more cruel and effective, at making us feel like we’re horrible, worthless people.

==

The last post HERE explained how this is called experiencing ‘toxic shame’ in the secular world, while Rabbenu describes it like this:

When the rebuker is not capable of rebuking, then not only is his rebuke ineffective, but he is also causing a sense of malodorous repulsiveness in the souls hearing his rebuke.

==

The NARCs out there use their criticism to basically try and ‘wake up’ our own Inner Critic, which floods us with toxic shame (aka ‘a sense of malodorous repulsiveness in the soul’).

We can’t always stop the NARCS, and people with a heavy-coating of ‘NARC’ from doing this to us.

And in fact, when we’re shamed in this way by others, if we can ‘hear our own embarassment but stay silent’, we merit to have every single one of our sins scrubbed off, as the Rav has taught on countless occasions.

(We’ll come back to how following the Rav’s advice of accepting bizyanot with love is really the kryptonite that no NARC can stand up against in a future post, BH. Remind me.)

==

But let’s not try to run, before we can walk, here.

Until we’ve done the job of ‘disconnecting’ our Inner Critic, we’ll find it impossible to accept bizayon with love, regardless of whether or not it’s deserved, or true.

And how do we ‘disconnect’ the Inner Critic that keeps on beating us up and flooding us with overwhelming feelings of shame, guilt and self-loathing long after the NARC who sparked it off has moved on?

In a word: AZAMRA.

Focussed on seeing the good in ourselves, first of all.

==

(Whilst we are aiming, one day, ad 120, to be able to do AZAMRA on all the poisonous NARCS we come into contact with, it’s actually dangerous to rush into doing AZAMRA on NARCS, until you have totally bottomed-out what you are dealing with.

And until you thoroughly understand that AZAMRA is NOT about whitewashing or excusing evil, bad, hurtful behavior.

Not yours, and not other people’s.)

==

I know I’ve posted this up here before, but if you didn’t watch this shiur on AZAMRA by Rav Ofer Erez already (with very good English subtitles) – take some time to do that, before you continue reading:

==

OK, so tachlis, how do we use AZAMRA to start taking down the power of the ‘INNER CRITIC’?

Really, this is the main work of what can do in our hour of hitbodedut every day, where we talk to God about what’s going on in our life, what’s bugging us, what we’re struggling with.

‘In the moment’, in the stressful situation, the drama of what is going on, most of us are just ‘reacting’ from our stress response of FIGHT /FLIGHT /FREEZE or FLATTER.

When the stress response is operating, we are stuck viewing everything from the view of the ‘snake brain’ that controls our stress response, in a very real sense.

==

When the stress response is turned on, snake brain diverts all the energy and juice away from the frontal lobes – the place where we can think about things gently, and with compassion, and really reflect and try to hear the voice of our soul.

The stress response literally turns that part of the brain off, and floods the body with chemicals to spark off FIGHT /FLIGHT /FREEZE or FLATTER.

This is a physical process. Once the stress response kicks in, snake brain is in the driving seat.

==

But the next day, when we’ve calmed down a bit?

When ‘the danger’ has passed?

When we’re not still dealing with a ‘live’ situation?

That’s when we sit for half an hour, an hour, whatever we can manage, to reflect on what just happened here?!

==

Your Inner Critic is still making you feel literally physically ill, you still feel so yucky and ‘ashamed’ and worthless – but now, your frontal lobes have come back online, and it’s time to really figure out what just happened here?!

Are you really so bad, so ‘wrong’, so pointless and worthless and awful, as the NARC and your Inner Critic is telling you?

==

If it’s helpful, I can try to walk you through what these conversations sound like, from my own hitbodedut sessions.

Let me know, in the comments or via email, if you think that would be helpful.

But in the meantime, here is the practical advice that Rabbenu himself tells us, back in Lesson i:282, on AZAMRA:

[A] person must seek and search to find within oneself some bit of good with which to revive oneself and to rejoice.

And by searching and finding some bit of good within oneself, one actually brings oneself from the direction of wickedness to the direction of righteousness and becomes able to repent, as in, “Just a little bit and there is no wicked; you will contemplate his place, and he is not there.”

In other words, just as one must judge others favorably….so one must judge one’s own self favorably, finding within oneself some good point that one still possesses, in order to encourage oneself, so that one does not totally fall into despair.

==

The lesson continues:

[I]t is known that when a person despairs on account of one’s grossness and evil deeds, seeing how very far one really is from holiness, one is usually unable to pray at all…..But when one encourages oneself with this advice…

Then, when one revives oneself and rejoices [over the good points they still contain], one can then pray, sing and praise God.

==

Remember I said in the previous post that NARCS really don’t believe in God, and really don’t believe in the power of prayer?

This is the spiritual explanation of that phenomenon.

A NARC is really only a NARC because deep down, they are also listening to that vicious ‘Inner Critic’ yetzer, who is telling them just how very horrible and worthless they are. The worst NARCS were also victims of hard circumstances and dysfunctional families.

But that doesn’t give them a ‘get out of jail free’ card.

And the hard things that we go through also don’t give us a ‘get out of jail free’ card, when it comes to developing some real emuna, and working to overcome our own bad middot.

==

OK, let’s sum up the main points in this post:

1. In our NARC-shaped world, most of us today have to deal with a merciless ‘Inner Critic’ that can flood us with overwhelming, visceral, toxic feelings of worthlessness, guilt and shame in a nanosecond.
2. The Inner Critic continues to beat us up and make us suffer long after the NARC who initially woke it up has left the building.
3. The Inner Critic is every NARC’s ‘fifth column’, when it comes to manipulating us, and getting us to do what they want, to avoid being flooded by those awful feelings that we’ve done something wrong, or we’re about to get in big trouble.
4. The way to beGIN the process of ‘disconnecting’ the Inner Critic is by following Rebbe Nachman’s advice of doing AZAMRA, or seeing the good in ourselves and judging ourselves favorably.
5. The best time to do that is in our daily dose of hitbodedut, where we can sit with our frontal lobes fully engaged, and try to process what is going on from that much higher perspective.
6. When the stress response of FIGHT /FLIGHT /FREEZE or FLATTER is turned on, our frontal lobes are literally taken ‘offline’ by the snake brain, which then sits in the driving seat for our actions and reactions.
7. AZAMRA should not be attempted on NARCS, until a person has done most of the work of disconnecting their own Inner Critic.
8. AZAMRA is also not about excusing bad behavior, or evil actions etc. Bad actions remain ‘bad’ – just, we don’t fall into the NARC trap of believing that doing a bad action makes the whole person 100% ‘bad’ and unfixable.

==

That will do for today.

I think next time, we’ll either take a look at ‘flashbacks’, or we’ll continue the discussion of how to break the NARC paradigm by using encouragement, instead of the totally misnamed ‘constructive criticism’.

If you have a preference, let me know in the comments section.

Until then!

====

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See for example, Lesson 2:24.