Jew World Order

3rd February 2016

By Jack Adam Weber

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Many take offense to advice when they don’t ask for it, including suggestions. Unsolicited advice can feel intrusive. It can threaten our personal space and privacy. There are also different degrees of criticism and advice, and the tone of delivery has lots to do with how well we can hear it. So does the nature of our relationship with the person from whom we receive it.

Criticism is another level of “advice,” which often comes with more punch and can push our buttons. However, I also invite us to consider criticism in a positive light, and if we don’t like its delivery, perhaps we can at least hear the core information — the helpful message — in the criticism. We also can ask for our needs — asking that criticism be delivered in a way that we’re better able to receive.

Style of delivery aside — be it angry, frustrated, insistent, blunt, etc. — let’s focus on the content of criticism.

First, when we get advice we often infer (it is not necessarily implied, meaning the rub is in the way that we think about it and emotionally react) that we are wrong, that our way of being is flawed, or even bad. This can be especially difficult if we have significant unresolved shame, meaning we judge and feel bad about our core sense of self.

Those of us interested in bettering ourselves appreciate criticism, and try to find something constructive in it. We might even try to sort through a difficult delivery of it because we want to learn and grow. Sometimes we might not like what we hear in criticism because it might be true, and this truth might cause us to see something we don’t like about ourselves or have to change somehow. The truth in criticism might also cause us to feel remorse, sadness, fear, or helpless; most are uncomfortable feeling these feelings and stave them off, thereby shooting down criticism or advice mid-air before it even makes it to our ears. Dong this can close us off to others and our own growth.

Third, we might associate criticism with childhood, when we were judged harshly or overly controlled. We then react to the present moment from a wounded place, that likely has little to do with what is currently happening. It’s reasonable not to want to be treated as we were when we were children. It’s even more reasonable, perhaps, to use critical awareness to recognize when we are having a knee-jerk childhood reaction, so that while it might seem we are being treated as children, it’s more honest to admit that we are reacting as a child. We can choose to see the current situation as adults and to respond from a more empowered and realistic sensibility.

Fourth, criticism is often associated with the shame and guilt of religion. We might feel the pain of how our parents or others wielded religious doctrines and used them as a way to violate our integrity. Some use religion to inflict condemnation and angry judgments. Yet the same religious precepts also can instill forgiveness, compassion, and wisdom. So, religion may not be to blame as much as the same core emotional wounds that cause some humans to wield religious doctrine as a sword of violence rather than as a compass for compassion.

Reactions

A complaint I often hear from adults, especially in intimate relationships, is that one partner feels as though they are being treated like a child. Let’s say that a couple, Jake and Anna, have an agreement to alternate days taking out the trash. Anna grew up with strict parents who would get on her case if she didn’t keep up with her childhood duties. Let’s say Anna forgets to take out the trash one evening and Jake reminds her to do so, in a neutral, matter-of-fact tone of voice.

Upon hearing this reminder, Anna hears it as criticism and retorts, “I don’t like being treated like a child.” Jake is a bit bewildered and says that he was only reminding Anna of their agreement. This is reasonable adult behavior on Jake’s part. Yet, Anna seems to react strongly to what is offered by Jake as a helpful reminder, and nothing more. Ironically, Anna might be the one who is treating Jake like a child if she is reacting from a childhood place, as a knee-jerk reaction to when her parents got upset with her for not completing chores, or in other ways Anna perceived she was “wrong” or “bad.”

What might be more humbly responsible and adult of Anna is to say, “I don’t like how I react from a childish place when part of me understands that you are only reminding of me of what I agreed to.” It would also be adult of Anna to recognize this childhood part of herself and work with it to heal.

If Anna were to look a little deeper, to her astonishment, she might even discover that she subconsciously reacts from a childhood wound to illicit a response from her partner … so she can then blame him for treating her like a child, effectively acting out on Jake what she did not get to express to her parents. By reacting from a childhood wound, Anna in effect makes Jake the parent. This is how Anna’s childhood self tries to effect healing the past. This is a healthy impulse, but it’s not healthy if it remains unconscious, so the issue gets projected onto her partner and creates a rift in the relationship.

Without dialoguing and engaging with this wounded part of herself, the reactivity does not change. It takes humble awareness, introspection, and an emotional knowledge of one’s past to recognize that one is projecting issues and displacing emotion. It also requires restraint, courage and motivation to prevent from projecting and acting out onto our partner. We can pat ourselves on the back when we are able to manage these domains. We also can be gently remorseful of ourselves when we flounder, regroup and encourage ourselves to do better. We also can enlist the help of our partner to remind us when they notice us acting out.

Often, our child self so badly wants to blame someone else for past hurt it just can’t hold back from doing so in the present. “If only I can let him know how I feel and put an end to it I could cure this ache in my heart,” the little child in Anna might say to herself. Yes, that aspect of herself can be healed and managed, but ironically, again, not by projecting the issue onto her partner. We do not heal much this way, except perhaps for if it helps us get in touch with that voice in ourselves. Ironically, we often create more strife and drama in relationship this way because we can’t heal what is unconsciously projected no matter how much we take up the issue with our partner. This is to displace childhood emotions into the present and project the past onto our current partner. We have to work through its source in the past inside us in a slow and patient process.

Healing our hurt inner child can happen by dialoguing with and feeling our inner perpetrator, be it our father or mother, uncle or sibling. Anna might interpret Jake to be condescending and judgmental, and even angry, towards her. But this does not mean he feels this way, nor does it mean Jake is treating her like a child.

Feeling treated like a child is often our unhealed child-self reacting to a similar dynamic that reminds and triggers us in the way the way that we were treated once ago.

Venting to one’s partner might feel good in the moment, but the deeper ache persists until we can contact the feelings and address the issue with the people— symbolically represented inside us as an aspect of us — with whom we had the original injury. With this said, in the present moment we can request that we be communicated with in a way that feels good to us. Anna could ask that Jake communicate in a calmer tone, engage in eye contact, speak extra kindly, and preface his communication with Anna so that she can perhaps take a deep breath and steady herself in her adult sensibility so as not to react, or to catch her reactivity and modulate it. Sometimes, however, the delivery can never be good enough, or timely, for one who ultimately doesn’t want to hear. Jake can also offer an invitation to Anna rather than a command. If he is feeling generous, he might even muster the resolve to take out the trash himself, without a fuss and as an act of selfless compassion. This act would be a gift to the relationship and might encourage Anna to change by gentle and means and get insight to her triggers.

We see, then, that we often defend against criticism for emotional reasons. Realizing this, it might be time to look inside ourselves for the old wound. For, if we did not like or find useful a piece of advice or criticism on a purely logical level, we would simply say so without emotional fanfare, and even thank the advice-giver. When we react emotionally we often miss the content of the advice or request itself, which can be a lost opportunity. That advice might have something we need to hear. Maybe it’s something that could change our life, create an opportunity, or help us heal our past. It might even improve our relationship!

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