Embracing Conscience and Eschewing Nasty

Fritz Perls

   It’s surprising how many people do not distinguish an inner critic from
   their spirit voice or soul aspect. I remember asking a client to participate in
   Fritz Perls’ “empty chair exercise.” This is a Gestalt technique in which
   the client engages with an aspect of themselves, an emotion or another
   imagined person. The client takes turns to play both herself and the other
   aspect. In this case I asked my client to engage with her inner critic,
   playing the critic first. She sat up straight in the chair positioned across
   from the couch where she had been sitting and chided: “You are going
   nowhere! You’re a loser, and you’re wasting your time.” After the critic
   lambasted her for a while, I asked her to move back to the couch and
   respond to the nasty critic. I was floored when she said, “You’re right.”
   Before I could interject in her defense, she continued: “But I’m making a huge effort to makes strides and I’ve come a long way.” Engaging in this manner helps clients to hear just how hard it is to rise above an inner voice that is pulling the rug at every step. They begin to feel how they are walking around as their own worst enemies.

It’s pretty tough to hear the voice of the spirit or soul self with another part of the self firing condemning insults. How harshly we judge ourselves sometimes is in direct correlation to how egregiously we judge others. Referring to a friend of hers, a client said to me: “Come on. You have to admit anyone who treats a goat like a pet is ridiculous. It's a farm animal. It's meant to be milked, not pampered.” As I glanced at the goat hairs poking from my jacket hanging on the back of a chair, I purred: “Tell me about what that means to you.” Clients sometimes defend the inner critic, assuring me that without that voice they would get nothing done. They would become lazy, good for nothings. They would repeat their mistakes and never rise to their potential.

I’m not recommending giving up our consciences for Lent, becoming hussies and addicted to gambling.
A conscience is an internal compass, a guiding light that helps us to stay in balance. Lawrence Kohlberg believed that many people never make it to the final stage of morality in which a person develops a personal guideline of moral truth. In this stage, the individual acts because it is right – because they feel what is feels like to be in another person's shoes – and not because an action is instrumental, expected, legal or previously agreed upon. Maybe some of us get so used to being harangued we think the imperative of an inner critic is the only way we’ll step away from the remote and live.

The inner nasty has us convinced that without its control, we will die - that we are too inept to manage our lives without it. This voice often reflects the worst in our parents: the father who feels like a failure and, therefore, drives his son ruthlessly, waking him in the morning with swift kicks to the ribs; the mother who gave up a dream when she got pregnant too young, holding unreasonable expectations for her child. Parents don’t always work out their issues, and, unwittingly, absorbed by their own issues, they cut off their children at the knees with endless derision, thinking that if they compliment the child, the child may grow lazy and conceited. People raised without love do not have the esteem, reference or capacity to raise a child with a sense of safety and love. But it is said that a child can thrive if they receive “good enough” parenting. People are resilient.

Sometimes clients say they hesitate to blame their parents, and I assure them that the process of counseling is not about pointing fingers, but, instead, helping clients to find inner peace and balance. How counselors achieve that is material for a future blog, but part of our work is helping our clients to develop a witness self to observe their feelings and thoughts. The witness steps in to hear the inner tyrant. We can rest assured that we will be just fine without it hovering over and picking at everything we do. As the inner critic fades to a far corner of the mind, the creative spirit rises to lead us closer to our dreams.