This is part of an interview I did for Margarita Tartakovsky, MS, author of the weightless blog

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/weightless/2010/12/quieting-the-inner-critic-building-emotional-resilience/

Yesterday, psychotherapist and body image expert Jane Shure, Ph.D, shared her insight on overcoming body shame, an extreme form of negative body image.

In part two of our interview, Jane talks about how the inner critic develops, how to quiet it and what emotional resilience really is - concepts that I believe are key in cultivating a positive body image.

From time to time or every day, all of us can relate to the gnawing and negative voice of an inner critic, the doubts, the insecurities, even the outright lies it may tell us about our supposed unworthiness.

But like body shame, you can overcome the inner critic and boost your ability to bounce back from the bad stuff. Here’s how.

Q: You lead various workshops on helping individuals to calm their inner critic. Where does this harsh inner critic come from? How did it get so powerful?

A: Ironically, the Inner Critic developed as an attempt to minimize pain and maximize feelings of safety and security. In early childhood we need to believe that our parents and caretakers are loving, responsible and hold our best interests at heart. We are completely dependent on them.

As youngsters, we have no way of comprehending the real stressors facing adults, the emotional limitations people bring to their caregiver role and the emotional baggage that gets transferred from dysfunctional extended family patterns.

We maintain a myth that the Inner Critic holds our best interests at heart, that it wants to “improve” us and help us to feel more adequate. We may even believe our Inner Critic’s threats and feel scared that bad things might happen if we don’t listen to its blaming and shaming voice.

These beliefs are myths. They are held by stories that we tell ourselves, shaped by distorted ideas that hold us responsible, and at fault, for circumstances beyond our control.

Q: How can we reduce the seemingly ruthless inner critic on a daily basis?

A: We need to know that the Inner Critic is part of our primitive brain. Because it developed in the earliest months and years of life, it will never go away completely. But we can learn strategies to reduce its destructive power.

When we stop giving credibility to the automatic shaming and critical internal voice, and, instead recognize it as an automatic instinct, we begin to lessen the Inner Critic’s power.

We need to practice talking back to the Inner Critic and noticing its patterns of all-or-nothing thinking.

When we recognize that our Inner Critic is like a one trick pony that can’t learn anything other than judging and putting us down, we begin to fortify our Inner Coach, that voice that helps us tolerate the discomfort that comes when we refrain from self-criticism, accepts positive feedback and uses more encouraging language with ourselves.

Q: You write that emotional resilience is key to psychological well-being. What is emotional resilience?

A: Emotional resilience is the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity. Everyone experiences disappointments and hurts in life. When shame rears its ugly head, it interferes with our ability to work with ourselves and put things into perspective.

Moving forward requires learning how to forgive ourselves and others, and learning how to hold appreciation for our efforts, more than our accomplishments.

Q: How can we build and fortify our emotional resilience?

A: Resilience comes when we have deep connections with others who believe in us, unconditionally. It comes when we, and others, hold realistic expectations of us that encourage us to take risks and grow.

We are harmed by either unfairly low or impossibly high expectations. And it builds with each time we counter our Inner Critic and expose its trickster nature.

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Thank you, Jane, for sharing your insight with us!

What ways do you quiet your inner critic? How have you cultivated your emotional resilience? How have you learned to bounce back?

What Makes Body-Acceptance Risky Business

By Jane Shure

I was a junior in high school when acclaimed writer and feminist activist, Gloria Steinem, helped found Ms Magazine. Coming of age at a time when women and men were encouraged to question authoritative messages about  gender roles and rights, profoundly influenced me. So imagine my excitement last week, when attending the 20^th Annual Renfrew Center Foundation Conference, “Honoring the Past, Embracing the Future,” with Gloria Steinem featured as the keynote presenter.

There we were, 700 eager psychotherapists and nutritionists, who daily work on the front lines helping people struggling with eating disorders. Gloria inspired us all, as she explored feminism among contemporary women and offered new ways of understanding the current climate in which women continue to struggle for equality. “If we are going to change the ethic where size 0 is an admirable norm, then we need to stand up and break the silence,” she guided. “It continues to be the simple acts of speaking out about our truths and challenging the myths” that exposes the cultural lies that harm us.

There was something in the simplicity of her message that I found empowering. In my own life, healing and growth has flourished when I’ve been safe to share my “truth” and expose the shame and embarrassment from my experiences. Safety always came from the same conditions - an absence of  judgment

“If we don’t take risks, we don’t make progress,” commented one of the conference attendees. She went on to share that her “most major risk is body acceptance.” That line caught my ear since I know that it’s only when we do accept our real bodies - the ones with curves and creases, blemishes and imperfections - that we grow in self-esteem and confidence. What are we actually risking if we accept our bodies? Are we risking living with more reasonable standards, ones that are achievable and sustainable? Are we risking learning to value what we have and minimize focusing on what we don’t have? Are we risking having brighter moods that empower us rather than attitudes that diminish us?

I asked Steinem to comment on this remark about body-acceptance and think her response was spot on:  ”If you accept your body, you then have to admit that you can’t fix it. We have ‘Ms. Fix-It’ complexes. When you admit that you can’t fix it, you are admitting you can’t control it … then you have to learn how to live with it.”

So we’ve got to ask - what’s so hard about learning to live with our imperfect selves? When we are bombarded at every turn with messages encouraging us to feel inadequate, we absorb it and are at risk for turning our bodies into civil war zones. In her brilliant understanding of the way patriarchal power gets used to dominate and control, Gloria Steinem reminded us that there is likely to be a backlash when women achieve power. “A way to stop that power is for the patriarchy to accuse: ‘It’s your fault and your body’s fault.’ If you can’t achieve body invasion, then you try, desperately, to control every other form of it - which is eating.”

We are sold the message that we’ll feel better when we fix our defects and improve ourselves. The advertisers hook us into believing their lies and we suffer under their selfish influence.

“Perfect is boring,” said the tireless pioneer for women’s empowerment. “I’m talking major league boring. There is no perfect. If you look at a beautiful flower, it’s irregular, not perfect.” Feminism has always taught me to value the strengths that are mine. It’s encouraged me to recognize my femaleness as qualities worthy of celebrating rather than abandoning in exchange for actions and appearances more reflective of males. As a psychotherapist, it is only when I rejected male notions of distance and aloofness and replaced them with values of connection, active expressions of compassion, and resistance to shaming, that I grew into my strength and competency.

While I agree with Steinem that “it continues to be the simple acts of speaking out about our truths that help to challenge the myths,” I’ve learned that it matters who you speak your truth to. Not everyone is capable of listening or being open minded. Many hold rigid notions of right and wrong and condemn those who differ with stances of righteousness. These are the folks from whom we need to keep our distance. I’ve learned that it’s a waste of my energy to appeal to those who are closed minded and think they know what’s best for all.

Seek out others who are capable of being open-minded for that’s where we can find personal safety and nourishment for our soul.  Dare to be heard and seen, dare to expand your sense of courage, and perhaps most challenging of all, dare to accept your body and yourself. For more, click on http://janeshure.com/blog and http://selfmatters.org

A friend of mine wrote: I struggle with the Great Steinem’s pronouncements, here. Seems she has spent a long time away from the working & middle classes where denial about BMI is doing serious damage. Two studies this week - one on a longitudinal study of the effe…cts of high BMI, another on how overweight people tend to see themselves as fit while too-thin people see themselves as fat - could be problematic in their class connections but a walk through a Walmart in most parts of the country sends a rather strong message that no matter what GS and the magazines say or show, zero is anything but the “norm.” I write this as someone who turned in a pathetic performance on a stress test this morning. I think I need a little MORE “fix it”-ism…

I wrote back: I hear you…you make an important point that some of us are hooked on overdrive to “fix” ourselves and some of us are hooked on being in under drive about mindful eating and consistent exercise. The BMI’s are a major problem - major problem.

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to focus on the negative voice within — the voice that stirs up anxiety by questioning, “Why didn’t you?” Out of nowhere, I can be hit hard with a critical thought targeting me. It’s like one of those automatic pop ups on the computer screen, setting off an electrical impulse, alerting me to be afraid that I’ve done something wrong.

Recently I was in my kitchen cooking dinner. I wasn’t overly stressed or tired, but out of the blue I heard an agitating voice from within saying, “Why didn’t you?” Stunned, I found myself, talking back out loud, “Why didn’t I what? What is it that I didn’t do?” Unable to come up with anything, I realized that it was my habitual, reactive mind at work. In this case, it was an automatic critical voice trying to get me to feel bad about myself, for no apparent reason.

The Inner Critic tells us how flawed and defective we are, how someone else could do it better and how much of a disappointment we are. It cuts us down in size and brings on defeat. It’s powerful, but remember that its power can be diminished. When we become alert to our own judgments and thinking, we can slow down our thinking and talk back with a different voice, a voice that has the ability to argue and dispute. It’s the voice of an internal coach.

In dealing with this, be mindful. Mindfulness helps us develop the ability to notice our Inner Critic when it chimes in. We’re guaranteed that it will get set off for one reason or another and rear its ugly head. The critical inner voice originated in childhood when our instinct was to shrink in response to feeling belittled or insecure. Over time self-criticism becomes a habitual pattern held in place by the intricate mechanics of the brain. We are all under the influence.

That night in the kitchen, a clear minded voice came to my defense, helping me shine a spotlight on the harsh critic, putting the negative, blaming voice right where it needed to be. Many people hope and pray that their Inner Critic will become reformed and acquire reasonable standards. Not so. Remember, your critical voice is rooted in early self development and is one of the most primitive parts of the emotional mind. There’s no reforming the Inner Critic. Instead, we need to feed and listen to a different voice within, the one rooted in an adult perspective, able to be supportive, reasonable and compassionate. With mindfulness as our guide, we can learn to pay attention and notice this more grownup voice and we can use it to become more courageous and self-confident.