I received the following response from Karen Olsen to the draft of a chapter she was reading on the Perfectionist Critic.

I am wondering if there is a slightly different sort of Perfectionist than those which you have developed in your chapter. After going through your exercises, I came to the conclusion that it is not so much that my critic is yelling at me and belittling me as it is that there is a fear of and a huge resistance to appearing to be, to exposing myself to be….. less than special and exceptional.

Remembering back to my childhood, I don’t remember not being able to get approval from either my parents or other adults in my life. What I remember is that I was always an exceptional student and that I felt special and that I became very attached to feeling special. “Feeling special” is probably entwined all through my sense of identity. Read the rest of this entry »

Some types of Inner Critics mainly tell you who you should be–the Perfectionist, the Taskmaster, and the Molder. They try to make you be a certain way in large segments of your life–perfect, hard working, or fitting a certain mold. Other types mainly tell you what you shouldn’t do or feel–the Inner Controller, the Underminer, and the Guilt Tripper. These tend to be more specific. They prohibit certain types of feeling or action–impulsive, addictive behavior, courageous risk taking, actions that harm others. It’s less clear where the Destroyer fits in. It tries to keep you from being alive and here, but it’s prohibitions aren’t so specific; they affect most of your life.

I wonder if there is something important about this distinction among types of Inner Critics. Any thoughts?

This is a continuation of the last few blogs on the Inner Critic, the Pattern System and enforcement. We can look at three levels of Perfectionist.

1. A healthy version of the Perfectionist will help you make your work excellent and your life organized without being extreme or punitive.

2. The Perfectionist will go overboard in these things by going for extremely high standards, causing you to overwork or be obsessive. However, it may just try to be perfect without self-criticism.

3. The Perfectionist Critic will push you to be perfect, often using harsh, judgmental language. It will attack you when you aren’t perfect enough.

I hope these distinctions help you in your work on this part. I would love to hear your feedback on this series of blogs.

In the last blog, I showed how the Inner Critic is in the Self-esteem dimension of the Pattern System. Each of the seven types of Inner Critics also resides in a dimension of the Pattern System. Let’s look at the Perfectionist:

The two polarized protectors are the Perfectionist and the Sloppy Part, which just does tasks in a cavalier way, not caring about how well they are done or the consequences. The healthy version of the Perfectionist is the Inner Mentor who helps you to do things in an excellent way without judgment or extremes. It is caring and supportive and knows when something is good enough. The healthy version of the Sloppy Part is the Inner Champion who supports you working in an easy flowing way without sacrificing quality. And it also supports your feeling good about yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Inner Critic parts want us to be a certain way, to fit a certain mold. The Perfectionist wants you to be obsessively perfect. The Taskmaster wants you to be hard working and striving. The Underminer wants you to be overly cautious. And so on. If you are that way, your Critic may not attack you and make you feel bad because you are living up to its standards. We may have parts that simply are that way. For example, I have a Taskmaster part that is a striver and achiever. It isn’t a Critic because it doesn’t attack me. That part just works too hard. You may have a part like this, and if it fails to live up to the Critic’s demands, then you may get attacked for this. That’s what I mean about the Inner Critic being an enforcer. It tries to enforce its standards for you by attacking you if you don’t meet them.

Luckily, my Taskmaster isn’t a Critic, and I have been working with it for many years to lighten up and allow me to relax, enjoy my life more, be present, and be free. Today it did that. It relaxed its push to get our Inner Critic book out as soon as possible. I have been feeling very happy today because of that. I feel like a burden has been lifted and I feel easy and expansive. Such a nice way to be.