The Inner Critic - Flipbook - Page 33
5. Might you be worried?
As I’ve described dierent approaches for connecting and relating to your Inner Critic, you may have
noticed that I have sometimes used the term ‘parts’ – as in ‘a part’ of you.
This is deliberate. The purpose is to oer a way in which you might be able to create some distance
between you and that within which is feeling ‘less than’ in some way, and which is bringing protection.
We can think of ourselves as made up of many dierent parts. Unique parts that when combined
make up our whole individual unique self.
Working with each part in turn we create the gift for ourselves of not having to identify the ‘I’ of me
with the part that is scared or hurting, or criticising. We can observe but not fall into the rabbit hole of
the hurt part.
By not declaring that this worried part is ‘all of me’ we can create the opportunity for the healthier,
happier and stronger parts of our ‘I’ to help.
Ann Weiser-Cornell, a world-wide authority on the practice of Focusing advocates turning towards our
feelings, and I have blatantly lifted the title of this section from her work.
Focusing is a psychotherapeutic approach to self-enquiry relying on the wise wisdom of one’s body.
The evolutionary body, which existed before language, has a way of knowing that sometimes it can
explain in words and sometimes, it cannot.
Based on the premise that we cannot exile our feelings, no matter how much we want to, (we might
bury them but they are still there), she advocates a process of turning towards them rather than away.
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