Tag Archives: criticism

Non-fiction

Criticism or Compassion

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I keep a digital notebook in my backpack, and it’s barely used. It’s for jotting notes or writing sonnets when I have time, and time these days is at a premium. There are just not enough hours to do everything. There used to be time a plenty when I was younger, but more responsibilities have fallen onto my plate, and I barely have the space to enjoy life’s simplicities.

But anyway, I write in this notebook words of criticism and compassion. I’ve been reading about ways to challenge my inner critic, and one exercise is to go a day criticizing myself about everything, just piling it on. And then the following day, replace those criticisms with statements of compassion, and alternating day by day as an experiment to see how I benefit from them both. I’m supposed to see that self-criticism doesn’t benefit me at all.

I used to call myself stupid and incompetent, among other nasty accusations. I thought it would help me improve if I just kept treating myself that way, thinking I would learn my lesson and smarten up. But such isn’t the case. Self-compassion is the better route. Instead of calling myself an idiot, I can tell myself I did my best. But then my self-critic would tell me, “You need to do more. That’s not enough.” At which my self-compassionate voice would say, “Yes it is.”

The war goes on forever. I’m still critical of myself, and that’ll probably never go away. If I could just give self-compassion a chance… My inner critic might weaken. At least I hope. He’s strong and tough to defeat. I’ve built him up for so many years. I can say a decade ago he was domineering, laughing, calling me weak. The self-critic isn’t me. I’ve been possessed by someone else who wants to inflict punishment for a reason, a reason I can’t find. I live it every day. I can’t go to sleep. The inner critic is too loud. He’s the ringing in my ears. I try to counterattack him with self-compassion, but the inner critic tells me, “Ha, how phony.” I submit to him and tell him, “Okay, Mr. Self-Critic. You’re right.” I let him win, but in reality what good has he done? Has he helped me improve? My logic tells me no.

Was this something I was taught since early age? Was I bludgeoned by the message that the only way I’ll get by is through criticizing myself, calling myself an idiot, and telling myself that I’m incompetent? Do they teach self-compassion in school, or is it the opposite? My peers were critics. Not many were compassionate. I was always competing for something to achieve. I had to get better grades to go to a nice college. And once I made it to that college, I had to get better grades to score that nice job after graduation. It only got worse from there. All the while, people insinuated I was dumb or incapable, thinking discipline would turn me into something better. Did any of it really work, or did it only hinder me and make me worse than I was?

I can’t control the critics, but I can control the compassion within myself through practice. The worksheet I’d followed asked me if I would say these things to a loved one or a child. Would I call them idiots or incompetent? No, of course. I wouldn’t even come close, so why would I say it to myself? What have I done to deserve this sort of treatment? I’ve listened too much to all the critics and have never been skeptical. I was always saying, “Okay, you’re right.” I’ve even been treated that way by friends. It boggles me how I kept them around. They’re not around anymore. I can honestly say I haven’t had many good friends. What’s a good friend like? Most friends would tease me in front of other friends to make themselves look better. I wisened up and cut them loose. Now I barely have any friends at all. It takes a lot of work, but I must learn to surround myself with compassionate people and leave the critics behind.

Fiction

A Tangled Web

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I belong to an online writing community. To earn points, I write critiques for other writers. Enough points grant me the opportunity to post my own work for others to critique. I joined it five years ago, and I can’t forget my first one ever—not one that I wrote, but one I received. It was the most vicious criticism I’d ever read about my work. I won’t mention the person’s name, not because I don’t want to expose the person, but because I forgot it. I wouldn’t have exposed the name anyway if I remembered it because I’m not that type of person.

Anyway, I remember him writing that I shouldn’t use metaphors because I wasn’t that good yet. He tore every sentence of prose that I wrote, meaning not one sentence passed his test. It was a true story with names changed to protect real people, about my time as an intern in Hollywood. I lost sleep over the critique. It was that hostile. I thought I could never write another story again.

I could write a message to those who critiqued me on the website, any message, as long as it wasn’t hateful. So I simply wrote, Thank you. And he simply wrote back, You’re welcome. That was the end of our exchange and our parting words as well.

Just out of curiosity, I read his story. We could post chapters of our manuscripts on the website. I must say, he was a pretty good writer, so I couldn’t write him back saying, Your writing sucks, too. That would’ve been untrue.

His criticism of my work was so vicious that after I posted more work, I wouldn’t read the critiques. I just stuffed them in a bottle and watched them float down the river. This went on for three years. I would post a short story for others to review and receive emails when people critiqued the work. The emails would tell me how many words the critiques were. In a nutshell, the fewer words, the better. If someone had written something like a two-hundred-word critique, that was a good sign. But if someone had written a thousand-word critique, that was not a good sign. Some stories did receive over a thousand words. And my heart would start pounding. I wouldn’t read them.

I finally brought this problem up to my therapist. We practiced EMDR to desensitize the blows of criticism. Let’s be frank. There are bigger worries in the world than critiques of my work. But to me, it was significant. EMDR (or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a technique used by therapists in which you follow a round light left to right and right to left with your eyes while you relive the painful memory. You’re supposed to report the physical sensations in your body to the therapist after each round. When remembering the critiques, I would feel the pressure in my chest and throat. After several rounds and several sessions, the bite of the critique wasn’t as vicious.

My therapist and I decided to read the next critique in our session. I read it out loud, and we examined the meaning behind the words. Over time, the critiques weren’t as bad as before. I could handle the criticisms better. They didn’t feel as personal.

We continued EMDR through each critique until I could read them on my own and didn’t need her help. This took about half a year to resolve. Now I can read critiques like they’re nothing. As I’d said, there are much worse worries in the world than a critique of my literary work. But I’m so self-absorbed that I can see why they would bother me so much.

I now welcome the critiques. They help me more than they hurt me, I guess because my writing has grown. It’s an ingenious website. I won’t bring up its name just like I won’t bring up the name of that vicious first critic. I hope he’s doing well. Wink wink.