One of the most fascinating bonds that I've discovered while exploring Focusing and relationships, is the one between criticism and trauma.
I’ll start by presenting two presumptions:
The first: we live in an environment of criticism, within a discourse of criticism, in a matrix of criticism. Starting with the system of school grades, through the praise and reprimands we get as children and adults, and up to the paradigms of good – bad, right – wrong, offender – victim; It rules our world – personally, socially, morally, politically. Criticism is everywhere, to the extent of blindness to its existence.
The second: Trauma is also everywhere. In everyone. Some of us our traumatized personally and most of us, if not all of us, experience trauma in the shared space in which we live, in the system we are part of. Such are intergenerational trauma and collective trauma such as wars or pandemics.
When we face (or feel we face) a life-threat, our body responds the same way a gazelle's body is activated by the threat of a nearby tiger: it wants to move, fast, to flee or to fight. When we can't (the tiger is too close and fighting is not an option anyway), when we're powerless and helpless, we freeze. But the rapid movement continues to whirl in our body, creating a vortex that is stuck inside.
Like every vortex, fast and powerful, the trauma vortex sucks in everything and everyone around it.
We live in an environment of criticism, within a discourse of criticism, in a matrix of criticism. Trauma is also everywhere
Fight – Flight – Freeze in Relationships
The link between Trauma and criticism is bi-directional:
Criticism is an experience of trauma. For us humans, when someone criticizes us, especially when it's a close one like a parent or a spouse, our experience is very similar to that of the gazelle's. Criticism for the human mind-body is an experience of annihilation: someone has just de-legitimized us or a part of us like our behavior or something we say or feel. They aim to change it, to banish it. From that part's point of view, it is a life-threat. This also happens as an inner process, when our inner critic is active, seeking to exterminate another part in us.
The closer the relationship is and the more dependent we are on the other person, the more devastating is the influence their criticism has on us, the more extreme. The body gets vigilant and the fight-flight-freeze mechanism moves into action.
In close relationships, if our inner critic is extremely active, even small comments without any criticizing intention would be experienced as a threat. The trauma vortex within is working constantly, waiting for the tiniest que from the outside to explode.
Another interesting point is that criticism itself derives from the same "ingredients" as trauma: when something in us feels frightened and helpless, it attacks.
Criticism for the human mind-body is an experience of annihilation: someone has just de-legitimized us or a part of us like our behavior or something we say or feel. From that part's point of view, it is a life-threat.
Criticism is Never Constructive; It's Destructive
When we're in pain, when we fear for our lives and feel powerless and unable to save ourselves, we look for relief and solution. We seek movement and often a fight, someone to blame.
We can see the complete cycle when trauma appears in interpersonal space such as a group of people, a community or a region. The whole field and everybody in it are influenced and gets sucked in by the trauma vortex: some parts freeze, some are shut down or detach and some flee. But some of the main manifests in the presence of trauma are criticism, anger and aggression.
When we're experiencing the vortex of trauma, sometimes even as bystanders or witnesses, we tend to take sides. We are drawn by the vortex to take sides, and become criticizers of the opposite side.
Criticism also appears as a vortex, just like trauma. Somebody says that someone else is an offender. By doing that, by blaming another person, the accuser becomes an offender, and the blamed – a victim. Whenever someone criticizes another person, the criticized party or a third party will turn the criticism back towards the initial criticizer.
We can find the destructive circular system of trauma and criticism in the world around us, and of course within us.
For instance, some of the typical reactions of sexual assault victims are shame and guilt, both are merciless self-criticism. Or another example: when the fear of a pandemic is triggering us, we tend to look for someone to blame and criticize their actions or lack of action. The vortex is activated over and over again, whirling rapidly, devastating and destructive. Because criticism is never constructive.
When we're in pain, when we fear for our lives and feel powerless and unable to save ourselves, we seek movement and often a fight, someone to blame
Opening an Allowing Environment in Relationships
Focusing oriented relationship as HomeFocusing offers, can provide some hope to this gloomy picture. For years I have been exploring the cure Focusing can bring to our relationships with ourselves and with others and the healing that radical acceptance can bring into the triggering field of criticism and trauma.
Focusing invites a slow and gentle process, as slow and as gentle as our body needs. It gives us the togetherness of partnership and it's clean and clear listening. It enables us to meet our painful, frightened and helpless parts.
HomeFocusing teaches us to express ourselves toward the other person truthfully, accurately and without criticism. A criticism-free communication allows us to trust the process, and replace the paradigms of good or bad, right or wrong, with the conception of radical acceptance: we are both ok, we are both legitimate and entitled to our needs and feelings. It opens an allowing environment between us and around us, instead of bloody battles where everybody gets hurt and loses.
A criticism-free communication as HomeFocusing offers allows us to replace the paradigms of good or bad, right or wrong, with the conception of radical acceptance of both of us
