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Overreaction of anger

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  • June 16, 2018 at 5:54 am #212687
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kel:

    You got a call yesterday from a client who was angry (“a little annoyed”) that you didn’t do some work. You intended to do that work but were not in a hurry because there was no deadline and because the client didn’t pay you yet.

    What happened next is, (it is my understanding), that your critical inner voice started beating you up: you didn’t do the work you were supposed to do! Bad, bad Kel! That inner critic was not a little annoyed with you, it is angry. And it has been with you for a long, long time taking its opportunities to harass you.

    Then you tried to reason with that inner critic: but the client didn’t pay me.. and the client didn’t do this or that, kind of pleading your case with the inner critic.

    The anger in “Overreaction of anger” is your natural response to being beaten up, mentally, that is.

    Is my understanding correct?

    anita

    June 16, 2018 at 6:03 am #212691
    Kel
    Participant

    Anita, yes, your summary is correct.

    The inner voice is partly aimed at the client too though, “This guy has shown me no respect, he hasn’t responded to my emails, he’s so disorganized and expects me to be organized 200% so that he doesn’t have to be,” and this “spirals” to “I should stand up for myself and let him know this isn’t acceptable, I’m not going to work with people who expect me to be more organized than they are, maybe I just shouldn’t work with this guy.”

    But at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s worth it to chastise the client directly, because a) I need the money from working with them and b) they are, in other ways, nice to work with.

    So the time wasted is also spent on working through what I would say to this other person to tell them all the reasons that they are wrong. I would like to both be kinder to myself, and also kinder to them (because they are probably mostly grumpy because of some external stress too.)

    June 16, 2018 at 6:13 am #212693
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kel:

    The way to function well or better professionally is to learn to better separate the inner going on conversation in your  brain from the external reality and in reality communicate with the client in the most effective way.

    To separate the inner communication from interfering with the outer conversation, or from just making your life more difficult than it has to be, let’s look at this inner conversation and understand it better:

    “This guy has shown me no respect… I should stand up for myself… maybe I just shouldn’t work with this guy” –

    question: as a child, was there a parent that didn’t show you respect, hurt you, and you wished then that you weren’t there, weren’t present with that parent?

    anita

     

    June 16, 2018 at 6:29 am #212697
    Kel
    Participant

    Absolutely. I think my parents are good parents, but everyone brings with them their own issues from *their* parents and passes it on…

    I recognize that a lot of the inner critic is repeating things that my critical parent frequently told me about myself “You’re smart but you’re lazy. You can do anything, but you’re lazy. You’re a negative person.” Which is maybe why there’s a weird mix of “I’m good at this, oh but my laziness is holding me back.”

    But I think my question is, accepting that I have this inner critic, understanding that it came from my parent, how do I move on from it?

    I think the trouble is when it coincides with an external critic–I have gotten much better over the last few years of not having the inner critic be so vocal when the people I’m working with appear happy with me. The question is, how can I keep the inner critic quieter when the people I’m working with seem like they might be thinking the same things as the inner critic? Suddenly then, the inner critic seems so correct!

    June 16, 2018 at 6:39 am #212699
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kel:

    The outer critic (parent) is the inner critic. The part of you that existed before the parent criticized you believes the critic, this is why “the inner critic seems so correct”. To quiet the inner critic, got to change your belief that it is correct.

    For as long as you believe what it tells you, whenever you hear a bit of criticism from a client (or someone else), that inner critic will voice itself, loud.

    How to change this core belief that your parent turned inner critic is “so correct”?

    Did you work on this in therapy, ever looked into your core beliefs in the context of when they were formed, that is, specifically looking at whether your parent was correct when repeatedly claiming that you were lazy, that you can do better but are too lazy to do better?

    anita

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