How Interior Integration helps us with our Fear of Criticism

EPISODE 138 | HOW INTERIOR INTEGRATION HELPS US WITH OUR FEAR OF CRITICISM

So, the only way that I used to be able to. perceive my fear of criticism was through a spiritual lens. And that was that it was because of a lack of faith and that I was not praying enough, and that clearly, I didn't love or trust God enough. All that was coming from my traumatized self, right? From the self that was fragmented, who was not able, to look at myself and delight in myself, when it was even difficult for me to experience God delighting in me as I am.

[00:00:37] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me.

[00:00:35] Hello everyone. So, one of the greatest sources of suffering for me as recovering complex trauma survivor is my deep fear of being criticized, being judged harshly, of being misunderstood because all those are reasons for being rejected, right? At least that's how I've always experienced it. And that has been such difficult thing to overcome in my walk with Christ because You know, to follow Christ, I, I know I have to be willing to bear all these things. I know they happen to Christ as well, to Jesus as well. And I know that if I were to follow him, I will also be encountering criticism and judgment, even persecution. But how do I follow him if I'm so afraid? of these things. Not just afraid, terrified perhaps because to me they were an existential threat as a complex trauma survivor. 

[00:02:10] SPIRITUAL VS. INTEGRATED APPROACHES
So, in today's sharing, I want to talk about how integration or this interior integration journey that, what we keep talking about, all I keep talking about, helps us deal with that fear of criticism, judgment, persecution, and abandonment. And also point out how, we can actually often spiritualize this fear of criticism and how the interior integration process is different from spiritualizing our fears of criticism and judgment. So, if we are spiritualizing these fears, the way we approach these fears, will also be spiritualizing, okay, will not be a very integrated way. So, I'm going to take a brief look at both the old way that I knew how to deal with it, which was one that was only on a spiritual dimension and often led to spiritualizing, as well as how that shifted and changed when it became more integrated. Okay, when I learned how to deal with these fears in a more integrated manner. So, one of my core questions that I bring up in prayer with Christ, you know, when I talk to God has always been this, this question, how can I follow him and love fearlessly? Because I, I wish and desire to be able to love fearlessly, like I see Christ does, you know, how can I love fearlessly when I am so hurt And affected by criticism and judgment there's the degree by which I can get dysregulated and how long it takes for me to become okay again just, be. you know, what I felt was just really keeping me from being a good disciple or being able to follow Christ, right? So, back in, in my earlier stages of my discipleship being a good disciple was a very big priority for me, right? That's not the case anymore because it's not about being a good disciple anymore. Now, where I am, I realized that's keeping my eye on the wrong focal point, right? And the focal point really should just be Christ, God, you know, and, and that relationship with him and everything else, including discipleship and spiritual fruitfulness flows from that. But every stage in the journey is valid and important. And at an earlier point in my journey, I, when I really wanted to be a good disciple and I could recognize that my fear of criticism was really keeping me from being able to follow Christ well right from being able to love well. So, the only way that I used to be able to. perceive my fear of criticism was through a spiritual lens. And that was that it was because of a lack of faith and that I was not praying enough, and that clearly, I didn't love or trust God enough. So, even the lens through which I recognize my fear of criticism was one that made me feel less than actually, I didn't know how to love myself back then. I, I just felt that you know this signalled how poor I was and just how unworthy I was to follow Christ and to be loved by God. All that was coming from my traumatized self, right? From the self that was fragmented, who was not able, when I was not able to look at myself and delight in myself, when it was even difficult for me to experience God delighting in me as I am. Back then, I always felt like I needed to get better. I needed to love more, fear less so that god would love me more so that I'll be more worthy of god, you know, so cognitively I know I've always known that god could not possibly love me more or less but practically speaking and this is always where it is most important because for many of us we understand things intellectually we cognitively believe you in, for example, that God loves us unconditionally and perfectly, but we cannot experience it in our bodies. And therefore, we live in a way that does not reflect what we cognitively believe. We live from a place of fear and lack. Okay, so that's the lack of integration that, that is causing the problem. And when there was no integration, all I could think of was that I didn't love God enough. And that's why I was fearful of criticism. You know, it was such a harsh perception to have of myself. Now, when I look back at those times, I just have so much compassion for my younger self that could only see herself in, in such a judgmental way.

[00:06:57] HEALING THROUGH INTEGRATION AND BOUNDARIES
Now, if we move away from that very spiritualized perspective about the fear of criticism, then the more integrated perspective would be this. The realization that I feared criticism and judgment because of a lack of secure attachment with myself and with God. So, now this perspective introduces a psychological Lens, okay, that helps us to understand what's actually happening within us in our human capacity to relate to people and to relate to God, that this lack of secure attachment Is the fundamental reason why we are so rocked by negative. 

[00:07:40] Reflection from others, or when people criticize us or judge us, or why we could be so affected, conversely by praise When I was in that place, I craved affirmation, craved praise, because I could only see myself through the eyes of others, So, how others saw me was actually, here I put on the slide here, that it was a big part, of how I saw myself. But I think for the longest time, it was the only way I could see myself was through how I felt others saw me or how I thought others saw me, right? That was part of my woundedness. It was part of the effect of the complex trauma that I went through. So, I did not have the ability to know who I was apart from how I thought I was perceived. So, if I felt people were judging me when I know of criticisms about me, it just shook me at a very existential level. And that's why it was so destabilizing. It is not just that I'm a little bit affected or I feel a bit down because I know that I'm being criticized or judged. It, it really went to the core of me, because at that time, I think the core of me, there was no stability. I couldn't even locate the core of me, right? So, that's how it felt. But this integrated perspective, As I learned about human healing, or the healing of my human capacities and my affective maturity, emotional maturity, I realized that the problem wasn't that there's something wrong with me, you know, and that's why I feared criticism so much, that it wasn't because I lacked faith, but that I needed healing in order to fear criticism less, or to be less destabilized by criticism. So, in the past, the only guidance that I had or that I the only kind of guidance that I could understand was spiritual guidance. 

[00:09:37] And this is still very valid and very true. And it's still very beautiful. And I, I still come back to this. You know spiritual understanding that healing for me or when I’m so afraid of criticism and from being rejected by others That what I needed was to let god love me Because I lacked that love to let God love me until that love heals my fragmented self, right. And I learned to love myself So, and this was also often the spiritual advice that I would offer others, you know, let God love you just learn to let God love you until You are so loved that you become more whole and then you can love yourself because without being loved by God or allowing yourself to be loved by God, we can't love ourselves, right? So, that would be the spiritual guidance or the spiritual advice that I was familiar with, even in the past. But what was added later through that integration lens was this. If you learn about complex trauma, right? And this is actually the guidance I would offer. I would give people now or the advice if people sought it. Learn about complex trauma, because that will help you understand how your capacity, your innate natural capacity to give and receive love was damaged, was fragmented, right? So, that natural capacity for you to be able to relate and love from a secure place that was broken. And that was something that happened to you. It's not because something is wrong with you were fine, you know, I mean we were created Well and good But because of our experiences because of what happened to us that capacity to love was damaged And learning about complex trauma is what helps us to be able to see this and understand this truly in a non-judgmental lens, because without this kind of perspective, it's very abstract. And it's always hard to hold on to or hang on to something that's just very conceptual and abstract, right? It's not embodied. So, the process of learning about complex trauma and healing from complex trauma has to be an embodied experience. 

[00:11:48] And that helps a great deal So, because What has hurt us You And what has prevented us from being able to love is That is because our capacity to love has been compromised Then what would help is for us to learn about and seek that help in embodied effective and human healing Okay, so that's when we talk about psychology again about therapy about learning about a family of origin wounds and healing from a family of origin wounds This is where the Modalities or you know understanding things like internal family systems can be helpful doing inner child healing work Doing somatic work. I mean, these are just some examples of embodied means to begin integration and healing That complements our spiritual healing complements our spiritual understanding and the, you know prayer and the mystical dimension of just, letting God love us. This is concurrent. It's just that, this more integrated perspective helps us to go through that spiritual relationship with God in an embodied way. Okay, so I think because of the limits of language, I often can only talk about these as if they're like different dimensions. In some sense, they are. There's a, there's a distinctness there, but they're not completely discreet. Right embodied spirituality is spirituality that is embodied. It's just that when we don't have that integrated lens, we don't have that embodied part of the spiritual life. Okay. And that's what keeps us from being able to really incarnate what we believe in our lives, in our bodies. So, I would say if you also really are afraid of criticism or you find yourself really hurt by rejection and abandonment. this is especially the case, let's say by people that you thought would understand and support you. So, a big example would be, I went through this more recently. When I was working in the parish and a lot of the criticism and the judgment that I received or that I actually encountered were coming from people within the parish or people in the church, in the larger church, right? 

[00:14:09] I mean, there were people who affirmed me of course, but I was always so destabilized by the judgment and criticism that I heard was levelled at me, right? And it was that integrative healing in the last, I don't know, six, seven years that has moved me to a place where I can move forward even when I anticipate criticism. I can even in some sense understand and empathize with those who criticize me because I can see my lack and even agree with some dimensions, some aspects of maybe the, of the criticism. But at the same time, I can also see how this is exactly who I am and that I'm not made for everyone. The particular mission and the gifts that I've been given is meant for some people, but maybe not all people. So, for some people, they're going to welcome me and my work. And for some people, they're just maybe going to be very turned off or upset with me. And that's okay, right? That's what integrative healing has allowed me to experience in my body. 

[00:15:25] When we look at this through the integrative lens, another thing and another advice or guidance I would offer would be learn to identify the emotionally unhealthy and dysfunctional environments that you are in and learn how to draw boundaries, okay, and learn how to protect yourself. This is such an important part of healing from complex trauma and moving from a place where we're so affected and deeply, deeply harmed and hurt by criticism and judgment and persecution to a place where we are more resilient, like authentically resilient, not just because we, we push ourselves through and we will ourselves to be able to accept criticism. That's, that's not an integrated approach. Okay. That's still very spiritually bypassing or emotionally bypassing. That's not going to sustain us. It's not going to last. But when we make the integrated approach, journey when we approach this whole process through embodied integration, it must include learning how to draw boundaries, it must include acknowledging and accepting, even embracing our limits now, our capacity now, right? 

[00:16:46] And not trying to be more generous or magnanimous or loving or self-sacrificial than we are actually capable of being without doing harm to ourself. So, when we learn, to see ourself very honestly and truly which is what healing integration also allows us to do better When we can see ourselves honestly and accept ourselves where we are and give ourselves the boundaries that we need that in and of itself Helps us to build that capacity to be okay with criticism because you know what drawing boundaries is going to attract criticism, too Drawing boundaries and protecting ourselves is also going to invite judgment from other people. 

[00:17:29] But this is all part of the process. And incredibly, as we learn to draw that boundary, or boundaries, those boundaries, right, as we learn to love and cherish and protect ourselves Because we experience that's how God is protecting us, He is not expecting us to be better than we are. Then we actually grow in our resilience and grow in our ability to love others, even those who are criticizing us, right? But we understand love in many more Dimensions and we have a much more nuanced appreciation of what love can look like Love doesn't necessarily mean that we have to expose ourselves and be vulnerable to people that we know are not ready to receive us That we know will hurt us Love can include boundaries love can look very differently as we ourselves continue to evolve and integrate and grow and mature through the stages of our spiritual and emotional maturity. right? 

[00:18:31] So, secure attachment really, is again, this is the language of psychology, right? This is not the language that you get from spirituality and faith. You don't get this term in just spiritual literature, unless you are already beginning to read maybe more contemporary writers who have begun to integrate the spiritual and psychology. So, secure attachment with God and secure attachment with ourselves. So, knowing and loving ourselves, knowing that We are, we love ourselves no matter what, knowing that God loves us no matter what, and not just an intellectual knowing, but an embodied experience, knowing that we are loved no matter what. This is what lessens our fear of criticism and rejection over time. Because we, we slowly build this repertoire. of experience, not just repertoire, sorry. We slowly built this archive, right, of lived experience that we were not abandoned, that we were loved no matter what, that even in our imperfection, in our incompleteness, even when we make mistakes, even when we lack so many things, we are still so completely loved by God and by ourselves. This, this comes with time as we heal and learn to love ourselves.

[00:19:51] OVERCOMING FEAR OF CRITICISM
And the more we experience that love, whether we can give ourselves, the more healed we become. And then the less affected by that fear of criticism we will be, and even when we do experience that fear, we find that we have the inner resources to become regulated again, inner resources to reground ourselves.

[00:20:13] So, we, we grow in confidence that we can deal with being judged and being criticized, that even when it's really, really painful, that we have that capacity to be held in our pain by God. We are able to hold ourselves in that pain. 

[00:20:31] So, it's not necessary that the pain lessens, the pain can still be very great, but we're less afraid of that pain because we've learned that that we can endure. that we, we actually grow in that capacity and that's just such an incredible thing to experience. It's really grace. I just want to emphasize it's really, really grace. I Cannot believe that we can do this without grace. We just can’t, right? 

[00:20:59] It's such a gift, but at the same time, it is something that we really experience ourselves you Contributing to. So, it's not just that grace. We see ourselves responding to that grace and that builds our own confidence in ourselves. So, in the past, Following Christ's True Model I used to think, That I should do what Jesus did, right? Um, that Jesus is my model. And I only understood that in a way of trying to model what he, how he acted. And that really tripped me up because you, we can't do that. Okay. Uh, it's, it's like, you know, watching the Olympics and trying to imitate what the Olympic athlete is doing in your own living room, for example. you know, or watching a really seasoned, um, yeah. ballerina dancing the ballet and trying to copy what she does without that training, without everything that she went through in order to have that skill and that finesse and the strength, right, and the flexibility to dance. But in our faith, so many of us do exactly that. We think that we're called to imitate Christ and then we try and, we look at what, you know, he does, let's say, in the Gospels, through our very limited and fragmented lens. 

[00:22:18] when we're not yet healed from trauma and then we try to do that, or we look at the saints and we say, oh, that's how I should be, you know, I should forgive. You know, immediately any, any, any harm that was done to me I should be I should be able to let go of anger. I should be able to love my enemies all these should We're looking at you know, what we can be You when we mature, what we can be when grace brings us there. But we are trying to do that right now.

[00:22:52] THE POWER OF LOVE AND SECURE ATTACHMENT
And the thing is, there's so much about the big picture that we actually cannot see, and so we end up hurting ourselves, Over time as I have healed and integrated, I realized that where we're really called to follow Christ's modelling, is in his relationship with the Father. is in his secure attachment with God the Father, and in his secure attachment with himself. 

[00:23:19] If You, look at Christ in the Gospels, he knew exactly who he was, and no matter how he was criticized, how he was judged and persecuted, and misunderstood, still he still stood on the firm ground of knowing who he was. because he was secure in his father's love for him and he was secure in his own love for himself. 

[00:23:43] So, he knew who he was, right? And notice that in the gospels, even when Jesus closest companions, the disciples, the apostles, when they couldn't get him and they misunderstood him so much, so often, they didn't even know, you know, what it meant that he was the Messiah. They could only see Jesus through their limited fragmented lens, right? But Jesus he wasn't affected by that. There was capacity in him to love them as they are. His confidence in who he was, his, His rootedness in who he was, was not dependent on how his friends and others saw him. 

[00:24:24] You note how in the Gospels, Jesus Christ never tried to convince others to believe him. It was never a priority for him. It wasn't important for him that people understood him. He would say things like, some day or eventually, you will understand, maybe not now, right? And he would tell stories and parables and he was completely okay that some people may get it, and, and many others wouldn't? 

[00:24:51] How is it that he was so grounded in himself? Through the language that, I'm using now in the language of attachment, one way we could say or explain this is that Jesus was very securely attached with God the Father and within himself, 

[00:25:09] And perhaps in his own earthly life, growing up in the Holy Family gave him a good start. One would imagine that having Mother Mary and St. Joseph as your parents, would give you a very good start in having a secure attachment, but even those of us who don't have that because we didn't grow up in the holy family, We can look to Jesus's modelling and know that healing will help us get there. 

[00:25:36] So, I used to ask the saints a lot when I was really struggling in my own pain of being misunderstood and being judged and criticized, and I found it so hard to keep going. But I really wanted to keep going. I wanted to keep following Christ. 

[00:25:51] And I remember. asking the saints. So, I don't have a typical devotional spirituality when it comes to the saints, but I, I do talk to them. I pray to them. They are like my mentors, My companions. It has always been that a certain point in my journey, a particular saint will be highlighted to me, will suddenly be introduced to me, and that saint's charism or spirituality is what I needed. 

[00:26:17] You know, in that season, so over time, I've accumulated several saint friends, And I asked them, you know, kind of collectively, how did you guys, keep going when they faced persecution? So, many of the Saints faced persecution, right? Like St. Teresa of Avila was brought before the Inquisition more than once, St. John of the Cross was abducted, imprisoned, and tortured by his fellow Carmelites. 

[00:26:46] Like, by his common brothers. A lot of the persecutions that the saints went through were by their own brothers and sisters. St. Francis of Assisi was rejected by his own order. I mean, in a sense, he was kicked out of the order that he founded. St. Catherine of Siena, who played such a huge role in the church of her time, in bringing the papacy back from France to Rome. 

[00:27:14] By the time she died, she was also kind of like a nobody. She wasn't celebrated in her own life. Many of the saints experienced abandonment, rejection from the church. And I always thought that perhaps it's different if you're rejected by the world because Jesus says you're rejected by the world, right? But what happens when you're rejected by your own religious brothers and sisters, which was exactly also what Christ experienced? He was rejected by his own religious authorities, right? How do you keep going? 

[00:27:51] And that's what I asked my, my saintly companions, you know, in prayer and what came back. So, this, this conversation that I had with the saints in prayer was more than 10 years ago now. And I remembered that the response I received from, from the saints was, was very simple. It was, and it was because we loved, it's because We loved that it, we kept moving forward because we loved God, because we loved Christ and because we loved those people that we were sent to. 

[00:28:30] And so over time, the sense that I had, the sense that I had was that the love that they had for those they were sent to love. became so much more compelling, more powerful than the rejection, criticism, and the persecutions that they experienced. That it wasn't that those things didn't matter, or that they weren't there, they were. 

[00:28:58] But love was greater. and love was a greater reality. And so, they could keep going and keep going. Now, love is such an important thing, right? In our faith, we say God is love. love. is so central to our faith. And this is where so many of us struggle because of trauma. 

[00:29:19] Many of us never knew or experienced what love actually is, right? So, we know we're supposed to love. We know we're called to love, but we never knew what love was. This is where those people who have a secure attachment from young, if they were blessed with that grace of experiencing really attuned, really secure love from their family of origin, they have a leg up in that sense, right? They may not struggle as much to love. 

[00:29:47] And that is also why if we look at the lives of some of the saints who were blessed with that kind of secure attachment, maybe earlier in life, their trajectory is a little different, could be different. But whether or not we had that in our families of origin, it is still a possibility. I just want to highlight that so many of us don't even realize that we don't know what love is. So, many of us don't even know that we are survivors of trauma, of complex trauma, right? So, we never knew that we never knew love. That the love that we experienced was distorted, broken, fragmented. And a lot of times that's the only model we knew. And then we try to love with that distorted love that we know, it's not going to work. I mean, it's not going to bring us all the way where we want to go when we follow Christ, right? So, we don't know what that secure love is.

[00:30:39] It is ultimately interior integration and healing through the grace of God that will help us to move in that direction. right? So, interior integration and healing is what's going to give us what in psychological terms Is uh, what is it called? Earned secure attachment, right? So, if we didn't have secure attachment growing up, it is still something that we can learn and grow into. We can have earned secure attachment in a relationship with God. We can have earned secure attachment in a relationship with ourselves. Right. And that also happens through the mediation of other people, relationships that give us an experience of what secure attachment can be like. So, that's what, that's what I really wanted to share in today's, um, and chat in this episode of my podcast. 

[00:31:33] I hope that something of what I said resonates with you. And if you're really struggling. as well with a fear of criticism, fear of rejection, of maybe having a bad reputation, of not being seen in a good light by others, Remember that when you grow deeper roots and are securely attached in God's love for you and in your love for yourself, that fear of criticism and judgment will no longer hold you back. 

[00:32:06] So, here's to healing and integration and an embodied incarnational spirituality of love. Till the next time. Bye.

[00:32:18] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

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