Dear DH:

Excellent work and insight. You will do very well in psychotherapy if you are fortunate enough to have a competent, caring and hard working therapist (I add these adjectives because many psychotherapists are not these things!)

Emotional Mind and Rational Mind are not separate areas in the brain. There is an enormous number of connections between thoughts and feelings.

When you were born you were a child, a carefree child, no criticism yet. Then parents started criticizing you, telling you to not eat this way, to not play that way, to not run, to not touch, punishing, shaming you… Over time, you internalized the critical parent and it became a part of your mind: the Freudian “Superego” also known as Inner Critic.

The Inner critic, when it is too critical and shaming, it is a real inside-the-head bully that bullies the inner child.

When you are angry at yourself for making a mistake, that is the inner critic getting angry, and when you are afraid to make a mistake, that’s the inner child scared of the inner critic punishing him.

When you used the inner child words, wanting to be carefree, that is the inner child wanting to be free of the bullying of the inner critic. There are ways to …shrink that toxic (overly and abusively critical) inner critic. If you would like to read more about the Toxic Inner Critic, you may like a website by a Pete Walker, if you google.

anita