WHAT YOU THINK OF ME . . . MIGHT BE MY BUSINESS
The adage “What you think of me is none of my business” is one of the best ways to prop up our defensive ego and perpetuate our blind spots. Unfortunately, this statement unilaterally accuses others of projection—their ideas and disowned parts coming to us in the form of how we should change, or what is wrong with us.
But, it may not always be a projection! They may be right.
What someone else thinks of us might very well be our business. Even if it is a projection, it can still be an accurate account of what we need to take a look at. Only we can know, and in our humility, we can determine what’s true. It’c crucial to be humbly honest because what we deny in ourselves precludes our own growth, health, and enjoyment of our relationships. This is why it’s a good practice to hear things with as neutral a mind as possible, especially when someone asks us questions that we might think are leading or attacking.
Again, only we know whether something is true for us, and the only way to find out is to be able to hear the input neutrally and honestly, then consider it both by feeling into it (an aspect of our intuition) and being as intellectually honest as we can—not by shooting it down before it even reaches the airspace of our heart and mind.
If we don’t trust the person who offers us advice, we also can be honest about our mistrust of them, rather than shoot down or argue against the advice itself. This might look like, “I could appreciate your advice more if I trusted it was for my own good, or if I trusted your sincerity. Since I don’t, I am sorry, I don’t want to hear what you have to say at this moment. Maybe later I’ll see and feel differently about it.” This is honest and often cuts to the chase and saves a lot of time battling ideas of right and wrong, especially when we don’t trust the person or the circumstance of the delivery.
Of course, we still need to self check ourselves and make sure that we are not simply allowing our ego to defend against hearing the content of the advice itself. After all, we can come to “not trust” anyone who doesn’t agree with us or who has some constructive advice. This is merely arrogance, as well as a narcissistic trait. Our defensive ego has an infinite number of ways to justify itself and protect even the dysfunctional aspects of ourselves! So, to play devil’s advocate to our defensive ego, we should try to hear the content of what someone has to say. If we can’t hear it, then it’s worthwhile to investigate why not.
Our healthy ego appropriately protects our sense of self from malicious attack, violence, and other harm. In the end, we have only our self-honesty to rely upon. We don’t have to believe or hear anything we don’t want to. We can set boundaries and shut out those whom we feel genuinely violate us. But if we want a better life and better relationships, it’s more helpful to honestly self-reflect and discover what is true.
Sometimes we simply don’t like what is true, not that we distrust it or the one who delivers it.
With practice, we can learn to trust both our feelings and our discernments about what is true, even if we don’t like what we find. If we are earnest about our growth, we will work to distinguish our healthy versus our unhealthy ego. If we are more interested in remaining the same and “safe,” even though it brings the same monotony and problems day after day, relationship after relationship, we likely won’t put in the effort.
Distinguishing what aspect of our ego is at work in cases of receiving criticism is an art and requires practice and learning from our mistakes and successes. It requires both our good thinking skills to not misinterpret what is being said, to remind ourselves to breathe and to pause before responding (“in the gap between stimulus and response is our freedom”) as well as our emotional honesty and self-reflection to admit, if only to ourselves, what is really true, what’s really going on inside us. To get to the heart of this truth, we can look beneath our immediate defenses and into our sense of self-worth and issues with shame. If we have been criticized unfairly in the past or shamed to feel bad about ourselves, as many of us have, it might be hard not to feel shame and worthlessness in the face of criticism or advice. To fend off feeling this resurfacing shame, we might find ourselves in a knee-jerk reaction to shoot down advice. Careful, neutral inquiry, however, can reveal to us whether we are indeed being shamed or if advice is merely triggering our backlogged shame. Particular body-mind integration practices is really helpful for this.
The more integrated and healthy our sense of self, replete with a good sense of how our functional and entitled egos operate and kick into action, the more able we are to hear criticism, without it meaning (read: our interpretation of it) that we are inherently bad and worthless. In other words, if we have shame issues from the past, we often will defend strongly against criticism and even helpful suggestions if it triggers our old shame issues and makes us feel unimportant, worthless, and hopeless.
If we suffer from shame, until we have a more integrated and solid sense of self, in the face of advice or criticism we might feel helplessly reactive and a need to protect ourselves (from our own judgment). To defend ourselves consciously like this can be a healthy form of denial, while we develop the capacity to be more honest, resourced, and vulnerable. If we want a deeper cure, so that we can both better ourselves and share more intimacy with others, we can work on releasing our pain, sadness, and anger from harbored shame. Psychotherapy, journaling, and self-help books can help in this way, as can The Nourish Practice
