I had a terrific conversation with Mark Coleman, the meditation teacher and therapist, about how to defeat bullies within and without. His new book, Make Peace With Your Mind, is full of good stuff.
Here’s a quote from our interview:
“The critic really started as a survivor mechanism in early infancy and childhood when we were trying to navigate our early family system and culture. When we’re learning how to fit in so we could optimize that flow of love and affection. It was an internal voice telling us to shut certain patterns and reactions down, that negativity bias that’s always looking for what’s wrong, looking for the threat. That tendency gets dovetailed into the critic, so that we don’t just notice what’s wrong. Instead, the critic comes in and nails us, slams us for it.”