Holding Yourself Hostage: Living with an Inner Tyrant

“I’m really hard on myself…but that’s good, right? I guess you could say I’m a perfectionist.”

Caesar goes on to give me several examples of his perfectionism: if he makes a mistake at work (“and there’s no mistake too small to overlook”), he doesn’t just beat himself up internally with vicious self-talk—he denies himself any fun over the weekend. If he doesn’t meet a self-imposed productivity goal (even in the face of grueling work hours and extenuating factors beyond his control), he’s consumed with self-disgust and immediately sets another goal that’s doubly demanding. When he does achieve something noteworthy, he finds it hard to tolerate praise from his coworkers, wife or kids, “since I’m bound to mess up again soon enough.”

In a very real sense, a large swath of Caesar’s inner world is ruled by a tyrant unleashed whenever he feels like he is in danger of “failing” or falling short of some ideal of “how things should be”…which is much of the time.

Interestingly enough, Caesar didn’t come to see me to reduce his self-criticalness. He was convinced that this level of “inner vigilance” was necessary to keep himself on track; he told himself that it was the driving force that helped him become successful in the ways in which he defined success. It served an important purpose and he let me know in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want to lose his edge.

But Caesar was unhappy. And he knew he wanted to be happy. But he didn’t see the connection between his chronic unhappiness and the harsh psychological terrain that made up much of his internal life. He believed he could always do better somehow; there was always more money to be made, a bigger and better accomplishment to achieve at work, he could be in better shape, his kids could do better in school…

When we live in something for so long, it becomes background noise, a part of us that rarely gets held up for examination.

Caesar didn’t realize that his unhappiness was the result of this unrelenting part of him that had a stranglehold on him; one that was born out of fear of becoming weak or soft or seen as less-than.

The tyranny of the inner critic

For many who are highly self-critical, an inner tyrant exists, one that may lie dormant depending on the circumstances of one’s life. But make no mistake, this tyrannical part of us — even if quiet for stretches of time — is always ready to pounce. 

Understanding the myriad ways in which self-criticalness negatively impacts us is an important step in recovering an authentic self — a self that is allowed a wide range of emotional experiences without the looming threat of self-attack. 

In my clinical therapy practice I see many people who are highly self-critical. But not all realize the full extent of this inner tyranny. What they do know is that they are unhappy, often dissatisfied, unmotivated, tense, anxious or struggling in their relationships.

An important step in therapy is discovering the profound and wide-ranging ways our self-criticalness shapes us.

Satisfaction and fulfillment are fleeting

It’s a real challenge to feel good about something for a period of time when you know there is an inner bully waiting in the wings for the opportunity to highlight any misstep. Under these conditions, feel-good moments are short-lived when it’s only a matter of time before the next perceived failure is rubbed in your face.

It’s important to remember that any success or achievement that silences our inner bully brings a momentary relief by quieting the self-critical part of ourselves. This respite from self-attack, however, is not the same as experiencing a deep sense of fulfillment or joy.

When we are highly self-critical, our so-called successes are like dodging a bullet. Nothing bad has occurred, but nothing good has occurred either. Not berating ourselves momentarily halts the self-attacks, but this doesn’t guarantee an authentic celebration of a job well done.

The strangulation of vitality

Our inner critic doesn’t like it when we’re emotionally vulnerable. In fact, this part of us may have arisen because we were judged, humiliated or abused when we were at our most vulnerable — when we were dependent on our caregivers for our psychological and emotional wellbeing.

One way to deal with a neglectful or abusive childhood is to dissociate (break away from) our own psychological and emotional needs. Under these conditions as children we learn that the less we need others, the less pain they can inflict upon us. Disconnecting from our emotional needs allows us to feel more control in situations that are often beyond our control.   

But the solution of disconnecting from our own needs comes at a cost. Our emotional experiences have the potential to infuse our life with richness, with a vitality that is enlivening. When this inner world is cast aside, little stirs us; delight and joy remain elusive.

Reduction of emotional intimacy with others

The inner critic isn’t necessarily tolerant of others either. It’s not a leap to go from harshly judging ourselves for any perceived failure to verbally striking out whenever we are frustrated. The criticism of others also takes the spotlight off of oneself; externalizing criticalness is a way of (unconsciously) bypassing the internal damage caused by our own self-attacks. 

This self-bypass occurs by projecting the parts of ourselves we cannot tolerate onto others, seeing in them what we refuse to see within ourselves. Another pattern is to criticize those who express the very emotions we were belittled for having as a child. These dynamics often play out without the realization of how our past is impacting our present interactions.

When self-attack morphs into feeling undeserving of love and acceptance from others, we close ourselves off to the love others have to offer. We may (unconsciously) push them away or undermine the relationship, thereby bringing about the painful events we believe we deserve. 

Anxiety, unease and/or depression becomes the new normal

When you live with something for as long as you can remember, it becomes the norm, even if it’s unwelcome or painful. The so-called “perfectionist” is someone who is unable to cut him/herself any slack. Avoidance of any mistake is the proverbial gun to the head, the anticipation of any misstep a reason to pull the psychological trigger of self-attack.

In order to control this inner wrath, we must be on guard and set up an internal world where over-planning and omniscience act as a safety net. Some try to steer clear of anything challenging or new as a way of avoiding experiences that might not be easily mastered.

We become phobic of novelty and spontaneity; we narrow our experiences through an over-reliance on self-control and attempts to control our environment and others. Living this way comes at a significant cost. Anxiety and/or depression may result when we contort ourselves in order to quiet our inner bully in this way.

Untangling the inner critic from our childhood wounds

It’s not uncommon to hear from someone who is very self-critical that s/he had a childhood that involved considerable shame. The sting of criticalness/humiliation is designed to do something very specific to a child — it stops the child in his/her tracks; s/he feels momentarily disoriented, less-than, inherently wrong. Some can rebound from these moments, especially when there are counterbalancing experiences that feed self-worth.   

But without this counterbalance, the hostile or unresponsive environment that surrounded us can be absorbed into the self; our relationships with caregivers and important others become internalized, a psychic terrain where we unwittingly do to ourselves what others once did to us.

The voices of others are translated into our own voice. We neglect ourselves the way we were neglected; we rail against ourselves in ways that parallel how others diminished us; we similarly avoid or minimize our needs, denying ourselves the basic necessities of emotional life in ways that show an unconscious loyalty to our early attachment figures. 

We may unconsciously spend our life trying to prove our value to these past others (even after they are long-gone). This is a hostage situation played out within our psyches where the internalized parent/caregiver who could never be pleased continues to remain the driving force behind how we think, feel and act. 

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If given the chance, none of us would choose to have an unrelenting bully as a roommate, someone who has power over us and abuses this power every chance s/he gets. If you were literally stuck in a lease with someone like this, you’d probably hide in your room and do everything in your power to avoid him/her whenever possible.

You would try to make yourself invisible, to become unremarkable and exist on the margins in order to dodge this person’s wrath. You might also try to make this tyrannical roommate happy, anxiously predicting and yielding to their demands and whims, always attempting to anticipate what will work in order to prevent further victimization.

The self-self dynamic described in this article is really no different from living with an inner bully…except that you might not realize that it’s you bullying you.

Rich Nicastro, Ph.D., is a psychologist in Austin, TX. For over twenty years he has worked with individuals and couples on a wide range of emotional issues, including those who struggle with being highly self-critical and/or self-sabotaging.