Next Level Practitioner - Inner Critic Week 107, Day 2 - Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT- Transcript - pg. 1

Next Level Practitioner

Week 107: Healing Relationship Wounds That Feed the Inner Critic

Day 2: How to Leverage a Client’s Partner to Soothe the Inner Critic

with Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT and Ruth Buczynski, PhD

Next Level Practitioner - Inner Critic Week 107, Day 2 - Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT- Transcript - pg. 2

Week 107, Day 2: Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT

How to Leverage a Client’s Partner to Soothe the Inner Critic

Dr. Buczynski: When a client is struggling with their inner critic, they may not be the only one suffering.

So how do we help someone who’s attacking themselves and others, including their partner?

Dr. Stan Tatkin takes us through two approaches to help couples work together to heal wounds.

Dr. Tatkin: I loved hearing the question about inner critic because it reminded me of an old mentor of mine

– Hal Stone.

When I was a budding therapist in Los Angeles, and even before then, Hal Stone was teaching something

called voice dialogue. It’s not that it’s explosively new because voice dialogue has bits and pieces of Jungian

psychology, Gestalt, and even of Moreno, of psychodrama.

For those people who don’t remember or don’t know, it’s a dividing – imaginary – oneself into parts. [It’s] not

discrete parts like dissociative identity disorder, but that we have all

these different aspects of ourselves that come out and are automatic.

Again, our automation is always based on memory.

Another way of looking at the inner critic – some people also have “the pusher” who keeps pushing you to do

things – is a superego gone crazy. Superego in that triune model - psychodynamic model of Freud and others,

“superego, ego id” – really comes to the fore at around age eight with rules: “You’re supposed to do this,”

and “I’m supposed to do that.”

These interjects that are parental or societal are supposed to keep us in line. The ego is supposed to be

executive and measure reality versus pleasure and pain avoidance.

That dorsolateral prefrontal cortex here that does the right thing, as opposed to here where it does whatever

feels right, requires a very strong ego function which doesn’t really exist until around the age of 26.

In the meantime, we have the superego, which is our parental “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” We know people

who have not developed to the point where their executive function now overrides this and says, “Well, you

know, it’s not just as easy as should or shouldn’t. There are executive decisions I make based on internal

“Again, our automation is

always based on memory.”

Next Level Practitioner - Inner Critic Week 107, Day 2 - Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT- Transcript - pg. 3

beliefs and internal relativism about what I should do and shouldn’t do.”

That’s maturity; however, there are some people who were burdened by this very young and these interjects

have a hold on them even into adulthood.

Notably, particularly the alcoholic population, often is burdened by this harsh superego - this internal judge

that’s constantly hammering away at them which is part of their addiction cycle. But you don’t have to be

alcoholic to have this.

What do you do with somebody who is attacking themselves and being moralist with themselves? They’re

going to do that with everybody else and their partner.

In couples therapy we could use each partner. The beauty of it – and it is a wondrous thing – not only do they

represent the original couple, which is mother-infant, but we pick

each other based on recognition and familiarity. That’s nature.

We don’t pick people who are too strange; therefore, the chances

that you and I are more alike than not are almost 100 percent. In

some areas we’re familiars. We have a saying in couples: “There are

no angels. There are no devils. Where there’s one, there’s always the other.”

When we’re dealing with somebody who has a harsh inner critic we have a partner who understands on

some level; [they may be] doing something similar or maybe is that outward critic - the bite that fits the

wound for the other person.

Either way, we’ve got a system that we can work with and leverage partners for each other and against each

other skillfully and strategically.

We can have them work together in terms of that critic - both in terms of ministering to the person who is

attacking themselves but also limiting the person who is attacking us.

If we understand each other and we’re not threatened -– which is a big part of couple therapy – [we] reduce

the threat and find the baby in each other.

Then I can understand, Ruth, when you’re starting to get harsh with me, I know this is an internal voice that’s

harsh in you and I can say, “Ruth, stop. I know this about you. You’re being hard on me and you’re being hard

on yourself.”

“In couples therapy we could

use each partner, but we

pick each other based on

recognition and familiarity.”

Next Level Practitioner - Inner Critic Week 107, Day 2 - Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT- Transcript - pg. 4

That right there is a day-to-day possible remedy for each other. You need me to help you, Ruth, with things

you cannot see because we’re automatic creatures, and I need you to help me with things I cannot see.

Hence the need for partnership - we’re automatic, reflexive creatures.

That’s one.

The other is the old Empty Chair. Put that voice out and be that inner

critic and have them change chairs. The problem with that in couples

is it leaves the partner out. It’s not a creative solution if you’re a couple therapist, but it is effective.

You don’t want to make the partner, in chairs, “the parent” or “the bad person” because our minds tend to

fuse this. We understood in psychodramatic practice [that] people can confuse who they’re playing and the

other person. That can actually make things worse.

Dr. Buczynski: Partners who work together to notice when an inner critic is lashing out can help each other

heal.

Tomorrow, we’ll look into how to help clients access what they already have within to change their

perspective on their critic.

But now I’d like to hear from you. How will you use these ideas in your work today?

Please leave a comment below, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

“Put that voice out and be

that inner critic and have

them change chairs.”