Scott Kellogg, PhD, & Amanda Garcia Torres, LMHC
In early August, I went to the APA Convention in Washington, DC. It was a very good experience. I mostly went to talks and presentations on working with trauma and working with addictions. One thing that struck me was that there was virtually no mention of the Inner Critic as a central force in both of these disorders. This gave me hope that our article might be both timely and useful.
An exploration of the literature on the psychotherapeutic treatment of Inner Critic issues reveals a split in our understanding of its nature and origin. One perspective is that the Inner Critic is an internalization of negative experiences with the people from the patient’s early life—or from society at large. This is what we call the “Internalized Abuser.” The other is that the Critic develops around age six—often in difficult or stressful situations—to keep the patient safe. This one we call the “Protector Critic.” These two Critics, then, are very different in both their origin and their role in the patient’s life; they will also need very different forms of treatment.
In this article, we explore how to use Chairwork Psychotherapy to: (a) make a differential diagnosis and (b) work with these two very different forms of difficult inner experience.
I hope you find this article to be compelling and useful.
Tags: chairwork, Inner Critic, schema therapy