How Coaches Can Help Their Clients Declare Independence from Self-Judgment

Ani
Hi and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey there, Brian. Happy Fourth of July.

Brian
Happy. Happy Independence Day, Ani. All right.

Ani
Happy Independence Day.

Brian
You kind of surprised me there with your Independence Day glasses.

Ani
I did.

Brian
Nice.

Ani
We love Independence Day here at the lake.

Brian
Well, we do love it here at the lake. Lots of family around. Our twice yearly annual biannual. I don't know how those bi's and annuals work anyway, but twice a year our family gets together from all over the place at the lake and we have a core group of people and it's just so much fun.

Ani
And I gotta tell you, the fourth of July meeting for me is the best. I know, you know, Thanksgiving is also awesome, but it's really the best because we can be outside and be at the lake and be together outside doing outside stuff.

Ani
It's kind of hard to be in here right now, you know, not in my bathing suit, hanging out at the dock.

Brian
Yeah, right. Well, so.

Ani
But I'm really excited to talk about independence because we get to do those kinds of things, you know, and other kinds of independence. 

Brian
Like we're going to talk about today. So we do have listeners from all over the world. We just want to say too. So in the US this week is the week of Independence Day.

Ani
Sure.

Brian
And you know, wherever you are in the world, there's likely a celebration about Independence Day as well. Hopefully. And even if there's not, the theme of this week is around independence. So if you remember last year, we did an episode on declaring independence from lower emotional states. And so if you haven't listened to that one, you can go back and declare independence from lower emotional states if you'd like. But this week on this year, this week, this year we're talking about how coaches can help their clients declare independence from self judgment.

Ani
I am declaring independence from self judgment, Brian. As if that's all that it takes.

Brian
As if that works. Yeah, right. So let's, so let's jump in. So oftentimes when we are... Talk about a topic that a lot, a lot of people talk about self judgment, you can, you know, if you, if you engine search this one out there, you're going to find a lot of information out there about it. So we want to make sure we're kind of coming at the lens from the way we approach these things here at the Somatic Coaching Academy from a somatic lens. But let's maybe get on this on the, the first, on the same page to start off with like how are we actually defining like self judgment? So of course the way I like to define these things is I look into the, go to the books. Go to the books, I go to the research and say what are researchers like saying about these things? How are they defining these things? So I have one right here. So this is, this is a definition that was, that I found in a paper, in a paper called Victimization in Light of Self Compassion, Development towards Communal Compassion 2017, paper on Aggression and Violent Behavior by Moshe Benison.

Brian
So that's where I'm kind of grabbing this definition from. It was quoted from an earlier paper from Neff in 2003. Anyway, here we go. So in this definition, self judgment is an uncompassionate response. It refers to being harshly self critical in instances of pain or failure. Rather than kind and understanding towards oneself, self judgment leads to rejection of one's own feelings, thoughts, impulses, actions and worth.

Ani
I think that's interesting because the definition has baked it in there. Something about pain and failure. And it's my experience that some people experience a lot of self judgment which means that they must be experiencing perceptions of pain and failure quite a bit.

Brian
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just, again you can look around, you can find lots of different definitions. I kind of liked this one for a couple of reasons.

Ani
You liked the thoughts, feelings.

Brian
Well yeah, that's definitely for sure. I like that it included this idea of feelings, thoughts, impulses, actions and worth because it just points back, back to the SBMC pyramid. Exactly. So anytime I see a confluence like that, I'm like, yeah, let's, let's definitely bring that in. You know, I also like the idea of having that pain and failure in the definition because if we reverse engineer this, then when people find themselves being self judgmental then according to this definition, whether they realize it or not, as you indicated, there must be some perception of pain or failure. So we kind of start bringing some awareness to it from either side that way.

Ani
One of the reasons I like this is because we, one of the things that we've been able to help people do for the entirety of our careers is help people who are having chronic pain. The translation of what that looks like to a person who's not having chronic body pain has always been difficult to enlighten people's perspectives about. And like that's what we're talking about right there. The person's having some kind of pain and it's not that they're having chronic back pain where they can't get up or walk around. They're having a painful experience internally. You know, talk about how pain is perceptual and obviously internal pain perception is really important. So I just. That's what I'm thinking about.

Brian
Yeah, that's great. It's great. So this idea of judgment now, babies are not born inherently self judgmental. I mean, let's just say that. Right. I'm not sure there's been any, any conclusive idea that humans are born with the capacity for self or inherent capacity.

Ani
Or babies aren't born with a sense of self.

Brian
Well, correct.

Ani
So some of the research talks about how, and I of course don't have the exact dates or ages or data, but I was just listening to some research about this recently where the sense of self isn't actually even developed until closer to the age of like two and a half starts to emerge.

Brian
Right.

Ani
So there isn't even a self.

Brian
Okay.

Ani
So regardless of. There you go.

Brian
So don't even have a self. Great point, great point. Yeah. So let's just... Leaning from there in terms of self judgment, I think we have to acknowledge that self judgment is a habit that we are taught. Correct. So self judgment is learned. Let's just say that.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
So if you're someone or your clients are someone who experience self judgment, then just know that we're not born that way.

Ani
Let's learn.

Brian
That's something that we learn.

Ani
You can learn something else.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
That's amazing.

Brian
So then the question is, well, why the heck would we learn something like that? Because it seems like in a lot of ways self judgment is troublesome for people. It actually stops them from creating what they want in their lives. It stops them from having healthy relationships, it stops them from having healthy bodies, all those kinds of things. So why the heck, why the heck would we learn self judgment kind of to begin with? And where do we even learn it from? Right.

Ani
We don't have a self for the first few years of our lives, we're learning it from the people around us.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
Soaking it up into our subconscious mind.

Brian
Yeah, exactly.

Ani
That's how babies learn. Right.

Brian
So we're either learning it through our, our parents, our caregivers, our society. Something like that.

Ani
Oh, what's crazy is you get to a certain age and you have all those patterns in you and now you have a self and you go, oh my gosh, look what I do. But it wasn't even yours to begin with.

Brian
Correct. Yeah, but we can, we can oftentimes own it as ours or it's inherently us because we don't remember when it started because it started in the soup of what we were, you know. So I think the two basic ways that someone would come to learn self judgment is two basic ways. The first way is if parents and caregivers are, are overly critical or judgmental of a child, then this, then the child would certainly then learn to be overly critical or judgmental of themselves.

Ani
Sure. And people who do that also are overly critical of themselves.

Brian
Exactly.

Ani
They're projecting it onto the people around them. It happens to be kids.

Brian
Exactly. So that just kind of, that's a process. Now the other way though, that it can happen too is that if a child witnesses their parent or caregiver being self judgmental, even if that judgment isn't being projected back onto the child from that particular person, the child will still learn it.

Ani
Yes.

Brian
And this is kind of like a lot of, in all of our trainings and we talk about these kinds of things. I know parents can get a little bit kind of judgmental about it actually. Right. And they can start to bring a lot of self judgment in to themselves because they're like, I'm ruining my kids and all those kinds of things. Or, or so that's not, that's not our intention here. Our intention here is again to bring awareness to these things so that they can move down chain. And if, if we bring in self judgment, then we actually stall the process. And a lot of times, again, we know parents that are trying to protect their kids from their own habits. So they say, I purposely don't criticize, overly criticize or project onto my kids. And, but they're doing it to themselves. Remember, there's a little adage that kids do what we do, not what we say. And so kids learn by example, by modeling. So if, if we're a parent who is very self critical or very self judgmental, then a child would just model that and soak that up and without it even being directed towards them.

Brian
So those are the two ways that self judgment is kind of learned.

Ani
So just take a pause here for a second. As a coach, if you're helping your clients with self judgment, really looking for your, for yourself at where your self judgment is. Because the ping pong that can happen between the lines, underneath the verbal language, underneath even the body language, like these subconscious signals that we send other people when we have really tough self judgment going on and we're trying to help somebody else unravel it, but we've got it going on, like we're called as coaches to look at that for ourselves so that the client can sincerely sit there and do their own work without getting all the, the like frequency issues from us.

Brian
Yeah. So, you know, humans, I don't, I don't think that humans inherently like pain.

Ani
Sure.

Brian
You know, we don't inherently like pain and criticism or self judgment.

Ani
Okay.

Brian
So there, so you would think, well if we don't inherently like those things, like why do we keep doing them? So there, there must be a purpose for this pattern of self judgment that's passed down from generation to generation to generation to generation.

Ani
You're going to tell me what you think it is? Yeah, you figure it out ahead of time.

Brian
Well, I have an idea. I mean, I have a thought around it and it just goes primal to... Unless you want to share one first. Well, I mean it's primal to humans. It's a protective mechanism. We learn self judgment as some sort of protection mechanism. And I think, for me, the clearest what we are protecting ourselves from? We're protecting ourselves from social unacceptability.

Ani
Abandonment, man.

Brian
Abandonment. So if, if we act out in ways where it's not socially acceptable, which would mean being exiled or, or having abandoned, that's the greatest threat to the core human, you know, the baby, the child that are set in ourselves. And so we come up with these judgments of ourselves or of others to keep ourselves or others in line. Right. And so that's basically that self judgment is the behavior of that whole process, let's look kind of like the tip of the iceberg.

Ani
Very young children learn to keep themselves in line because they understand if I'm not that that risks me being abandoned. To keep myself safe, I have to keep myself in line. And we learn very nuanced ways to be able to do that stuff. Very, very young yes, exactly. Hey, I have a question for you.

Brian
Yep.

Ani
Have you ever experienced self judgment?

Brian
Oh, yeah, sure.

Ani
When was the first time that you remember thinking this is self judgment?

Brian
Oh gosh, you know, it's so, it's so long ago.

Ani
What I'm really wanting to know is what is your experience of self judgment? Because I was surprised when I was thinking about this for myself what my experience of self judgment is. So I was curious to see what you would have to say.

Brian
Well, I don't remember specific incidences, but I do kind of remember like a trend. And so I became aware of how critically judgmental I was being of myself when it seemed like the errors I was making had bigger consequences.

Ani
Oh, that goes along with your thing with failure, your definition.

Brian
So like getting a car accident and it's like, oh, you stupid idiot. Like I can't stop berating myself and sometimes I did that actually. I felt like if I berated myself and I judged myself and I was critical of myself, maybe other people wouldn't be as critical as me. Like if I was demonstrating how hard I was on myself, then maybe I wouldn't have as much external punishment. Right. So that's kind of a process. But I noticed the very high degree I was being self-critical with big things first but only thought it was big things until it became more nuanced and more nuanced. More nuanced. And I started paying attention to my inner dialog on a more consistent running basis. And then I really noticed the almost a constant stream of self criticism and self judgment.

Ani
And when you say constant stream, you mean voices. Talking voices.

Brian
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, almost on a, like I didn't put enough peanut butter on my sandwich.

Ani
Right.

Brian
You know, and it's like, you stupid jerk. I mean, how many sandwich have you made? And you know, that kind of thing. And then I would catch myself going, wow. But it's interesting, I'm thinking about myself, about the failure of a peanut butter sandwich. There's no consequence.

Ani
Right, right.

Brian
But so what I'm saying is that, you know, it started with the big awareness. It started with the big consequences, but then I started paying attention to it. And I'm talking about, this is about like over years. This isn't just like over a week's time. This is like, like this started a couple decades ago and, and I noticed the more subtle, more subtle, more subtle until I noticed how almost ever present it was. And then I realized I really need to actually start at that level. Like a little homeopathy. Like I need to actually start on the vibrational level, the subtle level. Not when it gets so critical and huge. Because then it's harder to manage the daily. I had to get on the daily with it. What about for you?

Ani
I really didn't recognize that I was self critical until one step past you telling me that I was really hard on myself. I'll describe the one step past in a second. Okay. But it's interesting to me looking back at the trajectory now that you used to tell me you're so hard on yourself and I didn't really see it. Like I just couldn't really see it. Now here's the one step past. It wasn't until I felt like in our personal relationship you would like have this... You and I would have this pattern where you'd like pull away. And I thought you were punishing me by pulling away. And I became aware of that pattern that I thought you were punishing me. That I was like, if I think you're punishing me, I must be punishing me. And then I started to really watch do I punish myself? Then the you're so hard on yourself actually started to make sense to me.

Brian
Ah, got you. Wow. Yeah.

Ani
Because I've heard the voices in my head all my life, but it never really occurred to me that they were self judgment. Which sounds insane to me to say because I could tell you any of the number of things that they would say to me. The voices in my head and obviously they're self judgment, but it never occurred to me. So it didn't occur to me until you and I were going through those patterns.

Brian
Oh, interesting.

Ani
Then I realized I was judging myself and punishing myself and could kind of like look back from there. And the way that I was able to continue to work on the pattern and notice it was definitely through my sensations and not my thoughts.

Brian
Yes.

Ani
Because the thoughts would just kind of keep me in this thought loop and I'd be yelling at myself in my head or out loud to try to stop it and they would just keep coming. And it was like awful. But when I could pay attention to my sensations and work with my sensations, that was the unraveling of my life as a self punisher.

Brian
Yeah. Yeah, that's... Thanks so much for sharing that with me. I mean that's. I think that's very clear, very clear description. And everybody I think is going to really kind of soak that up and benefit from that, you know. And let's dig into that piece too, by, by the way, that the importance of working with it somatically.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Because that's a critical bit. The kind of the core feature of self judgment. If someone's wondering, well, am I experiencing self judgment? Kind of like you're saying, is this actually what it is? One of the core features of self judgment is right and wrong. Like there's like, if you really want to get down to it, is are we polarized into there's a right way and a wrong way to do, think, have, be, whatever it is that we're experiencing right now. And I actually am doing it the wrong way, which demands that I am self judgmental to get myself to do it the right way and I get myself to it the right way through, you know, critical self talk or blame or whatever it is. Right. All those mechanisms, projection. But the self judgment is really right and wrong kind of thinking.

Ani
Yes.

Brian
So one way to kind of determine am I actually in self judgment? Is to ask myself, am I polarized into right and wrong right now?

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Black and white, left right up, down.

Ani
One of the ways you can guage your progress with it is your attachment to the right and wrong thinking. I have a client who's been working on self judgment for a number of years and she's really to this place where there really is sincerely no right or wrong. You can hear it in her everyday conversations and that's my barometer for knowing that she's made it to a place where she's really not judging herself anymore.

Brian
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the interesting thing is, is that a telltale of how beholden you are to self judgmental thinking is if when you hear there's no right and wrong that you say of course there's a right and wrong. What do you mean? There are definitely things that are right and definitely things that are wrong that activates you. If that activates you, then you're still actually beholden to that thought pattern. Because once you actually let go of right or wrong, it doesn't mean that you all of a sudden allow yourself to go start robbing banks and like mugging old ladies, you know, which is what we think is going to happen if we let go of the idea that there's no right or wrong. Right.

Ani
Just imagining some people listening right now. They're like driving in their car listening to the podcast and they're like, no right or wrong? That's not true! Click.

Brian
So maybe you just turned it off and you, you're not listening anymore. But once you actually trans... Once you truly transcend that thing. You actually understand more about what we're actually kind of talking about happens on the other side of that. But one way to tell if you're still beholden to it is if it activates you when we say there's no and wrong.

Ani
Good point.

Brian
Right. So I just want to kind of put that in place. Put that in place right there.

Ani
Yeah. So if you're just like tearing your hair out right now, what are they talking about? Send us an email.

Brian
We'll talk, we'll get you. We'll get you hooked up. So what we know here, gang, is it's like the problem isn't always how we feel about ourselves, because self judgment is again, it's how we feel about ourselves. I'm wrong, right? There's something about me that's wrong.

Ani
Fine about myself. All these years, it was really you that was the problem. And I'm joking and not joking. I did not realize I was having a problem with me. I was very clear it was you.

Brian
It was me. Okay, well, I'm glad I could reflect that back to you.

Ani
Thank you.

Brian
Exactly. Because I'm perfect.

Ani
Thank you.

Brian
In every way.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
So. But it's not. It's not so much like how we feel about ourselves, and it's how we feel about how we feel about ourselves that's really, really important.

Ani
Yeah, yeah.

Brian
How we feel about how we feel about ourselves. Right. Because we're going. Some things are going to happen and we're going to feel a certain way about ourselves. And then at that point we get decide how to feel about how we feel.

Ani
So my turning point, sensationally working through this stuff with sensations, was when I developed a really clear relationship with the shame that I was feeling. And then to your point, the feeling that I was feeling about my relationship with shame. Okay, okay.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
So I recognized that I was feeling shame, like a lot. And I had no idea. And I was trying to cover it up basically all the time. And I actually remember where I was and what was going on when the shame, like, came to call that one day and it wouldn't go away and I was using all of my tools and it was still there after a number of hours and I just gave up. And I was like, I'm gonna stop being upset about the fact that I'm having shame.

Brian
Ah, yeah. Yeah.

Ani
And that was the last time that it stuck around. Like it had been my entire life.

Brian
Yeah. Powerful learning.

Ani
It was so cool. And I'm not gonna tell you I'd never have my shame sensations come up anymore or the sensations that are like that. Of course, because we work with the sensations, not the emotions. But it's not like that never happened. But it doesn't stick around like that anymore. And I don't feel bad about it when it comes up.

Brian
Yeah, yeah. Just what you did, Ani. And how do we declare independence from self judgment from a somatic kind of process? We need to start in the body because self judgment is, we've both said this, the voices in our heads. Right. So self judgment actually is very, very loud in the thinking form of things. Right. It's very loud in our hearing the voices or whatever it is.

Ani
It is continuous self sabotage because it actually throws your attention off from the place where you can do something about it, which is in your body. So it has you focusing on the voices in your head, which continues the patterns of self sabotage.

Brian
Right, yeah. So when we're dealing with self judgment, what we really need to do from a somatic process is get into the body, understand what the pattern of self judgment is about. And of course, every somatic pattern is those four parts. Sensations, thoughts, words and actions. People are very in tune with the thought part of it for sure. They may even be very in tune with the word part of it. They might not be as in tune with the action part of it, but they're likely not at all in tune with what the sensation part of it is.

Ani
Yes, I agree. Because if you were paying attention to and really with the sensations, it would very clearly draw your attention off of the voices in your head because it's usually pretty strong.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
The sensations that a person feels when they're, when they allow themselves to move into the sensory aspect of the self judgment pattern can be really big. Like profound.

Brian
Yes.

Ani
Profound, magnified, you know.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
Doesn't mean that that's got to be scary or whatever, but it can be like, whoa, I didn't realize that was going on.

Brian
Yeah. So from a sensation based kind of lens, the idea is to identify, recognize, become aware of what the specific sensations are that are happening or a part of the self judgment pattern. And then a really deep question to ask right there is what is this meant to protect? So while one is experiencing the sensations themselves, instead of buying into all the "what's wrong stuff", it's like, what are these sensations trying to protect? Because self judgment, remember, was taught as a, a process or a method to protect ourselves from being abandoned. Yeah. And so if we understand that process, we go back in and go, wow, so what are these sensations trying to protect me from doing, saying right now. And that will start to... Then you start to understand the core part of the pattern. Where did it start? Where did it start? And is it actually true anymore? Is it actually still valid? Is it still real? And sometimes that pattern will fight for its life and try to convince us that it's real. But if we really come at it from working with a coach, if we're having it reflected back from a coach, if you're a coach doing this process, then it's kind of like identify the sensation and then what is this sensation meant to protect you from?

Ani
And it's one of the really profound reasons to work with a coach on this because you have this experience and it's being witnessed by somebody who's doing their own work on their stuff, by the way, who can witness your experience and you. Because, you know, we're just talking about protecting ourselves from abandonment. So you're working with somebody who, if they're doing their own work, Brian, is not going to abandon you if they're doing their own work.

Brian
Correct. Yeah.

Ani
Because that happens, by the way.

Brian
Sure. Yeah.

Ani
Happened to me more than one time to be working with a professional who isn't doing their own work and actually abandons me or the process when I'm being vulnerable in my stuff, for anybody who's gone through that, just stinks. I'm sorry if that happened to you. So to have that be witnessed by somebody who can stand with their own work in your space and be there with you can break the spell of the abandonment thing. And there's like that extra secret sauce that's going on with the whole bit.

Brian
Yeah. And you know, the other reason why it's so important to start this work in the body, and we've talked about this a lot, is because what's happening in the body is influencing the higher brain levels. And so if you... Of course, when I'm researching for this podcast, getting ready for it, I read a bunch of articles and other professionals like what to do about self judgment. And so. Well, a lot of those things are really based in cognitive processes. Like, you know, they're talking about things like, well, let go of the feelings. Don't give it power. Try to look at the environment, what its cause. I mean, I think those are all good. And at the same time, when we're in the self judgment, there's either so much blame for ourselves. It's like none of that matters because I'm horrible or none of that matters because you suck.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Sort of thing. It's hard to break out of that.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
So when we. But when we go to the body to start with, then we can actually work with the core. What's actually holding this whole pattern together. Now, of course, one of the suggestions that's often given for self judgment is the idea of forgiveness.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
And I think this is so true. And we have a little twist on it because, you know, we do a lot of work around traditional Chinese medicine.

Ani
Right.

Brian
And it is true. When you look at how traditional Chinese medicine looks at the cure, if you will, or the remedy. The remedy for self judgment actually is forgiveness. It is true. And, and also forgiveness can become a very intellectual experience for people.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
It's like, well, how can I possibly forgive that? Something was done wrong.

Ani
Right.

Brian
Right. So it's right or wrong. Something was done wrong. I can't forgive it.

Ani
You say you forgive it, but you're not really forgiving it. Look at your actions. Come on. Or your words. Like no.

Brian
Yeah. And so, so other little thing we say is if you're having trouble forgiving, it's because you don't understand something. Like when once you understand something as a whole, whatever happened, whatever's going on as a whole, it naturally allows forgiveness to blossom. The key factor in forgiveness is understanding. But again, understanding can be a very intellectual process. From a somatic lens again, when you're working with the sensations of self judgment and you take someone through a process of neutralizing the charge of the sensation associated with self judgment, that actually is forgiveness.

Ani
It's embodied forgiveness.

Brian
It's embodied forgiveness.

Ani
Right. Which is why you can go through a process like that and then leave a process like that. And like not even remember the, like not what happened, Brian, but like the charge around the charger. Even like you don't even remember that you were upset about it, it actually.

Brian
Makes more sense because you understand more about it.

Ani
Correct.

Brian
It reveals the whole nature of the situation.

Ani
And this explains this idea of how sometimes we have emotional reactions to things or people. Like God, every time I'm around that person, I just feel like I have a reaction. And then all of a sudden you don't have a reaction anymore. When you do a process like you were talking about, the reaction disappears because you actually embodied forgiveness. You had an embodied experience of forgiveness and it's done.

Brian
Yeah. And that is declaring your independence from self judgment. That's actually how you declare independence from self judgment is you work in the sensation element of the judgment, self judgment. You neutralize the sensation element that actually creates more understanding, and that's naturally embodied forgiveness. That's how you declare independence from it.

Ani
Well, on that note, I'm gonna put on my Independence Day glasses.

Brian
All right, so we've got our Independence Day. I hope wherever it is that you are right now in the world that you are having a joyful and healthy celebration. Hope that you're surrounded by people that you love and care about.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
And I hope that you allow yourself to declare independence, your independence from self judgment and anything else that you would like to be independent from.

Ani
Thanks for joining us today. We will see you real soon next week on the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast.

Brian
Okay, time for hot dogs.

Ani
Bye. Bye.