Shame in IFS

A critic is a part that is not kind to us. When the critics speak to us, it shames us, and others around us. We feel worse and more ashamed. When our critic makes us feel bad and ashamed, other parts might resort to self-soothing strategies like procrastinating, engaging in comfort eating, distracting, spacing out, dreaming away, numbing our feelings and so on.
In IFS, we don’t view any part to be bad. A part that is taken to becoming an inner critic is a sincere helper of our system that wants us to keep achieving, or keep behaving in a certain way, or act, perform, or speak in a certain way. The critic may be an inner guide that prevents us from doing the wrong thing, or from repeating the same mistakes. Critics will similarly force others to also act and behave in a certain way.
Ultimately, shamers and critics, work in our service, by taking charge of our day-to-day life, our relationships, our interactions with our spouse, society, friends and at our workplace. Often, they are relentless workers. Their attitude is stern, firm and driven by perfectionistic energy. Critics may have taken this strategy of shaming either from our personal experiences of humiliation or invalidation from our school, families or societies or emulated burdens from one or both of our parents who may have had critics in them too.
Critics do not realize the impact of their criticism on the whole system. They make other parts of us want to hide away in shame even more and take us away from the very thing they want for us. Their goal for us is to be socially approved, and accepted, to do better, not to fail, to feel valued, and significant, to feel important, and to bring worth so we can counteract the feelings of failure, insignificance, being less than others and not being good enough.
Those who wage war with the critics are parts that dislike the negative energy of the critic and prefer positive thinking. The critic may wage wars with other parts like the procrastinators that take things easy for relief by non-doing but on the other hand, when the critic floods us with shame and bad feelings, our procrastinators and comfort eaters will step up to soothe us by offering food and distractions. But when comfort eaters, make us gain weight, critics become even more critical and this then fuels our procrastinators even more and the battle ends up with hopelessness.
In IFS, clients become aware of the many tangles that our parts have been caught up in. It brings awareness that what the critic does, is helpful and worked for so long, but it also creates an effect on other parts of the system and brings in what the critic ultimately does not wish for us. They are stuck in young times when this served the purpose back then, to please those around us, but now, are creating more dynamics and stuckness in the system. When parts rule the system, Self-energy gets covered up. IFS helps clients in accessing the Self-energy that has been obscured by the critic and its allies and opposers. So, each part that is involved in this tug-of-war is witnessed with compassion, clarity, patience presence and other qualities of the Self. The process helps gradually untie the knots that the system has got into for a long time.