Read The Nice Girl Syndrome Online
Authors: Beverly Engel
Everyone has this critical inner voice, but Nice Girls often have a more vicious and vocal one that attacks and judges them harshly. This less healthy inner critic probably treats you with the same lack of understanding and acceptance that you experienced from perfec- tionistic or critical parents (or other caretakers or authority figures) while you were growing up. This less healthy inner critic causes you to set unreachable ideals, which in turn causes you to keep trying to reach that perfect image, never letting you rest or feel satisfied. Its demands are never ending, and the actual feeling you are left with is, “I am not good enough, and I never will be.”
If you are like most Nice Girls, your inner critic not only eval- uates you according to its standards, it also constantly compares you with other people. For example, when you are doing well according to one standard, there is always someone who is doing better, with whom you can compare yourself. If you are different from someone in some way, this translates to you that one of you must be better than the other.
Our Shadow Self
Another concept related to perfectionism is the concept of the shadow, or our dark side. As we’ve seen, many women have worked
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hard all their lives to be “good.” They’ve done everything that has been expected of them—they were dutiful daughters, good students, devoted wives, caring mothers, responsible career women. But behind the facade of the loving, selfless, kind, innocent girl often lies an angry, resentful, competitive, jealous, selfish woman who is tired of her good-girl act.
There is a part of ourselves that we hide away not only from others but from ourselves. All of our lives, we have banished unwanted aspects of our personality into what psychoanalyst Carl Jung called our “shadow”—those traits, characteristics, attitudes, experiences, fantasies, and feelings that have been repressed into the unconscious. All of these suppressed parts of us are clamoring to get out. Unfortunately, most women are afraid to allow them out in the open. Instead, they smile sweetly and try to be perfect. Or they become involved with bad boys who will act out their dark side for them.
Jung believed that what we are unwilling to face in ourselves, we will be forced to encounter in the world. What we can’t tolerate or acknowledge in ourselves, we often project onto others. This is one explanation as to why Nice Girls often get involved with men who are dishonest, manipulative, angry, or abusive.
For example, let’s say that you were raised by an authoritarian father who frightened you so much that you could never show your anger toward him. The very thought of expressing yourself may have been so threatening that you felt you must deny and repress any signs of anger to protect yourself from his wrath. Instead, you pre- sented a face of submission, obedience, and pleasantness. This face is a false face, masking your true feelings. As time went by and you continued to mask your anger with pleasantness, the mask became thicker and your shadow became larger. In time, the process of falsifying your feelings became second nature and was totally uncon- scious.
Thus, anger became part of your shadow, and pleasantness became part of your persona. Since anger was not an acceptable emotion for you to express, you may have become attracted to a per- son who expresses his anger openly, perhaps even abusively. Or, you may have become involved with someone who has the same inner conflict you have about anger and who also puts on a false front to others but is secretly seething.
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Our shadow usually begins to form early in childhood, when we learn from our parents and other authority figures that certain emo- tions and behaviors are unacceptable. To avoid punishment and gain approval, we learn to repress these emotions and avoid those behav- iors. For example, whereas girls often learn that the expression of anger is unacceptable, boys often learn that crying is unacceptable. Thus, anger and assertiveness often becomes part of a girl’s shadow, and vulnerability and weakness become part of a boy’s.
Women in particular often hide their dark side behind a mask of sweetness, innocence, and fragility. But when you embrace this dark side and let go of your need to be good and perfect, you will be rewarded with more energy, power, spontaneity, creativity, and pos- itive sexual feelings—often called our Golden Shadow. We’ll look at ways to do this in the following section.
Remedies
Since many girls abandoned their true selves in adolescence so as to be accepted by others, Nice Girls often need to go through a process of rediscovering themselves and reclaiming who they really are.
You began this process in the previous chapter. Now you need to go back and recapture the self-confidence you felt before adoles- cence. You need to reclaim the outspokenness, enthusiasm, adven- turousness, and vitality you once had as a young girl. You need to go back to following your own instincts. You need to find your true voice and rediscover your strengths. The following exercise will help you to begin this journey.
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Sit quietly and take a few deep breaths. Remind yourself of what you used to do as a child for fun. Remember a talent or passion you had as a child (for example, dancing, painting, swimming). What happened to that talent or passion? Were you encouraged or discouraged from continuing it? Did you compare yourself with others and give up?
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Now imagine yourself reclaiming this talent or passion. Actually see and feel yourself doing it again.
Notice if any negative thoughts emerge, such as “You shouldn’t be wasting your time with this” or “People will laugh at you” or “You’re too old to do this.”
Tell these voices to shut up! Replace these critical voices with a nurturing voice that says something like “It doesn’t matter what others think” or “It’s okay to have fun.”
Make a promise to yourself to bring that talent or passion back into your life—to again experience the joy and exhila- ration you felt when you were swept up into it as a child.
Those who were shamed as a child often strive for perfection as a way to compensate for an underlying sense of defectiveness and to avoid being shamed in the future. The reasoning goes like this: “If I can become perfect, I am no longer vulnerable to being shamed.” Unfortunately, the quest for perfection is doomed to fail, since no one can be perfect. Each time you fall short of perfection, you will probably reawaken the already-present sense of shame you were trying to run from in the first place. And if you expect perfection from yourself, you will constantly be disappointed in yourself and continuously be damaging your self-esteem.
If the above information describes you, the first thing you need to do is to begin shifting your focus away from your so-called faults and instead focus on your positives.
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List five of your most positive characteristics—those attrib- utes that you feel best about and are most proud of. If you cannot think of five things, continue thinking about it and observing yourself until you can.
If you still cannot think of five positive attributes, ask a close friend to tell you what she values and admires most in you.
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Write down these attributes on an index card and place it in a conspicuous place where you can look at it often (some people have placed the card on their car dashboards or on their mirrors at home). Stop to read your list at least twice a day. Begin by taking a deep breath. As you breath in, take in the knowledge that you possess this quality. Now acknowl- edge this positive attribute by saying it out loud.
Make it a practice to give yourself credit for the good things you have done or for the progress that you make. Tell yourself, “You did a good job” or “You’re getting better at this.”
Following the instructions in chapter 4, create a positive and pow- erful statement to counter the message that you must be good and perfect. Useful examples might be: “I’m not perfect and that’s okay,” “I don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful,” and “I don’t have to be perfect to be loved.”
The sad truth is that it doesn’t matter what you have accomplished in life, how much success you experience, how beautiful you are, or what efforts you make to raise your self-esteem—if you have a pow- erful inner critic who chastises you constantly or who discounts your achievements at every turn, your self-esteem will always be low.
Your inner critic has many roles. It is that part of you who:
Blames you for things that go wrong
Calls you names such as “stupid,” “ugly,” and “weak” and makes you believe that the names are true
Compares you to others—especially to their achievements and abilities—and finds you wanting
Sets impossible standards of perfection
Tells you to be the best and that if you are not the best, you are nothing
Beats you up for the smallest mistake
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Keeps track of your failures or shortcomings but doesn’t remind you of your accomplishments or strengths
Exaggerates your weaknesses by telling you that you “
always
screw up a relationship,” “
never
finish what you started,” or “
always
say stupid things”
Your inner critic may be experienced consciously as a thought or a “voice,” but most of us are unaware of its habitual activity. Usually we become aware of it only during stressful situations when our shame is activated. For example, when we make a mistake, we might hear an inner voice that says something like “What an idiot!” or “There you go again, can’t you get anything right?” Before giving an important presentation at work or a speech in front of a class or group, we might hear, “You should have prepared more; you’re going to make a fool of yourself” or “Everyone is going to see how nervous you are.” My client Marianne described her inner critic in this way: “I have a voice inside my head that is relentless. All I hear is, ‘You messed up,’ ‘You didn’t do it good enough,’ ‘You’re a failure.’”
Even when you do become aware of the internal attacks, they can seem reasonable and justified. The judging, critical inner voice seems natural, a familiar part of you. But with every negative judg- ment, your inner critic weakens you and tears down any good feel- ings you have about yourself.
Your inner critic often appears as your own voice, making it appear as if you are the one who has these notions about what is right, what is necessary, or what things mean. But make no mistake about it, the voice you hear is not yours. It belongs to someone who lives inside you, someone you’ve brought along with you on your life’s journey.
By paying attention to your self-judgments, you will begin to realize that they were learned from others. These standards can actu- ally run counter to what you yourself want, feel, or know to be true.
This is how my client Tiffany described her dilemma. She can’t relax and enjoy her life because she has a powerful inner critic who dom- inates her every action.
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“I’m an educated woman but I feel so incompetent and stupid most of the time. I constantly compare myself with other people and always end up feeling inferior in some way. I’m constantly amazed by how other people seem to be able to speak up and not worry about whether what they say is going to be negatively judged by oth- ers. Other people tell me that they are impressed with how much I know and what a good job I do, but I don’t trust others’ assessment of me. I always think they just feel sorry for me and are trying to build me up.”
If you identify with some or all of Tiffany’s feelings, you also have a powerful inner critic. The following questionnaire, taken from my book
Healing Your Emotional Self: A Powerful Program to Help You Raise Your Self Esteem, Quiet Your Inner Critic, and Overcome Your Shame
, will help you determine just how powerful your inner critic is.
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Do you spend a great deal of time evaluating your per- formance, your appearance, your abilities, or your past history?
Do you set very high standards for yourself?
Is it difficult to live up to the standards you use to judge yourself?
Do you give yourself little breathing room to make mis- takes?
Is your underlying sense of self often determined by your beliefs of what is right and wrong?
Is your sense of self often determined by whether you have met your own or others’ standards?
Do you spend a great deal of time worrying that you have done something wrong?
Are you continually plagued by critical messages inside your head, messages that you are unable to quiet?
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Do you constantly compare yourself to others or to the success of others?
Are you often envious of others’ successes or achieve- ments?