For a few years, I believed that what we often call “the rational mind” was my enemy.  I have a powerful rational mind, and most people would see this as a plus, but to me that was part of the problem.  I thought all the analysis, judgment and criticism my mind did was holding me back in life.

For instance, when I was having a conversation and just trying to listen to the other person, the rational mind would kick in, coming up with counterarguments, different perspectives, advice and so on.  Unconsciously, the other person would sense this, and it would be disconcerting to them.  I often felt helpless in the face of the mind’s constant whirring.

How I Lost My Mind

This was partly, I think, because I had an intense, time-consuming job — being a lawyer — where the rational mind dominated everything.  As a young attorney at a big law firm, I led a cloistered life, spending most of my time in my office drafting legal papers, memoranda and letters.  This was okay with me in the workplace, but it wasn’t easy to silence the mind’s noise in my off hours.

In a sense, leaving that job and starting to coach and write was my rebellion against what I saw as the tyranny of the rational mind.  I knew there were parts of me I hadn’t spent much time cultivating, and I thought leaving my old environment was the only way I could really do that in earnest.

I also immersed myself in ideas and techniques to help me discover “who I was beyond the mind,” as some spiritual teachers put it.  I spent countless hours meditating, releasing emotions, taking workshops, and so on.  Conversation, for me, became about noticing what I felt in my body and trying to give that a voice — “I’m feeling my shoulders relax as I talk to you.”  I wrote a slew of articles, and ultimately a whole book, about listening to instinct and intuition.

I made some progress toward this goal of self-discovery — I experienced moments when my mind was blissfully empty, and all I felt was raw sensation — my pulse, breathing, tingling in my hands, and so forth.  I saw that the rational mind was “just another part of me,” to paraphrase Michael Jackson, and that I was an okay person even when it wasn’t operating.

How I Found It Again

Perhaps the most important thing I noticed, in these “mindless” states, was that the mind no longer seemed so oppressive.  When I began to feel more in control of it, I started to see that it was simply a tool I could use — not an enemy bent on destroying me or making me unhappy.

After seeing this, I started regaining my interest in using the rational mind, and discovering what I could give the world with it.  I got back into reading about philosophy, psychology, and other disciplines I scorned for a while as abstract and “heady.”  I started a new blog addressing some of the criticisms of personal growth, which has a more “pointy-headed intellectual” style, I think, than what you’ll read here.

I’ve noticed, as I’ve been reconciling with my mind, that I’m having a blast.  I’ve been cranking out articles nonstop for the new site, which ideally will turn into another full-length book.  The heightened awareness of my body I developed has actually helped me appreciate this — I’ve noticed how light and free my body feels as I’ve done this writing.

The moral of the story, I think, is that I needed time away from the rational mind to rediscover its value.  Another takeaway is that we don’t serve ourselves by pushing away parts of who we are, and one of the most rewarding things we can do is make peace with the parts we find it hardest to deal with.

How about you?  What part of you have you been pushing away?  What could you do to integrate it back into your life?

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To me, one fascinating aspect of the Internet is the vast amount of anonymous negative commentary that goes on all over it.  The ability to hide our identities when posting messages on blogs, forums and elsewhere lets people say things they’d never risk telling someone face-to-face.  And even if we do reveal our names online, it’s harder for people to meaningfully retaliate against us than it would be in person.

People have different attitudes toward this phenomenon.  Some like the Web for its raw, uncensored “snark,” and see it as a refreshing escape from the sometimes stilted politeness of face-to-face interaction.  Others wish all the haters on the Internet would find amusement elsewhere.  What we don’t usually consider is how much we can learn about ourselves in a medium that allows us to be as harshly critical as we want with few consequences.

It’s often said of people who are critical of others that they’re just trying to cover up their own insecurities, or build up their status in their social group by lowering someone else’s.  But at a deeper level, when we criticize or judge someone, we’re actually revealing something we don’t want others to see about ourselves.  Because we judge some part of our personality or characteristic we have as wrong or unacceptable, we try to convince ourselves and the world that someone else has it, not us.

Psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone, in Embracing Our Selves, call a part of our personalities we fear and refuse to acknowledge a “disowned self.”  Disowned selves are created when we are repeatedly punished, often at an early age, for displaying some aspect of who we are.  For instance, if our parents frequently shame us for being loud or expressive in public, we may “disown” our playful selves, and learn to be withdrawn and easily embarrassed around people—and critical of people who “put themselves out there” too much for our liking.

As the Stones describe, we limit our fulfillment in life by disowning parts of our personalities.  If we refuse to acknowledge part of who we are, we cut ourselves off from the strengths and opportunities that part can offer us.  The Stones illustrate this point nicely in their book:

Perhaps you are excessively neat, relentlessly hardworking, compulsively kind and thoughtful, always caring and giving, always right, or never complaining or angry. . . . So think about how these qualities can limit you, can make you intolerant, inflexible, unable to relax and accept yourself and others as full, complex human beings.  It is nice to try to live a perfect life, but what if that means never trying anything because you are afraid to make a mistake?

By observing how we negatively judge others, we can learn about the parts of ourselves we’ve disowned, and that it may benefit us to reconnect with.  With this in mind, let’s explore some of the ways people tend to verbally attack each other, on the Internet and elsewhere, and what we can learn about ourselves if we find ourselves putting people down in these ways.  Even if you don’t actually say these things to people, you may be thinking them anyway, and still have an opportunity to learn about your “disowned selves” from those thoughts.

As you read this list, notice whether you tend to shame yourself for having these negative thoughts about people, or pretend that you don’t have them.  If you judge yourself for judging others, you may be depriving yourself of valuable information about the places where you’re cut off from who you really are—in other words, “disowning” your judgmental self.  For the moment, see if you can set that tendency to shame your critical self aside.

1. Loser.  Although it’s tough to pin down precisely what a “loser” is, most of us seem deathly afraid of becoming one.  Broadly speaking, “loser” seems to mean someone who persistently fails at projects they take on—whether we’re talking about business ventures, romantic relationships, or something else.

If we find ourselves frequently judging others as losers, that may stem from our own deep-seated fear of failure, and of having our failures seen and ridiculed by others.  For many of us, this fear is so intense that it prevents us from even attempting to achieve most of the goals that interest us.  For example, although many of us have at some point dreamed of starting our own business, the risk that our business might fail, and others would mock and reject us, often seems too terrifying to face.

It’s not surprising that many of us harbor this fear, as most of us have learned since a young age that mistakes and failures are bad and worthy of punishment.  When we broke something as children, we were verbally or physically punished; at school, when we gave a wrong answer, we received a lower grade or ridicule from the teacher; and so on.  It’s better not to try something, we were taught, than to mess up and be branded a loser.

However, overcoming this fear seems critical to achieving the fulfillment most of us are seeking in life.  If we want to pursue the goals that most inspire us in our careers, relationships, and elsewhere, it seems we need to become comfortable with the risk of failure and ridicule.  Otherwise, we condemn ourselves to “safe” but dull and restricted existences.

2. Jerk.  “Jerk” also has different meanings to different people, but one common meaning is a person who is overly aggressive and calls attention to themselves with their behavior.  If we find ourselves calling people jerks, or thinking that way often, we probably have some discomfort with our own aggressive tendencies, and our own desire to be the center of attention in a group of people.

Discomfort with our aggression can hold us back by limiting our ability to be a leader and promote ourselves.  Taking a leadership position in any setting requires us to let others know that we want to be leaders, and that we see ourselves as capable of filling that role.  We may even need to compete against others for the leadership position.  These are assertive actions, and if we take them we run the risk of being perceived as pushy and arrogant—i.e., as jerks.

Thus, to many people, it’s more comfortable to sit on the sidelines and put down people in leadership roles—whether they’re politicians, celebrities, prominent businesspeople, or someone else—than to seek those roles themselves.  We can confirm this by looking at the many magazines and websites devoted to attacking celebrities and wealthy people, which of course get massive readership.

If you find yourself often seeing others as jerks, it may be useful to take a look at your own life and notice the places where you shy away from taking the lead or promoting your products or services to others.  My discussion here, of course, also applies to lots of stronger language that’s often used to describe aggressive people.

3. Idiot.  Many of us get a thrill from knowing more than others about a subject, and pointing out their ignorance.  Even if we don’t explicitly call others stupid, many of us secretly savor what we see as our superior knowledge and intelligence.

Our craving for superior knowledge often arises from a fear of being ignorant, or being seen as such.  As I mentioned above, we’re generally conditioned to believe it’s wrong or unacceptable not to know the answer to a question, and that our level of knowledge is what makes us valuable to others.  Many of us even feel the need to pretend we know the answers to avoid admitting ignorance—people who’d rather make up fake directions than admit they don’t know how to get somewhere come to mind.

Anxiety about being exposed as ignorant can limit our fulfillment.  I know it used to have this effect on me.  I used to be painfully shy, and much of this shyness resulted from a conviction that, if I wasn’t an authority on a subject people were talking about, I shouldn’t talk at all.  In other words, I believed people mainly valued me for the information I knew, and if I demonstrated that I didn’t know something they wouldn’t want me around.

This anxiety can also affect us in the career context.  A number of people I know have been interested in changing careers, but are so scared of looking like they don’t know what they’re doing in their new fields that they’d prefer to remain in a second-best situation.  I worked with one client, for instance, who was interested in becoming a massage therapist, but kept fearfully imagining working with her first client and having no idea how to proceed.

Physical exercise is yet another area where this fear holds us back.  When I tell people about my yoga practice, for example, they often respond “I’ve always wanted to do yoga, but I’m not very flexible.”  Translation:  although they could become flexible over time by doing yoga, they don’t want to look like amateurs at anything, and so they aren’t even going to start.

If you find yourself putting others down or seeing them as stupid, see if you can notice the places where your own fear of ignorance is having you play it safe and avoid the unfamiliar.

4. Fraud/Hypocrite.  One of our favorite ways to denigrate others is to point out the places where their words aren’t consistent with their actions.  Our willingness to do this reflects our own deep-seated “impostor syndrome”—our fear that we’re only pretending to know what we’re doing and “have it together” in our lives, and that one day someone’s going to find us out and the house of cards will come tumbling down.  If we keep the focus on others’ hypocrisy, we think, maybe people won’t notice our own.

In his wonderful book Chained To The Desk, psychologist Bryan E. Robinson, in the context of discussing workaholism, suggests that this nagging sense that we’re “fakes” stems from early experiences where we’re persistently unable to meet our parents’ standards.

When it seems like we’re constantly criticized, no matter what we do or how hard we try, we eventually develop the belief that we’re just plain defective people.  As Robinson puts it, “many workaholics were held to high standards that they could never reach. . . . Driven by insecurities, workaholics sometimes go to desperate ends to prove their worth.  Often at the expense of others, they use superiority to disguise their inferiority.”

If you find yourself constantly looking for ways to prove that others are “frauds,” take a look at your own fear of being exposed as a fraud, and how this anxiety has impacted the way you’ve been living.  As Robinson says, people who work obsessively are a good example of the harmful effects of this fear.  In many lawyers I met when I was an attorney, for example, there was a desperate, frantic quality to the way they worked—a sense that, if one detail was out of place, their worlds would end.  This constant fear actually tired them out and reduced their productivity in the long run.

As with other criticisms I’ve talked about, the worry that we’ll be exposed as fakes also deters us from trying new things and taking risks.  I’ve known a few people, for instance, who were afraid of entering intimate relationships, because they worried that their partners would “find out” that they were childlike or immature in some way.  Others are reluctant to promote their businesses, for fear that they’ll be met with ridicule and called frauds by the public.  Notice whether any of these fears are limiting you in your own life.

One common theme you may notice in my discussion of these criticisms is the idea that, if you find yourself judging other people in these ways, there’s an area where you’re probably “sitting on the sidelines” in your life—holding back from pursuing your goals out of fear and insecurity.  By taking a close look at the ways you criticize others, you can find out much about your “disowned selves” and the places where you have opportunities for growth.

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The fear of annihilation often manifests itself in our lives as a worry that, if we show the world who we truly are, we’ll be hurt or destroyed—in other words, that we’ll be annihilated for fully “being ourselves.”  Many people have a specific part of themselves that, for this reason, they’re afraid to display to others.  For instance, maybe this part is their anger, vulnerability, sexuality, or something else.  If they let others see this emotion or behavior, they fear, others will abandon them and leave them to die, or even physically harm them.

In my own case, for much of my life I was afraid of hurting others.  I believed that, if I expressed emotion or asked for what I wanted, others would suffer.  Thus, I was very careful to avoid telling or showing others how I felt, and I literally held my body in an expressionless and rigid posture to make sure no one knew.

Consciously or otherwise, I believed that, if I released the tension in my body and expressed emotion, no one would want anything to do with me, and I’d be isolated, unloved and eventually starve to death.  I was in the predicament Dr. Darren R. Weissman describes in The Power of Infinite Love And Gratitude:  “What’s the foremost reason . . . why so many of us are afraid of getting well?  The answer is the fear of losing love as soon as we reclaim our disowned selves.”

Eventually, I started recognizing that this approach to living wasn’t actually serving anyone.  It took great effort for me to constantly monitor my communications and posture to ensure no emotion was ever expressed.  Instead of thanking me for my efforts to avoid hurting them, as perhaps I hoped they would, other people became uncomfortable around me, as my rigid and robotic way of being was unnerving.  But while I knew on a rational level that I wasn’t helping anyone by concealing who I was, I’d become so accustomed to hiding away that I was afraid I couldn’t change.

In a moment of despair about this, I had an interesting thought.  What if my worst fear were actually true?  What if I actually would hurt people, and they would abandon or harm me, if I showed them who I truly was?  What if I am an inherently evil, hurtful person, who brings pain into the world?  What if hiding away was the only real option for me?

At first, having these thoughts only plunged me deeper into my funk.  But after a few minutes of moping, I suddenly burst out laughing.  It was as if an inner voice I’d never heard before spoke up and told me that, even if I am an evil person, that’s perfectly okay.  As I had this thought, the constriction in my body released, and I felt infused with energy.  It was as if a dam inside me broke, and healing, empowering water was spreading through every part of my body.

Another realization came swiftly afterward.  I recognized that there was, indeed, a “dark side” of my being.  There was a part that was willing to do and take whatever it wanted, when it wanted it, without regard to anyone else’s feelings or wellbeing.  There was nothing unique about this—everyone carries some of that “dark” energy.  But I was so afraid of this energy that I’d designed my entire life—down to the way I moved my body—to avoid unleashing it on the world.

When I simply acknowledged that part of myself, without pushing it away or pretending it didn’t exist, I suddenly saw that I had nothing to fear from it.  Yes, I saw, I am mean and hurtful—and I am also generous, kind, beautiful and so much more. 

My “dark side” is just a universal part of the human experience.  Simply acknowledging its existence in me doesn’t hurt anyone, and won’t cause me to be abandoned or annihilated.  I created much more discomfort for myself and others by disowning that part than I did by just letting it be.

My own story illustrates the exercise I’ll share.  You, like most people, probably have an emotion or behavior you’re afraid to show the world.  Perhaps it’s your weakness, sadness, aggression, ambition or something else.  If this is true for you, and you’ve been designing your life around not displaying that part to others, I invite you to try this simple technique:  just admit to yourself, without judgment or reservation, that the part you’ve been concealing exists.

For example, if you’re worried about revealing the fact that you sometimes feel weak and helpless, try saying to yourself out loud “I am weak and helpless.”  If you’re worried that others will see your jealousy, say to yourself “I am jealous.”  And so on. 

Once you’ve done this a few times, notice that admitting the existence of your disowned part didn’t destroy or damage you.  Recognize that what you’ve just said is not simply true for you, but has been true for practically every other human being in history.  And feel the peace and relief that acknowledging more of your humanity brings you.

I was inspired in doing this exercise by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone’s wonderful book Embracing Our Selves.  The Stones lovingly describe the difficulty, but the eventual empowerment, we experience when we integrate aspects of our humanity we’ve pushed away in the past:

It is sometimes painfully difficult to honor all our parts. As Jung once so aptly said, “the medicine we need is always bitter.” Well, it may not always be bitter, but . . . it is not always easy to accept patterns that seem reprehensible to us or, more accurately, that seem reprehensible to that part of us with which we are identified. The rewards for embracing our selves are great, for each reclaimed pattern feeds us with new energy, each helps to make our journey on earth more meaningful, more effective, and more joyous.

I’m convinced that the key to inner peace, and achieving your goals in life, is developing a healthy relationship with every part of yourself, no matter how frightening or ugly those parts may look to you.  In acknowledging and honoring every aspect of your being, you gain access to more resources, and to more composure and empowerment.

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John was concerned that this person was “gunning” for him—that his coworker was always trying to prove that his or her work was better than John’s, and was probably making negative remarks about John to superiors while John wasn’t there.  John constantly worried about this—so much that it sometimes disrupted his sleep and his ability to work.  One of the reasons John had changed jobs a few times was to quell this anxiety, but somehow this sort of person seemed to follow him wherever he went.

When he came to see me, John was on the verge of leaving the nonprofit he worked at and seeking yet another position, to get away from the discomfort he felt in his colleague’s presence.  “I’m sure I’ll eventually find a place where people don’t make me so nervous and upset,” he told me.

Before John changed jobs again, I suggested he ask himself whether he’d experienced this type of relationship with other people before he entered the workforce.  Did it seem, I asked, that—no matter where he went in life—he was constantly plagued by someone who seemed to be “gunning” for him, fiercely competing with him and trying to undermine him?

After giving it some thought, John realized there had almost always been someone like this in his life, even as far back as his childhood.  As a kid, John had two brothers who were close to him in age.  Both of his brothers, John remembered, were constantly striving to win their parents’ affection, through getting good grades in school, athletic accomplishments, and so forth.  Because his brothers felt that their parents didn’t have enough time or attention for all the children, they would put John down when they talked to their parents, suggesting their parents should pay less attention to John.

For a while, John took the same approach as his brothers, jockeying with them for a special place in his parents’ hearts.  Eventually, however, John recalled getting so frustrated by his brothers’ behavior that he decided he wasn’t going to play their game anymore.  He was going to do what he wanted with his life, and not obsess over whether he was competing effectively with his brothers.

John also resolved, when he had to work in groups, to be a “team player”—to treat his coworkers as allies and allow them to share equally in the credit for what the team accomplished.  If John ever felt the urge to outperform or undermine a colleague, he’d push that instinct away, telling himself those feelings were “selfish” and “inappropriate.”

John’s decision to distance himself from his competitive feelings had some benefits for him in the workplace.  Others did indeed see him as a “team player,” and he was generally well-liked.  But when we do what John did, and cut ourselves off from part of our instincts or feelings, we often create suffering in our lives.  Strangely enough, when we disown part of who we are, it seems that other people start entering our lives who have the traits we dislike.  When we deal with those people, we feel frustrated and uncomfortable.

Psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone describe this phenomenon in their book Embracing Our Selves.  The Stones call emotions, instincts and ways of thinking we repress, or don’t allow ourselves to experience, our “disowned selves.”  Simply because we push them away, the Stones observe, our disowned selves don’t stop influencing our lives.  Instead, we tend to unconsciously seek out relationships with people who strongly express those emotions and instincts.  Our relationships with these people—whether in the romantic, friendship or work contexts—tend to be unhealthy and stressful:

Although attraction to a disowned self perceived in another can often lead to the integration of these energies, unfortunately, we are more likely to see individuals lock into destructive relationships with those who reflect a disowned self. . . . Instead of learning from one another, instead of integrating these disowned selves, they live with the reflection of them in their mates, judging them and continually being angered by them.

To break this pattern of unconsciously seeking out our disowned selves in others, we need to acknowledge and accept these emotions and instincts.  We need, in other words, to reintegrate our disowned selves into our personalities.  If we don’t, we’ll keep on attracting people who represent our disowned selves into our lives—just as John, no matter how many times he changed jobs, always ran into someone else who strongly expressed John’s repressed competitive, aggressive instincts.

To help John reconcile with his disowned competitive self, and feel more comfortable in his work situation, I recommended that John take up some more competitive practices in his life.  To do this, he didn’t have to devote his energy to outperforming or “backstabbing” his colleague.  Instead, I suggested, he could take up a team sport, run in a race, or even just play competitive board games.  This way, John could get back in touch with his aggressive part in a way that felt healthy and appropriate to him.

John got back into playing basketball each week, which he hadn’t done for years.  Not only did he have fun and get exercise by doing this, but it gave him a healthy avenue for reconnecting with his competitive energies.  Because of this and other practices he took up, John gradually began feeling more peaceful about his work situation.  He started becoming more productive, and sleeping better, because he wasn’t constantly worried about his colleague’s competition.

If you continually find yourself running into someone you dislike in each working environment—or any other setting—you enter, give some thought to the aspects of their personality you’re not okay with.  Do you accept those aspects of your own personality?  Or do you suppress them before they can come out?  If they have a tendency to get angry, for instance, ask yourself whether you permit yourself to feel and express anger.

It may be that the person you don’t get along with has a personality trait you’ve disowned in yourself.  If this is true, acknowledging and accepting that part of yourself will likely improve your relations with the person, and free you from the unease you used to feel in their presence.

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