Written by Siqi Gao 2022 Cohort
Last week, we watched a video in class about master inner voice by Dr. Ethan Kross. It reminded me of my undergraduate studies I attended a class in which I did not do very well, and the teacher was strict but kind. I knew I hadn’t done well on an assignment after the teacher emailed me feedback; I was too scared to look at it, thinking he would criticize me. But he just said one thing and immediately pointed out the errors directly.
Then I started to reflect on my “respondent conditioning” – why am I afraid of criticism or making mistakes? Just this thing = I didn’t do a good job, people point out the problem, and I change. In fact, it is a completely easy process. Who can do everything very well? The criticism is only about the incident, not my personality. But there is an inner voice that will show up and impact me, making me feel guilty.
My favourite streamer Dorothy123 pointed out that other people’s negative perceptions of us are actually imagined. When a person attacks and criticizes us, what exactly is he attacking and criticizing? When people attack and criticize us, they only criticize the “character” we play. They can’t attack us because they don’t know who we are. The real person is the sum of all the characters, but we have to play different characters in different situations with different people. For instance, I am a student, a daughter and someone’s ride or die. When people criticize us, maybe we don’t fulfill their expectations and don’t play our character well.
Besides, now we have already grown up. We have enough self-awareness to protect ourselves in this environment. Even if we do something wrong, we don’t need to act guilty and ashamed to meet the emotional expectations of others or a violent inner voice. What’s more, no one needs us to meet demand anymore. Even though this thinking is deeply ingrained in our minds, we can slowly persuade ourselves to keep reminding everything is role play!