Hey friend,

Welcome to Recover! Heal! Launch! - Dr. Bob Beare’s Newsletter (renamed but still the same.)

So glad you’re here.

In this edition we’ll look at:

• How judgment is a destructive default mechanism.

• How we developed this pattern.

• How to let it go.

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”

― J. Krishnamurti

We are judgment machines. Especially when we have unresolved tension in our bodies, we try to work it out in our heads. This is one of the main places that trauma spills out onto the world - judgment.

Consider

My ex told me I was the most brilliant person she had ever met - and believe me she didn’t mean it as a compliment. When uncomfortable for any reason, my go-to was judgment of myself or others.

I would bring out the shame sword toward you or toward me. The roots of this ugly condition are in our childhood. When met with chaos, we tried to make “sense” of it all. It was non-sense, so making sense of it was the beginning of our lifelong struggle.

We carry our old unresolved pain and trauma in our bodies and it remains as a sore spot. Any situation that pokes even slightly at this unconscious pain sparks an intellectual attempt to avoid it.

If we were criticized when we were small and vulnerable, a mild comment from a family member, a friend, or a coworker can set us off. We may react explosively or launch on a several-day judgment binge in our heads - alternately blaming them and ourselves. Sometimes we carry these judgments/resentments for years.

If our creative expression was critiqued excessively or minimized, we may have knee-jerk judgmental comments about others’ art and creative work. My daughter is an emerging filmmaker and she took the risk of showing me a recent video she edited. My first comment was a wisecrack about the vulgar music she chose. I’ve been apologizing for a week now. With reflection, I realized that much of my creativity as a kid was either minimized, misunderstood, or judged in some way.

My judgment machine has calmed considerably over the years of doing inner work, so I won’t beat myself up any further on that one. But it brought this topic up into my face. It also brought up some tears and grief about my own buried wounds around creativity.

Children pretty much tell their emotional truth until they hit “The Age of Reason”, at about 7. Until then, everything that’s presented - good, bad, or ugly is ingested as fact. Comments about their body, intelligence, and creativity become reality. Then, they start to develop a bullshit meter. But they are not yet empowered to call out the bullshit.

Instead, they develop the ability to go into their heads and concoct something that will avoid punishment or please their caregivers. They begin to stuff their emotional truth. If there is even occasional chaos to avoid, the knee-jerk thinking mechanism becomes a protective pattern. Then, avoiding the truth to survive becomes a lifestyle.

Can you see how this pattern develops? Are you beginning to notice when you go straight to your head as a protective response? Do you see how healing this can help you access increased authenticity?

These moments can be opportunities for us to heal. But our unresolved trauma isn’t just hurting us, it is injecting poison into the world. So the work isn’t just for us, it’s an act of caring for others when we heal our judgmental patterns.

There is grief work to be done to offload the pain that is stuck in our bodies. Support is required. It is difficult to do this work in a vacuum. They say we can’t re-do our childhood, but that’s a load of crap. We can get the loving support we missed when we were young from others on the healing path. Then we can learn to give it to ourselves.

There is no benefit in blaming ourselves or our original caregivers. But we must look at the reality - we have all been hurt, we are judgment machines, and avoiding it will not serve us or the world. 

As a reminder, you are part of a growing community here. We are all healing as we let go of our judgment of self and others! This is a community forum for dialogue. Your insights on this topic are valuable. Please reply with your experience and comments.

An Affirmation

Today, I am seeing how I go into my head when I am uncomfortable. I am noticing the emotion beneath the judgment. I am healing that wounded child within. I am allowing myself to observe, feel, and let go.

Solutions

1. Get support: Excessive judgment of yourself and others is a result of trauma that is lodged in the body. Find a body-oriented trauma healer. Get in an experiential group. Heal your inner child. An amazing community group that focuses on inner child healing is Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA). Consider The Deep Waters Experience or another of the programs on this list: Recovery and Trauma Resources.

2. Notice your judgments and feelings: When you knee-jerk judge yourself or others - notice it. Awareness is the biggest part of healing. Then, notice what you’re feeling - Anger? Sadness? Fear? Shame? This becomes a healing moment vs. a damaging moment. I’ve written extensively about getting out our heads and into our hearts in Stop Doing Sh*t You Don’t Want to Do: A Straightforward Guide to Letting Go of Unresolved Trauma

Questions for Growth

Take this into your journal.

1. What situations bring the most judgment for you?

2. How is that related to your old wounds?

3. What quality support are you getting?

4. What progress have you seen?

Letting go of the judgment reaction is not easy. It requires support to normalize the expression of the feelings beneath the judgment. Stay connected.

Take good care,

Bob

To keep your healing alive, engage with this community, and support my efforts to rally this movement of healing:

1. Reply to this email with your experience and insights on this topic (Let me know if you don’t want it published - otherwise, I sure will!)

2. Get my new book - Stop Doing Sh*t You Don’t Want to Do is out now! Get it here. And write an amazing review here.  The Audiobook version is now available on Audible, Spotify, Google Play, and Libro! 

3. Get ready for premium! Within the next month, we will be rolling out The Launch Pad 🚀 premium subscription option with more tools and insight. Stay tuned for more info!

From our previous newsletter, Cheer Up!, here are the thoughts of some of our community members: