Dr Emily

And it's so hard.

It's a really painful, really painful reflection.

But I also want to acknowledge, Josh, that I have heard that many times before.

In fact, for a lot of people that are going through the process, there can be a clinging on to this being true.

Yes, because if it's not, I will be deeply devastated that it will somehow reveal that actually there is a flaw in me that I am defective in some way.

Yeah.

And I think it's so important to acknowledge just how painful that is and that there can be a yearning for there to be a definitive reason as to why I've struggled in life.

And the thing that I would, that I'd kind of like really want to open up to or encourage the work around is that whether there is a diagnosis, something clinically that you're meeting criteria for, for example, it does not make that other person suffering any less.

So.

Maybe there's been a struggle in life and this inner critic has been really, really loud.

And no, there is, maybe there's neurotypical brain here.

Yeah.

And so the obvious response is, well, clearly it's something about me.

I'm inherently defective.

But then I want you to think about or invite you to think about the little part of you.

And that there was something extremely adaptive about what you were doing and extremely adaptive about that critic that was actually very, very important for your survival.

And that if you bring a lens here of compassion to that critic, does that change the way in which you relate to it now?

And so what that might look like for me, like in my work, would be doing – there's a number of incarnations of this.

But one of the things that I might do is like interview the critic.

So what I would do is like, Josh, if you were here, I would talk to you normally and then I would get you to change positions and to come over here and to imagine that Josh is still in the seat here.