“They Make Me Feel Wrong”: A Meditation on Shame and Criticism for

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to gently unravel the belief that someone else can make you feel wrong, and reconnect with your own sense of clarity, calm and self-trust, even in the face of criticism.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People. A podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm. Eliminate stress and find true inner freedom. I’m your host, Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, A way to question and reduce stressful thoughts, and you guessed it. I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover why disapproval or criticism. It can feel so overwhelming, especially for highly sensitive people, how the simple thought they make me feel wrong creates tension, self-doubt and shame, and a step-by-step guided meditation to gently question this belief using the basics of the work of Byron Katie.

This is an addition of guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen. Learning to deal with criticism is a skill and an art, and it takes time to develop. In my experience, one of the ways that I find to be most helpful to change this experience for me is to do some inner work, and I used the work of Byron Katie for this.

But it’s not enough just to have strategies. It’s not enough just to understand the idea, that I shouldn’t take it personally, or I shouldn’t do it shouldn’t be so bothered by it. It has to change on an inner seeing level, has to be something that changes on the level of how you experience criticism, if it’s gonna make any difference at all.

So this meditation is an attempt at that. It’s we’re going to look in that direction, but keep in mind that you have to do your own work. I can’t do it for you. No one else can do it for you, and you can’t just understand your way to it. It has to be an internal process of unraveling the thoughts that are holding up this experience for you.

So to do that, let’s start by looking for a concrete situation where you had some criticism. You may need to take some time for this and you can pause the recording if you need to do that. I’m gonna use a situation where I was in a dog training class and a teacher said with kind of disapproving tone, I hope you’re not saying Harley.

At home. In other words, she wanted me to use the word his name once and then wait for the dog to come. And I felt shame because we were doing that and this was her way of instructing. But there was no previous no previous instruction given. So I’m suddenly already in the wrong just for showing up to class.

And that got to me. So this is the kind of situation where I’m. That we’re looking for. Can you get a place where you’re, someone criticized you and it got to you, you felt it in your, maybe in your stomach or your heart, and it was it was a real emotional experience. That’s what we’re gonna look for. So pause the recording, take some time to find something.

It. It is important to have a concrete situation. Otherwise, you’re just doing this work in kind of the abstract, which is nothing more than intellectual play rather than inner work.

So when you’re ready and you have a situation, let’s begin by identifying the stressful thought to question. There may be many. In my situation, I had thoughts like, she expects us to be perfect. She teaches by disapproving. She wasn’t being fair. She makes me feel wrong. I need her approval. I need her to be pleased with me.

These are a lot of different thoughts running in me and in your situation you will probably have a lot of different thoughts as well. Any one of these can be great to question and you may want to question more than one. So for me, I’m gonna take the first thought which is for me, she makes me feel wrong.

And let’s do this together. If you can identify with it in your situation. See if you can do this work along with me. So the first question is it true? She makes me feel wrong. And the key to this is to be in your situation. So I’m gonna just change the phrasing. So it’s like they make me feel wrong because it may be a different person in your situation, but be there, that person is saying something to you.

They’re giving a tone of disapproval. They’re criticizing, they’re making you feel wrong. Is it true

for me? I’m coming up with a yes, this is a yes or no answer. Just come as close to your own truths as you can with it.

So number two is can you absolutely know it’s true that they’re making you feel wrong?

And until you can see, otherwise, you may have to just be honestly in a yes. But if you see some wiggle room and it’s not quite so clear. Then it may switch to a no. They make you feel wrong. Can you absolutely know it’s true?

I’m switching to a no here.

So how do you react? What happens when you think that they make you feel wrong in this situation when they’re criticizing what happens to you?

I feel shame. I feel closed down. I wanna leave. I feel disconnected from my teacher and I’m angry as well. Feels not fair. I didn’t try to do anything wrong. What I feel like a justification kind of defense coming Hey, I didn’t know what you’re supposed to be teaching me this now. Why are you giving me the test before you even teach me?

So it’s this strong defensive reaction in me, and it comes with a, like a belly full of anger or kind of discontent. It’s a, it’s like a flip flop of my stomach at the same time, and a kind of clenching as well. So these are reactions and I want you to find your reactions. Where does it affect you and your body?

Where is the defense coming up inside of you?

How are you treating the other person when you think they make you feel wrong for me? I’m pushing them away. What do you do? Are you separating from them in some way? Are you attacking them back verbally, or are you just collapsing inside and attacking yourself instead? All of these are reactions and they’re what happens when you’re in thinking this belief that they’re making you feel wrong.

So who would you be without the thought? Imagine yourself in the same situation without the thought that they’re making you feel wrong, even though they’re criticizing, even though there’s a tone of disapproval, even though all of that. Who would you be? And this really stretches your mind. Who would you be without the thought that they’re making you feel wrong even when they’re criticizing you?

For me, there’s a deeper breath that comes in. I feel more in control, more connected to myself. I feel less powerless, less of a kind of victim of my teacher and more independent I would say. So what happens to you? Who are you when you’re thinking, when you’re not thinking that they made you feel wrong?

It takes a lot of awareness to answer this question. They’re literally saying the same thing my teacher’s saying with a tone of disapproval. I hope you’re not saying Harley at home, but imagine myself standing there without thinking that she’s making me feel wrong.

This takes some real stillness, and

that’s what I’m inviting you to. As you look with your own situation, who are you? If you’re not thinking they’re making you feel wrong, like I feel a little more confident, a little more strong. Like I’m standing on my own feet and I’m almost hearing this lady barking away as like with her own stuff going on.

It’s not as much about me. I showed up for the class. I did everything right, and here she is using. A kind of tone of disapproval to try to whip me into shape or something. I’m like, oh, that’s a pretty low tactic. Alright, what does it have to do with me? There’s this little bit of separation coming in, and this is what we’re looking for in the experience.

It’s what’s different if you’re not believing automatically that they’re making you feel wrong?

Okay, so the next step is to look for a turnaround. A turnaround is an opposite, and the purpose of looking for an opposite is to find some kind of balance. A lot of times both sides of the story are true, but we’re only looking at one side of it, and that’s pulling us down. So take the statement, they made me feel wrong, or they make me feel wrong.

And. Turn it around to the, to, let’s say, turn it around to myself instead of they make me feel wrong. I make me myself feel wrong. And this is a kind of opposite. There are many different opposites. How could that opposite balance out the original statement of them making me feel wrong? That’s what we’re doing here.

We’re looking for the balancing factor. So that we don’t get so caught up in the original idea, so I make me feel wrong. How could that be, how could that be in your situation that you are making yourself feel wrong, maybe as much or more than what they’re doing? And we’re not denying that the other person may have been making you feel wrong or trying to, but where is it that you’re also doing it?

What’s your part in it? I make myself feel wrong. Yeah, I felt shame. I thought, oh, we’re doing that at home. We’re calling our dog by his name many times to make him come and I should have known better. There it is. I was thinking just because she disapproved that I should have known better, which is crazy.

How could I have known better? I never knew how to train a dog before. I never heard this instruction before, so why am I holding myself to some standard That’s way beyond my experience level. That’s my part. Sure. She uses a tone of disapproval. She’s doing something. But look what I’m doing too. I’m expecting myself to be at what she’s wanting me to be.

I buy in to her disapproval and that makes me feel wrong. That’s my part. So let’s look at another turnaround. Instead of, they make me feel wrong I make them feel wrong. That could be another way of flipping this in an opposite direction to balance out the idea that they’re making me feel wrong.

And how could that be also. Possibly true. There could be many sides to truth. And one is that she is making me feel wrong, but another is that I’m making her feel wrong. And when I look at it, I see, yeah, I think she’s a wrong teacher. I think she’s a bad teacher. I think she’s doing teaching by, by shaming, and I don’t like that.

Even though I stand by that and I feel like that’s a a truth in a way, I’m emotionally invested in making her wrong. Like I’m, this is an energetic battle that’s happening here. I feel like she’s pushing me down with her energy and I’m now turning that around and pushing her down with my energy.

And now we have a fight. I’m pushing myself down. We already saw that and I’m pushing her down. There’s a lot of emotional pushing going on inside of me, and that could be as much of a factor of what’s making me feel badly in this situation. So this is about opening our minds to all sides of this. It’s not just that what that person’s doing to me, but what I’m doing to myself with it and what I’m doing to them with it energetically, and that affects my experience.

So why am I feeling bad? Oh, partly because I am, I’m shaming her really, and I’m shaming me. So let’s look at another turnaround. Again, we’re looking for balance. We’re looking for how could an opposite balance out the original statement? They make me feel wrong. She makes me feel wrong. An opposite could be she doesn’t make me feel wrong, or they don’t make me feel wrong.

I. This just plays with what else could be going on? Is there another alternative explanation besides just the one that seems obvious and we’re not denying that it’s, there’s also truth in the idea that she’s trying to make me feel wrong or using a tone of disapproval. Maybe that’s her little manipulative way of teaching.

I don’t necessarily approve of that. But is it the whole story? What else could be going on? This is how we open our mind, and so let’s look at that. Are there any examples of how, in this case, she doesn’t make me feel wrong is as true. From a bigger perspective, her probably her bigger intention is to teach.

She likes teaching. She’s a dog person. She likes. Dogs, maybe it’s, maybe that’s her way, maybe. Maybe she’s treating me like a dog. Like she likes dogs and she commands dogs and she gives orders to dogs and so I don’t know, maybe that’s just built into her way of doing things.

And it’s not as personal as it makes it feel. It’s not like she’s making me feel wrong. She just uses this kind of tactic that somehow works for her

or. She’s not making me feel wrong. We’ve already seen she can’t actually change my feelings. She can’t get inside of my heart and make me feel any particular way. That depends on what I’m believing and how I’m holding myself and what I’m doing with what she says. I often like to say people bring weapons right up to my door, but I have to actually pick them up and hit myself with them.

In order for there to be any damage. In other words, people can’t get that close to me to really make me feel something I have to buy in, and that’s my part. And what, and in seeing that, I can see that I don’t have to buy in if I’m really clear. And so I don’t have to feel wrong, even though she’s trying to make me feel wrong.

It’s a little separation there, so she doesn’t make me feel wrong. Like I said, she may just be trying to do what she thinks is a good thing and the end justifies the means for her. Who knows? So this is just a little taste of what could be going on for this person, an alternative explanation that is not all about her being really mean or nasty to me, or trying to hurt me, not necessarily.

I think her intentions are good. I just don’t like her means that’s all. In this episode, we looked at why disapproval or criticism can feel so overwhelming, especially for highly sensitive people. And the reason for this is that we have a part to play it. People are critical all the time. People judge by nature, that’s what they do.

They disapprove, happens all the time, but it becomes overwhelming when we buy into it. Then we start blaming ourselves or we start attacking back and blaming them and disapproving of them. So it’s our part that makes it stronger. Now, this is true for all people, for highly sensitive people. We tend to think and mull over different experiences and get to the bottom of what is going on a lot.

Anyway, so when it comes to criticism, we tend to. To look deeply at that. And in that we can end up getting caught in the same loop of blaming ourselves more deeply than is necessary or more we can start blaming other people. We also looked at the simple thought, they make me feel wrong, and how it creates tension, self-doubt, and shame.

Just seeing with that thought, how. The stress amplifies is essential to see, and without the thought it is. There’s a little more separation, a little healthy separation, a little bit of confidence, and less of a stressful experience. And then finally, we went through the step-by-step guided meditation to gently question this belief using the work of Byron Katie.

And you saw how each step of that process. It starts with stress and then it just starts to loosen and loosen, and we start to see the effect of the thought with the thought without the thought, and we start to see how the turnarounds, these opposites, balance the original statement and bringing a broader perspective with the turnarounds.

It’s not that we flip from one perspective completely to the other perspective. No. We expand from one perspective. To include another perspective which gives a broader point of view, and that is usually a more peaceful point of view. So thanks for listening and thanks for doing this work along with me and I look forward to another session with you soon.

In the meantime, have a great rest of your day.