Critical Care

One of my leftover "hang ups" from childhood appears to be my hypersensitivity to criticism.  Why do I just feel like I made an announcement at an AA meeting?  Were I to be at one of those meetings, I would promptly be called out for my indecisive language.  Instead....

I HAVE a problem with my hypersensitivity to criticism.  Is there a 12 step process to face this nagging deficit in my character?  I'm assuming not but of course I'll be Googling it later.

Being able to pinpoint exactly when this happened isn't difficult.  At the age of 5 starting kindergarten, I began to see/feel/experience my differences among others.  Developmentally, it's perfectly normal but without parental support to show me how to respond to innocent (albeit critical) remarks, my journey of self-doubt and unworthiness began.  Therefore, hearing a critique cut me to the quick; I was already my worst critic.

Each time that I think I've overcome this dysfunction, a new situation (or critical person) appears in my life.  In all honesty, they DO NOT appear just to hand me their opinions.  I've invited them into my life and once they begin to feel comfortable, they then tend to offer advice because they just want to help.

Now begins the dance of dodging each other's hot spots and learning how to communicate critical care.  The phrase is so fitting because most of us truly do want to help each other despite mass media's warnings.  We seek to give critical care and I believe we seek to RECEIVE critical care.

I am open about it.  I want to learn and evolve in the hopes that I can be a more peaceful person.  Peace within my self...peace with the life that I'm living...and peace with well-meaning but oft misspoken care givers.  Givers of critiques.  Finding others like me who covet the peace zone and are willing to acknowledge their deficits isn't as easy as I thought.  Giving air time to the dysfunctions that hide within our psyche is uncomfortable.

This was my experience upon hearing someone discuss religion with me one evening.  My whole being was literally thrown back to an earlier time of pain.  Heart palpitations, stuttering, incoherent thoughts were pieces of a painful childhood that I had buried away...my zombie of religion began to rise from its grave.

Stunning.  The human mind and its armor protecting us from ourselves amazes me.  Its message to RETREAT, RETREAT was on target and I did.  Stunning x 2.  I'm evolving enough now to face not only the critique but the truth behind what causes a perfectly normal adult to fall headlong into a forgotten pain.

Losing a friend or loved one when this happens might be part of the outcome.  But sunny-side-up me believes that individuals come into our life for a reason and it's to help us learn more about ourselves.  In doing that, I suppose the loss of one for the gain of another (me) is the trade off for personal growth.

I'm wondering as all of us enter this new instant communicative age if we need to set up more than Urgent Cares for our bodies.  Perhaps we need to have an Emotional Critical Care office in every pharmacy as well....