• are suffering from mild to severe psychopathology. Most avoidants find it comforting to spot specific pathology in their critics. As Keating suggests, avoidants can lessen their “difficult feelings . . . by understanding some of the syndromes of difficult people [who] may be feeling depressed, guilty, fearful, etc., and refus[ing] to admit such feelings even to themselves.”2
Such understanding helps avoidants affirm themselves, develop a semiscientific method of self-defense, and even, if they like, improve their relationships with their critics by responding to the critics’ emotional ranting in a therapeutic fashion, as a therapist might respond, say, reassuring fearful histrionic critics that all is not lost, or suspicious paranoid critics that the danger they believe themselves to be in is minimal to nonexistent.
Avoidants should also attempt to understand where they themselves are coming from, in the sense of what motivates them to respond so fearfully and negatively to criticism. Why, for example, do they value others’ negative opinions about them over their own more positive opinions about themselves, and continue to do so even when they know that their critics are misguided? Perhaps it is a combination of submissiveness to almost everyone, plus a global self-punitive, self-negating attitude that leads them to be a “sucker for authority”—parentalizing critics, and everyone else, as omniscient, good, and omnipotent mother or father clones, while simultaneously treating themselves as unknowing, bad, little children too small and weak to even consider challenging others’ negative views. Perhaps they have become “compliment junkies” because when they were children, they were either criticized too much or loved too extensively and now as adults need to sustain a compensatory or harmonizing, habitually unflawed self-image that can only come from always getting 100 percent positive feedback from others, without which they respond in a predictably negative way, and as predictably, catastrophically.
Perhaps it is jealousy that causes avoidants to become overly sensitive to criticism. In his 1922 paper “Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality,” Freud divided jealousy into competitive or normal, projected, and delusional types. The first is connected with a sense of loss and narcissistic wound as well as enmity against the successful rival; the second involves a projection of one’s own temptations (that may have been repressed) with flirtations as a safeguard against actual infidelity; and the third is associated more specifically with projection of repressed homosexuality.3 Competitive or normal jealousy leads avoidants already sensitive to feeling as if they are second best to too readily feel that they are being criticized and rejected because they don’t match up; projected jealousy leads avoidants already feeling sheepish about being amoral to too readily feel that they are being criticized and rejected because they are sinners; and delusional jealousy leads avoidants already questioning their sexual orientation to too readily feel convinced that they are being criticized and rejected because they are queer.
Avoidants can be taught to respond to criticism in a healthier way. They can learn to
• ignore as much as possible those negative people who reject them
• remind themselves that no matter who they are, not everyone is going to like them or approve of what they do
• harden themselves to criticism they cannot avoid, developing a thick skin, turning off that alarm bell in their heads, and always remembering that being criticized is rarely catastrophic and that what seems so important today often turns out to be unimportant tomorrow, for most matters in life are not matters of life and death
• develop a sense of humor, putting both unjustified and justified criticism into perspective by lightening up and seeing the amusing and, in the infinite scheme of things, unimportant side of what at first looks to be an interaction of tragic proportions. Thinking macrocosmic thoughts can help. For some avoidants, looking up at the stars and realizing what is a big and what is a small thing puts passing ill-considered or even justified criticism into perspective.
• tell themselves when they do get criticized and rejected that it is not the end of the world, but a part of, not an unfortunate complication of, being involved in a relationship
This said, there are times, to be determined by the individual, when avoidants should meet criticism head-on, mustering as much strength as possible to respond to criticism not like a turtle pulling back into its shell (flight), but like a lion turning on those who trouble it (fight). Now having in effect “identified with the aggressor,” they turn tables and, instead of cowering, become as aggressive to the critic as the critic has just been to them. Too often, avoidants are the recipients of advice along the lines of “just let it pass, don’t become so defensive; I wouldn’t even give them the time of day, it just encourages them.” As a result, they have (wrongly) come to fear that being assertive with their critics, for example, aggressively setting limits on them, will predictably ensure further criticism and rejection. In truth, assertion can help avoidants reduce criticism and rejection and develop and retain a more positive self-image. Avoidants who tell their critics straight out, “You do not know what you are talking about,” or “You are one, too,” or “You did it first,” or “It is not a matter of who will accept me, but a matter of who I will accept” at least won’t withdraw from their critics after saying or doing nothing in response. They will instead respond forcefully, actively, and productively, effectively neutralizing the attack on them with a valid, effectual counterattack. Thus a patient of mine remembers a stranger telling her not to let her dog on the beach when in fact the dog was on the sidewalk bordering the sand. She felt less cowed when, instead of replying “sorry” then seething in retreat, she said, “I haven’t given you permission to talk to me.” Avoidants can profitably plan their repartee in advance of an anticipated attack. I often advise my avoidant patients to make and hold on to a list of their positive points so that when they are actually attacked, they are prepared to reel these off along the lines of, “This is what I like best about myself.”
Those avoidants who have difficulty responding to their critics assertively need to discover the reasons why. These are, with remedies implied, as follows:
• the belief that submissiveness offers protection along the lines of exposing the underbelly as a sign of abject, protective surrender (in fact, submissiveness gives many critics, who are invariably sadists, carte blanche, then a second chance, condoning and encouraging them, for most critics, as sadists, perceive submissiveness as weakness, implying vulnerability, which inspires further attack)
• an excessive need to develop and maintain a positive self-image based on being nice and cooperative at all times, even in the face of intense, unjustified, and irrational negativity from others
• low self-esteem that leads avoidants to feel too unworthy even to attempt to mount an effective self-defense
• a fear of failure: “It won’t work”
• a fear of success: “I will go too far”