• some = all thinking characterized by the inability to distinguish setting limits from getting annoyed, getting annoyed from getting angry, and getting angry from committing murder
• an excess of empathy and altruism, where, after putting themselves in their critics’ shoes, they use their own terror-stricken responses to others’ criticism to judge how devastated others would presumably feel in response to criticism coming from them
Particularly helpful is aggressively living well as the best revenge: having an extremely pleasurable life to spite all those who seem to want one to be miserable.
Sometimes avoidants can actually have a rational discussion with their critics. They can start by simply refusing to accept global criticism—roughly the equivalent of name calling—and instead ask for details, telling their critics, “Only if I know exactly what I am being criticized for can I respond in a meaningful, considered way and so adopt the best possible defense, point-by-point, with facts, not out of my emotions.”
Avoidants can also learn how to manipulate their critics to get them to lay off. They can make their critics feel guilty by acting as if they love them back, no matter how harshly they treat them, saying something like, “That’s OK; the negative things you say about me don’t cause me to feel less positively about you,” however ingenuous that statement might be. Alternatively, they can make their critics feel guilty by beating them over their heads with their own bloody bodies (“Look what you have done to me”), or they can successfully disarm their critics by saying, “Mea culpa,” that is, “getting back” with a selfcriticism, as in “you are right, I know that’s the way I am, but, pity me, what can I do about it, I don’t seem to be able to change.” Manipulations work especially well with those critics who unconsciously want to be loved but go about getting that love in a paradoxical way, via criticizing others as a test to see if, nonetheless, they still love them, with all their heart, under the most inauspicious circumstances.
Avoidants can almost always reduce the negative impact criticism has on them by putting third parties between them and their critics. Third parties can support avoidants by advising them how to avoid criticism in the first place and how to cope with and recover from criticism that they were unable to escape. As supportive confidants, third parties can take the avoidants’ side at times of stress—offering them a retreat, a place where they can go to be reassured that they are not as bad as their critics say they are, while being reminded, when applicable, that it is the critic, not the avoidant, with the big problem. E-mail support from friends can be particularly valuable for avoidants who otherwise might have to face their anxiety completely alone. And as Benjamin Franklin said, applicable here, at times of stress the best things to get you through are “three faithful friends—an old wife, an old dog, and ready access to cash.”4
Having private demeaning fantasies toward their critics can also help avoidants feel less cowed. Thus avoidants can help overcome a fear of public speaking by thinking of the audience as fools, perhaps in the nude.
Sometimes the best idea is to just walk away from criticism physically and emotionally, completely shunning troublesome people and instead focusing on one’s most fervent admirers and one’s truest and most loving friends.
Avoidants should certainly lose interest in meeting only the difficult challenges of life, in only winning the hard games, and in only meeting and making the tough conquests, as they make the difficult, critical people in their lives the very ones who count the most and only set out to appeal to, by changing the minds of, those that are most set against them.
Some Case Examples
One artist reacted to criticism with the thought, “They criticize me with such conviction and knowledge that they must be right.” He spent his early years depressed, hoping “for the big reward, more important than the Tonys and the Oscars—having the New York Times say something nice about me.” His mental state improved when, instead of hoping to get the Times to reverse its position, he developed a healthy disdain for its opinion and went about his business, closing the eye formerly always open to what “Daddy thinks of me.”
A doctor’s megalomaniac colleague continually put him down. For example, once he confessed to this colleague, “I don’t like this person,” only to be told, “I happen to know that the feeling is mutual.” Another time, after he bragged to this colleague that “if I wanted to, I could always get a job at a certain organization,” the colleague told him, “What makes you think they would want you?” This colleague also put the doctor down medically, no matter how accurate and clever the doctor’s formulations. Indeed, the more accurate and clever they were, the more he challenged them. The doctor felt that his ideas were being quashed or ignored. Yet he kept trying, and kept failing, to please and impress. Each night, he would go home feeling depressed, his self-esteem lower than the night before, and each morning, he would go back for more, trying to get his depression to lift by bringing this man around in an attempt to feel supported and accepted, instead of attacked, humiliated, and rejected. Finally, he realized the senseless nature of this commitment and sensibly simply stopped talking to the colleague—beyond a curt good morning and a discussion of any business that had to be transacted. His therapist, in supporting his new approach, added, “Don’t think you are supposed to get along with someone just because you work with him.” Now the doctor’s self-esteem returned, his depression lifted, his creativity and cleverness reappeared, and his work performance improved markedly.
Of course, avoidants should not completely harden themselves to ignore or minimize the utility of constructive criticism. Instead of becoming automatically and reflexively defensive in the face of any and all criticism, they should distinguish constructive from destructive criticism, then reexamine themselves to see if any constructive criticism is deserved, accept it if it is, and change accordingly. That doesn’t mean seeing themselves as bad. It just means trying to be and do better the next time by turning the criticism into a positive, creative, growthenhancing experience, making the criticism work for them by taking it somewhat to heart, doing better, and most important, making certain that their critics hear all about how well they have done, are still doing now, and plan to do in the future.
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CHAPTER 18
Hel ping Avoidants O vercome Their Low Self-Esteem
Beck notes that “in anxiety the dominant theme is danger”1 and that the “person with an avoidant personality simply minimizes . . . social interactions in order to protect [himself or herself from a specific danger, the danger of developing low] self-esteem.”2
Avoidants’ low self-esteem consists of a low self-approval rating originating in an inability to meet self-expectations due in part to self-imposed, excessively high self-standards, along with a hypersensitivity to the criticism of others, leading to a highly critical self-attitude. As a consequence, the avoidant individual concludes, “I think as little of myself as they think of me,” or even “I am worthless.” The resulting negative self-image then leads to withdrawal meant to self-protect— improving one’s self-image through avoiding a test of that self-image by avoiding large aspects of living through isolating social rituals. These involve giving up the seeking of interpersonal gain to avoid experiencing interpersonal losses. That, however, decreases functionality as escalating defensive disengagement creates the very losses that the avoidant is attempting to avert. These losses create a further diminution of self-esteem, for the avoidant now feels, and often is, alone, and predictably tends to think, “I must be a defective person, for why else wouldn’t I have a single friend in the world?”