judgment Archives - Jamie English

Ever notice a stranger looking at you a bit odd and start making up stories about what they must think about you? You glance down at what you are wearing, everything buttoned up and zipped? Toilet paper stuck to your shoe? Nope, you are good. Well, it must be something inherently wrong with the way I look or what I am buying, or they think I am a bad person…. If the thoughts get crazy out of control, we start to think they can read our minds or know our deepest secrets. Don’t believe everything you think, because this can spiral out of control. What we don’t know is the stranger is frustrated in their job, or maybe they are constipated. They may just be looking off into space but that happens to be in your direction. Now…sometimes they are judging us or because people continue to amaze me with their rudeness, they say something directly to our faces.

Earlier this week I was discussing this with one of my teen clients. I made the statement that when other people make judgments, it is 100% about them. She’s precocious and said, “How can we know something 100%?” And she’s right. Most of the time, I would avoid absolutes like this. But over the years, I have concluded that what other people think about us is all about them. I asked her if we could test it out for a second. Think about when you are in public and you notice strangers…what do you notice about them? Since I work so much with body image concerns, what shows up in my office often has to do with bodies. And honestly, I suspect most everyone, if we are honest, we might be comparing whatever body part we are most self-conscious of at the moment. Or if we are judging what a person is doing or saying, it often reflects thoughts we are struggling with, maybe even parts of us we don’t want to admit is there. I mentioned the book Judgment Detox a few weeks back, and one of the ideas that she discussed in the book is when we judge others, it comes from a place of woundedness within us.

So….my made-up percentages are as follows—if someone else thinks bad thoughts about us (or even shares them with us), it is 96.5% about something they are insecure about. The rest comes from a place of woundedness they are afraid to face and/or want so desperately to distract from. It is with a fair amount of confidence that I say 100% of the time, someone else’s thoughts about us are more about them. If they share it with us, they are actually revealing something about themselves. A take away for ourselves is to notice our own thoughts and judgments to learn about ourselves.

I’m currently reading Judgment Detox by Gabrielle Bernstein. I haven’t finished it, and I would like to acknowledge that she may not be everyone’s “cup of tea,” but I am liking what I am reading. She’s outlining a 6-step process (because we love to have practical steps, right?) to be judgment-free. I am only on the second step, but it seems like she has some solid and psychologically sound information she is sharing. The first step is to start noticing times you are judging. Notice without judgment. I am struck by how she encourages you to take that judgment and get curious about what’s behind that and where it comes from.

Reading this got me to thinking about a phrase you might have heard: “You spot it, you got it.” Sometimes these catchy little one-liners are fun and memorable for several reasons, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have strong, deep meaning as you reflect on it. As you might guess, as you dig deeper on your judgments of others, it often comes back to your own stuff. What we are judging in others is reflecting on parts of ourselves we avoid or try to deny having. It usually boils down to shame…our own internal shame. We have shame within ourselves and start pushing it on to others. Think about it, when we are judging others, aren’t we basically saying, “you should be ashamed of yourself,” in one way or another. I’m not going to lie, looking at your judgment can sting a bit. If I spot it, I got it. So, if I spot pettiness, I’ve got pettiness. If I spot entitlement, I’ve got entitlement. If I spot close mindedness…. You get the picture.

Deep breaths. The good news is that on the other side of spotting our judgment is a path to learning about ourselves and finding healing for our shame. Another side note within the book, she talks about EFT (emotional freedom technique), also known as tapping. I was trained in Clinical EFT about 5 years ago. It can certainly be a good tool within the therapy space, as well as a self-help tool you can do by yourself. I was happy to be reminded of this powerful tool and hope to revisit it more for myself and maybe some clients. I may write more about this in future blogs. I do want to do the “Judgment Detox” for myself, so what I learn may also show up in future posts.

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