Sam came to me for help with compulsive eating. I’ve found over the years that whenever eating becomes compulsive, the inner critic is playing a role. The inner critic is an internalization of how we were treated as children. The messages we absorbed take up residence inside us and keep running long after we leave home.
For Sam, one of those messages was “You don’t matter.” It came mostly from their father. When that message runs the show internally, there is no room for the person. No room for their needs, their feelings, or their right to take up space. That lack of room escalates the nervous system into a state of alert, and the compulsive behavior arrives to relieve the pressure or express it.
Sam asked whether it was random that they had landed on food rather than alcohol or drugs. I think it largely is. The message gets translated into some form of self-harm, and which form often depends on circumstance more than meaning.
Then Sam said something I hear from many people: “I just want the formula to fix it.”
The formula is separating from the inner critic. We were already doing it.
Internal Individuation
Individuation is the process of becoming your own person, distinct from the family you grew up in. We usually think of it as something that happens between people: the teenager pushing back, the young adult moving out. But there is an internal version too. When you separate from the inner critic, you are claiming how you want to relate to your inner child and your body, instead of repeating how you were related to. God bless our parents, but when we’re in charge of ourselves, we get to make different choices.
That’s why the dream moved me. “Back off,” said to your parents, is one of the most declarative statements of separation I can think of. It is also, as it happens, close to what I teach people to say to the inner critic itself.
Two Arenas
Here is where the session got interesting. I wanted Sam to see that individuation happens in two places at once.
The first arena is the relationship with the actual people. Sam had done brave work here already. Years earlier, after their mother kept ignoring a request to stop pressing her beliefs on them, Sam wrote her a letter. If this doesn’t stop, they wrote, we won’t have a relationship. Their mother finally listened. “That felt good,” Sam said, “knowing she had a line.”
The second arena is inside the psyche. Psychologists use the word introject for this. We project feelings outward onto others; we introject, or take in, people and carry them inside ourselves. We all hold internal images of our parents, and we relate to those images every day, often without noticing.
The inner critic is related to these images, but I think of it as a bigger umbrella. It forms earlier and draws on the whole field of childhood experience rather than one person. So we carry both: the specific inner pictures of Mom and Dad, and the wider critical structure that blends them.
The letter worked on the outer arena. The dream showed something moving in the inner one. Sam had already set a limit with the living mother. Now some part of them was telling the internal parents to back off too.
That, I told Sam, is not evidence of being stuck. It’s someone elbowing through and making room for their own humanity.
Rewriting the Script
Sam described a phone call years ago when they mentioned that the family had problems. Their mother’s next card said she didn’t want to hear about it anymore. She couldn’t tolerate it.
What I offered Sam is one of my favorite gifts in this work: you get to rewrite that script inside yourself. Because the inner world belongs to you, you can stage a different scene. We could role-play it. Write your mother the same letter, and this time let her respond the way you needed. Or let her respond the way she did, and say back to her what you couldn’t say then. The goal is to find the version that leaves you feeling calm and safe.
Sam got quiet. “I think that’s the piece I’m searching for that I don’t know yet.”
I didn’t believe them. Sam may not know it cognitively, but whenever I catch them in a moment of letting themselves be who they are, they know. My hands open wide when I describe it, because it has the quality of taking up space. The answer lives there.
That was when the tears came. I asked what they were saying. Sam told me that the idea of more support is their automatic tears button. Even texting with someone they might date, the thought of someone giving them energy, someone they could lean on, brings tears. Then they said something with real compassion: their mother’s anxiety probably came from never having anyone to lean on either.
So part of the internal work is building an inner world where Sam can lean on adult voices, ones that differ from the ones they grew up with. That inner space counters the compulsion. When there is room for you inside, the inner critic loses its grip, the nervous system has less to brace against, and the eating has less pressure to relieve.
Information Isn’t Transformation
Near the end, Sam defended their parents gently. In theory there was space to talk, they said. Their mother had even taken parenting classes. But how much of this was taught back then?
That’s a good question, and it points to something important. Receiving instruction and becoming someone who can show up authentically in relationships are different things. Information is cognitive. The courage to make space for yourself and for another person may mean challenging everything you learned in your family about love. A class may not promote the bravery required for that.
Coming Back to the Dream
Before we ended, Sam added one more detail. Often in their dreams they try to yell and nothing comes out. This time, the yell woke them.
To me, that is huge. A voice that used to get stuck finally came out with enough force to reach the waking world. When I asked what the tears were saying now, Sam said, “Relief. Happiness at progress.”
Transformation, I would add. Brand new, and already underway.
A Few Questions to Sit With
Is there a voice inside you that tells you that you don’t matter, or some version of that? Whose voice did it start out as?
Where have you already set limits with the actual people in your life, and where might the internal versions of them still need to hear it?
If you could rewrite one old scene inside yourself, what would you want someone to say to you? And what would you finally get to say?
