• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Janneke Jobsis Brown

Following Shadows

  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • WW II Heritage
  • Events
  • Intergenerational Trauma
  • Video
  • Blog
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Trauma-Healing / Excelelnt, Excellent—The Critic

March 1, 2012 By Janneke

Excelelnt, Excellent—The Critic

I squirm inside (in a healing way I hope) when I see how the intro to the first Excellent, Excellent, Excellent  post  appears on-line. It starts with these words….

Father & Son

“She is right,” said my teacher. “Her work and ability is excellent, excellent, excellent.”

 

Its as if I felt SECURE writing of INSECURITY  but embarrassed to have the first words readers see to be “She is right,” said my teacher. “Her work and ability is excellent, excellent, excellent.”

 

So I get to squirm into this awareness: It is okay to celebrate those times that people in God’s world affirm us.

How have you been affirmed, not criticized? Let me know.

One of my critics of how I “ought” to be was my dad, a survivor of World War II trauma in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He had no sense of childhood or childhood’s  innocence from age 12 to 15. My mother had the same disruption, in The Netherlands (Holland) from age 9 to 14.

 

So, I remember my dad always saying to my sister and I, “Why wasn’t that B and A? Why wasn’t that A an A +?”

 

Then I visited Holland and my dad’s youngest sister, my Tante (Aunt) Mechtelien showed me a letter he had written in the 1930’s from Indonesia to The Netherlands,. This was just before Nazi invasion shut down all mail and safety.

 

In early 1942 the Japanese invaded Indonesia, and my dad’s life (along with his family) was never the same again. The “critic” in Dad’s life, his father, died in the Japanese concentration camps, which he, his mother, brother rand sister barely survived.

Japanese One Gulden Note- occupation currency ...

 

(Dutch grades in Holland are measured 1 to 10, 10 being the best)

The letter was to his paternal grandparents. Every line said something like,

“In math I got a 7,  in History I got an 8…”

 Oh, I realized,  this is how my dad’s  grandparents raised his father, how his father raised him, and now how Dad raised us.

 So my dad‘s internal critic was alive and well, so is mine up to today. Voice Dialogue therapy is one of our great helps for “getting” and silencing our inner critics. Basically it boils down to a quick, “Thank you for sharing.” The Critic is trying really hard s/he truly believes that relentless criticism will produce a perfect human. A quick thank you for sharing can silence the Critic so we can get on with the matter of how does God see us?….not with condemnation, with love.

 In twelve step meetings I have heard great advice for the negative voices inside, often called “the committee,” and as “waking up in the morning before I do.” The greatest  solution suggested in this meetings for a critic or committee-of-critics?  Push them into your closet each morning, close the door, pray, get on with your day.

Sidra and Hal Stone, Ph.D.’s, invented the concept of internal Voice Dialogue for us psychotherapists. The Critic’s voicein our internal work is a crucial awareness for inner healing.

How have you been affirmed? How do you silence your internal critic? Let me know.

courtesy of ww.voicedialogue.org

 

 

http://www.voicedialogue.org/dream-index.htm

Enhanced by Zemanta

Share this post:

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Email

Filed Under: Trauma-Healing, War's Family Tagged With: Dutch East Indies, Dutch-American, faith meaning and World War II, father and daughter, Generations after World War II, History, Japanese Concentration Camps, Jappen Kampen, Netherlands, Psychological trauma, Wereld Oorlog II

Previous Post: « Excellent, Excellent Moments
Next Post: In Darkness, movie director Agnieszka Holland addresses the Banality of Evil »

Primary Sidebar

Signup for Updates

Sign-up and read the first two chapters of Following Shadows FREE. You will receive updates in your inbox whenever new articles are posted.



Connect with Janneke

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • Survivor Psalm
  • Paratrooper "Angels" of WWII
  • Trauma and Truth
  • Do we really recall WWII lessons AND recall WWII history?
  • Open Door

Topics:

  • Grace Stories
  • Homesick-Heimwee
  • Thirty Days of Light
  • Trauma-Healing
  • Uncategorized
  • War's Family

Footer

Meet Janneke

Janneke Jobsis Brown
Following Shadows is inspired by my own story. As a survivor of an international childhood with parents who were World War II survivors, I know the generational after-effects of starvation and slave labor in Japanese concentration camps for my father, and the terror of Nazi occupation for my mother. I know the challenges of struggling to feel at home across three countries: The Netherlands, Iran and America.

Read More…

Recent Blogs

  • Survivor Psalm
  • Paratrooper "Angels" of WWII
  • Trauma and Truth
  • Do we really recall WWII lessons AND recall WWII history?
  • Open Door

Connect with Janneke

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Read Two Free Chapters

Sign-up and read the first two chapters of Following Shadows FREE.



Copyright © 2021 · Janneke Jobsis-Brown, All Rights Reserved