In Episode 93, I come clean about the fact that I’m a pretty judgemental person. Of course, we all naturally make judgements all the time, that’s part of how we make decisions and form opinions. But culturally, being “judgemental” has come to mean something like, passing judgement on the decisions and behaviour of others. And for people like me who tend to struggle with boundaries, the line between my decisions and opinions and your decisions and opinions can get kind of blurry. For a long time, shame pressured me to make decisions based on fitting in with everyone else’s decisions, so you can see where this boundary confusion comes from. My judgements are constructed something like this, “Hey, that’s not how we are supposed to act! That’s not how we are supposed to think!”
Since my shame breakthrough, it’s been easier to form my own authentic opinions and make my own decisions, but I still have judgements of other people coming up all the time. I’ve started to notice that many of these judgements are just echoes from the past, ideologies left over from my childhood conditioning. I sometimes don’t even agree with them anymore! I also notice that my sense of boundaries has improved such that, even if I do agree with the judgement that comes up about someone, I don’t really care as much about it anymore because… it’s their life!
One of my core values is authenticity. The more I can be honest and transparent about what is really going on for me in any given moment, the more pleasant feelings and self-empowerment I tend to experience. This includes being more honest about my judgements of others. It’s a difficult and vulnerable thing to share, but I’ve noticed some surprising benefits. Not only is it more authentic, which can actually lead to even greater connection with the person I’m judging (or at least with myself), but it even seems to deflate the judgements themselves! The judgements are attached to (probably even stimulated by) unpleasant sensations in my body that come up in relation to the person in question. When I voice the judgement to the person I am judging, that unpleasant sensation actually dissipates, and usually takes the judgment with it! This makes it easier for me to connect with the person I’m judging. It’s like my judgements want to be spoken, and once they are, they leave!
So, ironically, voicing a judgement doesn’t make it more real, it makes it less real! And by not voicing it, I’m actually trapping that judgement and that unpleasantness in my system, blocking my ability to connect with the person I’m judging. And I think that’s what judgement wants! It wants to block us from connecting with people who make the “wrong” choices, so as to “protect” us from them and from the judgement and social exclusion that might come from others for merely associating with these “judgement-worthy” people.
Talking openly about my judgements allows me to transcend the manipulative power they have over me, which puts me in a more conscious position to decide logically, based on my current values, how best to engage (or not) with the person I was just judging.
