“Judgmental”

I had a therapist once who liked to insist that we control our feelings. He would say that our feelings are a conscious action, that we choose how we feel about the things that happen to us. I’m not sure I exactly agree with him on that. Something else he would talk about was passing judgment on our emotions. He’d talk about emotions as being neither good nor bad, that it’s what we do with them that can be good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, etc. That concept, I can definitely get behind.

One time I shared in a meeting about how I was working on trying to be less judgmental. I actually got a call from someone later that night telling me that I was one of the most accepting people he knew. It warmed my heart to hear, and helped me to see that what I was actually being judgmental about was myself.

Being hard on myself, being judgmental towards me, has proved to be one of my more difficult challenges in Recovery. It’s not a struggle that people can see, it’s something that takes place on the inside, in that obsessive mind of mine. Thank God that not only am I not perfect, but that I can never be. Letting go of my perfectionism is an ongoing process, but the fact that I’m able to do it as well as I can now is a blessing. So is the chance to keep on working at it and improving.

I still have that knee-jerk response, though, to judge. I tend to be of the mind that how we feel is how we feel--it’s not good or bad, it just is. The choice is mine: I can come down on myself for feeling a certain way, or I can stay in the real and just accept it. But passing judgment isn't just about feelings, is it?

Something I’ve learned through my Recovery is this little gem: the more judgmental I am towards myself, the more I tend to be judgmental towards others. And I’m not talking about just outward judgments, the comments that make it out of my lips and the actions I take with my feet and hands. No, I mean the more sinister kind, the mental moments where I pass snap judgments about the people and things that I have no control over and that aren’t any of my business.

It’s a pretty standard piece of wisdom that if there’s something about another person you don’t like, what you really don’t like is the part of yourself that is like that. The fourth and tenth steps are great tools for dealing with these issues; they call on us to look at ourselves with a cold eye, to read about ourselves in our own handwriting.

I try not to play the ‘what-if’ game, but sometimes it’s helpful for setting a course for myself towards where I want to be. Take step six, for example: what if all my character defects were removed? What would my life be like without them? The same works for me when thinking about my general spiritual health. What if I were completely and totally spiritually fit?

If that were the case, then it seems to me that my emotions would pass in front of me like scenery. I would see my anger, my frustrations, my sadness, joy and elation, and think, “hmm… interesting.” I would still have my feelings, I would feel them, but would do so without any kind of judgment about them. The same would be true for the events of my life and all my experiences in it. Being centered, calm, and serene isn’t a daydream, either. It just so happens to be one of the main goals of this spiritual program of Recovery.

I’m going to have judgmental moments. But if I continue to work on myself, to set the course for the spiritual path, they become less and less as time goes on. When I unconditionally love myself, then I will truly be able to unconditionally love others. When I am able to look at myself without judgment, I will no longer feel the need to pass judgment on others.