Welcome to a very special episode of Ghost of a Podcast. This week, instead of listening to a reading, you're going to hear a prerecorded live conversation that I had with my patrons over on Patreon about criticism. We talk about imposter syndrome, and it's a great in-depth conversation, which I hope you will enjoy.

Hey. Look at you all, coming in hot. Everybody's here. I feel like the holidays are a really good time to talk about criticism. Am I right? I mean, I don't know about your family life, but I feel like hanging out with family kicks up criticism stuff. And so let's talk about it. Let's talk about criticism. I'm really excited about this.

In case you missed it, I did a live on imposter syndrome. And I think if you didn't catch that live, you should watch it. It's posted to the Patreon feed. And I think it's a really important topic, and it's connected. It's connected to criticism, right?

So let me just start with some thoughts, okay? Constructive criticism focuses on a task or an idea and not a person. So you're not saying to somebody, "You're always doing blah, blah, blah when you go on dates with people." You're saying, "Oh, I noticed that you trusted this person before you got to know them." One is kind of a bit of a character assassination. It's a really general thing. It can be unhelpful. It can be insulting. And the other is specific to a task, an idea, etc.

Constructive criticism is actionable. So, when it's constructive, it's not about something that is outside of the person's control. Okay? Constructive criticism is situationally appropriate. If you are asking someone for their feedback and they give constructive criticism, and it's like, "Ow. That hurts my feelings," it's all par for the course, right? If you're talking to your friend about stuff and you don't want any feedback, and they start telling you everything that's wrong, okay, that's not as situation-appropriate, right?

Constructive criticism builds up or offers tools or redirection or direction. Again, constructive criticism is not based in character assassinations. It's not based on sweeping statements. It's not based on invalidating how somebody feels. It's not meant to squash. That said, when I'm giving constructive criticism, I might do it in a way that I think is healthy and ticks all those boxes, and you might be like, "Ouch." Just because I'm doing it to the best of my ability doesn't mean that it lands well for you. The way that you do it may really land poorly for me. And so, when it comes to kind of metabolizing or hearing criticism, it's really tricky because we cannot expect other people to be good at it or perfect at it.

And so it's important to take a beat, when you receive criticism, to recognize there's your feelings, and then there's what's being said. And your feelings are always valid, and that doesn't mean they're always proportionate to the situation. And I want to hold that alongside intent is not equal to impact.

So what I'm trying to get at is you are responsible for you. Also, I am responsible for me. And I think, a lot of times, people tend to have personalities where we either take responsibility for too much, or we don't take enough responsibility at all. And when we don't take enough responsibility at all in woo spaces, it's because we are victims. And that is a thing. That is a thing. When you feel hurt or attacked and you can go into victim mode, it's hard to take accountability for yourself, right? And so recognizing your feelings and validating your feelings is an important part of being able to navigate intentional and unintentional criticisms from other people.

There's this fucking guy on the internet. He's a white—I'm assuming a straight guy. He is an FBI guy, and he's—whatever. He's all over my fucking feed, so I've seen this shit. And he talked about how the best way to have control in a situation, the best way to have confidence in any situation—and he's, like, an FBI negotiator; that was his context—was being comfortable. There's a lot of things I have to say about that idea, but ultimately, I agree.

Being comfortable with yourself is foundational to being able to be like, "Oh yeah, I'm criticized and I'm wrong," or, "I have this opinion about what my friend is doing, and I may or may not be right," or whatever it is. Being comfortable with being wrong, with things going well or poorly, being comfortable in yourself is really important. And also, this is a straight, white guy—looked like he was a straight, white Christian guy. The world is made for his comfort, literally. The world was made for his comfort. And for any of us who have marginalized identities—which is, I'm guessing, most all of us, if not all of us, in this room—the world is literally not made for us. Airplane seats are not made for you. Bicycle seats are not made for you. It's not made for us, right? And so our discomfort is kind of part of a systemic situation.

But nonetheless, no matter how unfair the world is—and the world is grotesquely unfair—there is something really important about having a conversation about criticism, whether it's being criticized or being critical of others, and having, at the same time, a conversation about comfort with yourself, comfort with failure, and self-possession because when you, like many people, anchor your self-esteem or your self-worth through the approval of others or the lack of drama from others, you don't really belong to yourself. You're not really comfortable with yourself. And in that case, any critique can shatter you.

On the flip, if you are speaking to someone else about a criticism that you want to give them and there is any malice or judgment or contempt in your heart, it's going to come across as mean, even if you're doing your fucking best. Sometimes people respond to our energy. There was a reading I gave on the podcast where we were having a conversation, and then, at a certain point, the person who I was giving a reading to asked me an additional question. I said no, and it provoked a really intense emotional response in them.

And this is something I have experienced many times and I have thought about a lot since that episode because I thought it was such a great thing that came up in that reading, because I know, for myself, when I am like, "Oh, I have to have a boundary, and I have to say no"—which is not exactly a criticism, but it landed for that person as a criticism—sometimes my energy goes really hard, "No," because that's the only way I know how to do it. Now, does that mean I was wrong or harmful to that other person? I would say no. But does that mean that it triggered intense feelings of being criticized or rejected in that person? I would say yes.

And so part of being able to have boundaries or have criticisms and being honest about it is allowing other people to have their feelings. And that's hard for most of us, right? Most of us have a really hard time allowing other people to not like us in a moment or to have a strong emotional reaction to something we said. You don't get to control other people and how they feel, even if you have the best of intentions. And a lot of times, this is a big thing that comes up.

Now, all of this said, I'm going to try to glance at some of these comments. [redacted] asks, "Constructive criticism regarding masks and taking COVID/flu/infection precautions is so hard because people tend to default to fear mode, and that often turns into anger, which turns towards the messenger. It's so isolating to keep bringing it up." Real talk.

And for me, I have a really hard time not getting mad with the people I'm asking to mask. So my defensiveness of, "Why am I having to be the high-maintenance one when I'm actually trying to not get sick and not get you sick"—so it is really hard to be constructive when you're defensive or when you're resentful. And I think most of us who are still masking have resentments. How could we not? We don't want to get sick. We're getting sick. And we're still doing this really inconvenient, frustrating thing, and everybody else stopped, right?

That said, when people get defensive and angry, it's them revealing themselves to you. People who really, genuinely don't think that masking is worth anything—people who genuinely are like, "There's no airborne illnesses. There's no need to mask. Masking is done. Nobody cares anymore"—those people don't get mad. They're just mystified. The people who get mad are the people who know better. They know better, but they're not willing to make the choice.

And so this is where it's really important to recognize my resentments and my defenses, your resentments and your defenses, reveal something about you and me, depending on who we're talking about. That's a really important thing to hold. If you can hold space for the messiness that is your internal universe and the messiness that is inside of someone else, then you can start to actually connect and conversate. And that's hard. You know what I mean? It's hard. It is hard.

[redacted] says, "I'm hearing that critique delivered with compassion is constructive, and if it's delivered with malice, it can be received as rejection." Yes. I would say that is true. And also, there's a lot of complexity in it. There's more, because you can receive criticism in a million ways. I don't know about you. When I'm driving my car, sometimes I make mistakes, like I turn when I shouldn't. I don't stop quick enough. I make mistakes on the road sometimes. And then people will honk on a horn and get mad, and it lives inside of me. I feel awful. So the horn is there for a reason. It's to express, "Hey, bitch. You're doing something wrong." And a person might be not doing it with empathy but not doing it with malice either. But my guilt, my feelings about it, have a lot to do with me and my shit, right?

It's messy is what I want to say because none of us have made it to be old enough to be having this conversation without being criticized a lot, without having a strong relationship to rejection and acceptance, criticism, and all the rest. And so we bring that to every single context that we experience any kind of critique in.

[redacted] asks, "Is bringing up an issue or expressing feelings with someone distinct from criticism?" Great question. Depends on who you ask. Depends on how you do it. It depends on whether or not that's true. Bringing up an issue—well, give us an example, Kate, because I think that this is a really important question. Have you not been in a situation where you feel like you're just bringing up an issue, but the other person receives it as a criticism?

There are many things that I say that I don't think are a criticism but people receive as a criticism.  What if you want the person you're criticizing to know that you're angry? Is that a sign not to say anything? Well, that's how you start a fight. That's called fighting. Now, I'm not mad at fighting. Fighting is how you work things out or you realize that you can't work things out. But you want to fight fair. So how do you fight fair? By being honest.

Now, honesty can be weaponized. So, if you're being honest and you're weaponizing your honesty, then you're being cruel. Have you never been mean? I have. Have you ever been the victim of meanness? I have. We all have. But we want to be honest with ourselves.

[redacted] says, "This just happened yesterday with my sister. She was insulting the intelligence of an animal, and I gave what I thought was constructive thoughts in reply. And she exploded on me." Okay. Excellent example. One minute, you're like, "Me and my sibling are having a conversation," and the next minute, the sibling is like, "You are fucking with me," or, "You always do this"—that kind of a thing, right?

And this is the thing. When somebody feels criticized, they go into victim mode. And when a person is in victim mode, we have a couple ways that we respond: fight, flight, fawn. Isn't that it? Is there a fourth? But you see what I'm saying. We either fight back, we fall apart, etc. It's just really hard. Where is the line between saying, "Hey, I'm noticing this thing," and micromanaging a situation? What is the difference between criticizing something or someone and trying to control their behavior, like, "I need you to mask if you're going to come over," and the other person being like, "Why are you trying to make me fucking wear a mask when I don't mask?"

And so, again, we have feelings. And it comes back to the central thesis of literally everything I do, which is emotional intelligence. Being able to tolerate your feelings is really important. And feeling like you're a failure, feeling like you're being rejected, feeling like you're wrong or bad or—something that's a big trigger for a lot of you is being misunderstood. That shit can eat at you.

Being able to acknowledge, "Okay. This is how I'm feeling right now. How can I actually tend to this feeling? And then I'm going to figure out what that person really meant or how I need to respond or what I need to do"—when we feel bad, we tend to self-abandon. We tend to self-abandon. And this is where I come back to this idea of comfort with the self. If you have self-worth and somebody criticizes you and you come back to taking care of yourself around that—not to absolve yourself of responsibility, but taking care of yourself around that feeling that's gotten triggered—that's really helpful.

[redacted] says, "It feels like there's a power dynamic with criticism, like the person doing the criticism takes the position of boss." So that's a power you've given someone else. And I understand what you're saying is it feels that way, and I think a lot of people feel what you're describing. And also, that's an attribution you are giving to the criticizer because some people are like, "I don't listen to criticism." I know people like that, who are just like, "Whatever, says you."

And the truth of the matter is—let's go astrological. Saturn—right? Saturn. Saturn can be very—it's a teacher. It's the teacher of the zodiac. And so it makes sense, if you're experiencing criticism—and I'm assuming not all criticism from all people, but certain kinds of criticism from certain people—you attribute Saturnine position to those people: "They're trying to control me. They're trying to school me. They're trying to punish me." Saturn.

So, by being able to recognize, "Oh. I am projecting that onto this person. Whether or not they are trying to assert their power over me, whether or not they think they're my boss, I know that they don't have power over me except for the power I give them, and they're not my boss"—unless they are, in which case the metaphor doesn't work. So, if they're not your boss and you don't treat them like your boss and you don't give them the power of your boss, then this issue goes away.

Now, listen. If it was that simple, I mean, you know, I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't do the work I do because it's very fucking hard. But it's important to recognize the power that you give other people, the criticisms that you receive from other people, are a reflection on them as much as they are a reflection on you. How you metabolize them is a reflection on you, not a reflection on them.

[redacted] says, "Telling people certain words are ableist also activates people, even when it's coming from a place of compassionately sharing information." Okay. That's a great example. This is something that I think about that specific example because I'm always wanting to learn more about language and the origins of words.

So learning that language can be ableist and racist is really hard for some people, right? It's really hard for some people. If you tell me I can't use this word that I've always used and I haven't had any negative connotation to it, and now you're telling me it's a bad word and I'm a bad person—people get really defensive.

And so coming in hot with, "That's ableist," can sometimes be the kind of shorthand that somebody who already has education can hear. Coming in, instead, warm with, "Hey, did you know the origins of that word are x? This is something that I've heard a lot of people are asking us to evolve our relationship with"—I mean, I'm using too many words already, but finding a way of articulating education and information instead of telling people that what they're doing is ableist—because that's a sweeping accusation, in a way, right? It's not how you mean it. It's not how I hear it when people say it to me. But it goes into sweeping accusation land. And character assassination, sweeping accusations—they always trigger defenses, okay? They always trigger defenses.

[redacted] says, "Sometimes criticism from family isn't constructive; it's just judgment." Fuck yeah—also from friends, also from strangers. I can speak authoritatively to say that. Criticism is not always constructive. It's not always given in good faith. You have the right to determine, "This is criticism given in poor faith. This criticism is a judgment. This criticism is a punishment or a way to control me," because sometimes that's what's happening.

But—and this is a big but—it's important that you first find a way to sit with the feelings that are triggered inside of you so that you can figure it out. Sometimes people talk in a way that just is fucking going to be triggering to you. Sometimes people are judgmental and mean. But here's a fun fact. If I'm judgmental and mean—that's how I do; that's how I am with most people, most of the time—and then I hang out with you, my child, my sibling, my whatever—I hang out with you, and I'm judgmental and mean with you, guess what. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with me because I'm judgmental and mean all the time.

If I'm judgmental and mean, and then I'm with you and I'm judgmental and mean, it's what I call a rainy day in Portland. It's just par for the course. It's not personal to you. It's not specific to the situation. It's me being me. Now, that doesn't mean you need to consent. It doesn't mean you need to deal with me or invite me into your life. But it does mean that if you're surprised that somebody is mean and judgmental when they've been nothing but mean or majoritively mean and judgmental, then that's your issue around not accepting reality as you've experienced it. And that's connected to criticism because it's connected to a comfort in your own ability and right to judge for your fucking self, to assess what's real for you.

[redacted] says, "Thinking in terms of attachment, childhood development, we rely on our families for survival. And criticism can register as not belonging, and not belonging to the family group can feel like a threat to survival." Absolutely. But I've worked with toddlers. I've worked with children, and I know a lot of people here have, and a lot of people here are parents.

You cannot parent without criticizing your children. If you don't criticize your children, you're doing a bad job. Children need to be told what's wrong because how else will they learn what's right? Right? Criticism is not a bad thing. It's when criticism is not constructive. If I'm hanging out with a kid and the kid wants to cross the street when it's a red light, I'm going to say, "No. That's actually a really bad thing to do. Let me tell you why." That is a criticism to what they did, but it's in efforts to help them stay safe.

And it's important to know that if, in your early developmental experiences, you were criticized as a way to push you away from other people, that that's going to be your shit as an adult. But just because it's your shit, it doesn't mean that when other people are criticizing you, they're always pushing you away. So this is, again, where emotional intelligence comes into the mix because I have to be able to assess, are you rejecting me, or are you telling me, "No. You misunderstood," or, "No. I don't like that," or whatever?

[redacted] asks, "Any thoughts on weathering criticism in the public eye? I mean, yeah. It really is a hard thing to do. I find it very hard because you can't know if somebody is coming at you with good faith. When you are in the public eye and other people give you their feedback, those people know you. They have a relationship with you. They have been exposed to who you are. But you don't know those people. You don't have any lived experience with them. You don't trust them, because why would you? You don't know them.

Somebody in the public eye may earn your trust, but the person that is giving the feedback is unlikely to have earned the trust of the person in the public eye. So it's really complicated. This is, for me, an issue of recognizing that it's good to stay open and to listen and, at the same time, to hold space for you don't know where it's coming from, the feedback or the critique. You can't. You don't know who the person criticizing you is. You don't know what their value systems are.

And we live now in this world, for the first time in human development, where everybody is encouraged to give their two cents on everything everyone who puts themselves in a vulnerable position in public says or does. And there's really strong pros, and there's really strong cons. There just is, right? And so it's complicated, but this is where I want to bring you back to boundaries. The value that you give to somebody who has earned your trust, who you know, should be different than a stranger that you don't know. That's hard for a lot of us, but it is a thing.

[redacted] said something, and it's about me. "Yeah. Oh my God. Self-disclosure, there's been times I've not posted a critical response I had to something Jessica said because of the parasocial dynamic, which is interesting." It is interesting. And it's a really important thing to be mindful of, right? Being able to hold space for, "This is a critique that I actually think is constructive. Jessica, you said this thing, and I thought it was ableist. And I want to understand where you were coming from because that landed in a wrong way for me"—so, in that way, because of the parasocial relationship, you are stepping forward with self-disclosure not in terms of your feelings alone, because I don't know you. I don't know where you're coming from.

Maybe you just had a fight with your partner for the last 24 hours, and then you came to my Patreon, and you started getting mad at me. That's happened, for sure. So coming in and being like, "Okay. This is my take. This is where I'm coming from. This is my critique"—great. Do that. Yes. Please. How else am I going to know? How else could I grow?

And then, also, recognizing that it's not natural to have these kinds of relationships—right? It's not natural that—Leah, you don't have a natural, organic, "I know how to handle this," locked and loaded in your head is because it's not natural. It's a weird thing to have these kinds of relationships. And I want to invite constructive criticism, and also, I get really overwhelmed by it.

The other day, I asked, "Should I use filters, or should I not use filters on a post?" And a lot of people told me what was wrong with using filters. And I didn't ask if it was bad or good. I just asked if I should use filters in another way. A lot of times, when I ask for feedback about something, A, people just really get excited, and they give me a lot of criticism about B, C, and D. And it's really hard. It feels really bad, honestly. And it's not bad like you should stop doing it. It's just an impossible, weird situation.

But metabolizing my feelings about being criticized, let's say about filters, is not me metabolizing my feelings about what you personally typed to me. It's about me metabolizing my boundaries and my self-worth and my relationship to you wanting me to like you or to prove that I'm not creepy when I use [indiscernible 00:26:30]. I probably am. I don't know.

But you see what I'm saying is that it's a relationship. It's a relationship that each of us must have with ourselves and then with people, because if you are in relationships—I'm not talking about parasocial in this moment, but in your personal life, in your processional life—where you never get criticized, then people are talking about you behind your back. Real talk, right?

So it's better to be honest. It's better to be able to hear honesty. And if you're willing to hear honesty and you're willing to be honest, then inevitably, you're going to have to metabolize shit that feels bad and that makes you insecure.

"How about criticism given repeatedly? I've recently been the recipient of honest criticism given the same way for hours." That's not criticism. Honest criticism? I mean, that's not just criticism. That's something else. That sounds like a lecture. So, in your personal life, if somebody is like, "Every time you do the dishes at my house, you break a glass"—not based on a true story. "Every time you do dishes in my house, you break a glass. I need you to not do that," and then I start going on and on and on and on about it—now I've given you the criticism, and the rest is punishment.

So you have a right in your relationships to say, "Okay. I'm hearing this criticism. Can I repeat it back to you so that I make sure I understood what you said?" And then you repeat it back, and they tell you yes or no, that is correct/that is not correct. And then you can say, "All right. If we keep on talking about it, I can tell you I'm going to get really defensive. If you feel like I heard it, can we stop talking about it now and maybe talk about it another day when I have time to metabolize it?" You have a right to do that. I've done that. You have a right to say, "There's only so much I can take in right now, but I want to hear it." But you have to mean it. You have to actually want to hear it. That's the thing.

[redacted] says, "I am my own worst critic"—I mean, so many of us are. "I think the criticism I hear, even constructive, is scary and more hurtful when I'm already worried it's true, regardless of whether or not it is true." And I think that's really common. I feel that way. You feel that way. I'm guessing a lot of people here feel that way.

And so I want to say again there is a way that we must be able to belong to ourselves. A very effective way of navigating criticism is by being willing to be wrong. And it's hard. When I get it wrong, I feel terrible. How about you? Do you feel terrible when you get it wrong? Because I do. I feel fucking awful. I feel embarrassed or humiliated. I feel ashamed. There's all kinds of feelings that can come up when I get it wrong, depending on the severity of the wrong.

And so being able to be like, "Okay. This is how I'm feeling. This is how I'm feeling. This is how I'm feeling. Fuck. I'm feeling this way"—and then meet that feeling. Be with the feeling. Slowly sit into the feeling, kind of like you would sit into a cold plunge or a hot tub. Meet the feeling. Breathe into the feeling. Sit with the feeling. Sit with the feeling. Sit with the feeling.

From there, you can start to understand, "What do I need to do to handle the feeling?" and, "How do I engage in this situation?" Right? "How do I engage in the situation?" You're being criticized by a family member, and they don't have fucking good faith. They're not going to listen to you. It's not a back-and-forth. Okay. Now I need a boundary. It's your friends, and it's actually really important to you that you have a back-and-forth. Okay. You either need to meet the moment, or you need to ask for some time to meet the moment.

Asking questions is also sometimes really helpful. And when you ask questions, you might find, "Oh, this person is being a dick." Okay. That's good information for you to have about them. That doesn't mean their criticisms are wrong. It doesn't mean they're right. These are all different data points, and we tend to smoosh them all together. But we want to be able to hold them separately, hold them lightly because then we can better understand them and meet the moment.

[redacted] says, "When I criticize my mom, she goes into victim mode. And  I don't know what to do then because the power dynamic is weird then." Here's what you do. You let her be a victim. You hang out. Having empathy without feeding into her victimhood and without being her savior or her perpetrator, you let her be a victim. "Wow. That must suck to feel like a victim all the time." It does. It sucks. Anyone who feels like a victim frequently will tell you it's terrible.

And your job is to tolerate that that's how she feels. Now, you might have criticized something, like, "When I was a kid, you never picked me up from school." And she might be like, "No, that's not true," even though it is true, and, "Oh, you're telling me I'm a bad parent." Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn't. Okay. Let her have her feelings. That's it. Because she is a victim, the subtext is you're the perpetrator. You don't have to take that on. You don't have to be the perpetrator. She might need you to be the perpetrator, but you don't need to be the perpetrator. See what I mean?

[redacted] says, "Jessica"—oh, that's very nice—"the way you're able to untangle the knots of complicated shit is so appreciated." You're welcome. Thank you. I have done a lot of therapy and a lot of studying.

[redacted] says, "One of my favorite phrases if someone says something that hits me in a weird way is, "Can you say more?" I think that's great. "Can you say more?" "Can you explain it?" Depending on how much you trust the person you're talking to, you can say, "Oh. I had a defensive reaction to that. I'm not sure if I'm reacting to what you're actually saying or if I'm just having emotions. Can you say it a different way? Because I want to hear it." But that's only with somebody you really trust.

Online, that's a different thing. And I am not—I almost never comment on social media posts, like just regular social media posts, because I just don't know where the other person is who made the post. So all to say, when it comes to online and parasocial relationships, I think it's a lot fuzzier. So, if it's a situation where you're here on Patreon, where I'm posting about content and you're asking questions about that content, and it's like a learning situation, then it is more of a  structure to me. Anyways, the parasocial relationship I wish I had more constructive feedback around. But I just feel like it's a messy one, and a lot of us spend a lot of our lives in parasocial relationship. And again, it's sticky. It's sticky.

[redacted] says, "I work somewhere that everyone talks about each other behind their backs and never to their faces, and I find it so frustrating." I'm glad you find it frustrating because it's disingenuous, it's dishonest, and it's cruel. But a lot of people have a very hard time being honest and direct, and so they're dishonest and indirect. And you can't trust those people. You might be that person. You might think, "Oh, I don't want to be mean, so I'm not going to say it to your face." Then you're not being trustworthy, unfortunately. I've been criticized for being very honest at times in my life, and I've ever been criticized for not being trustworthy.

[redacted] has a great question here: "Can you speak to picking up on other people's unspoken criticisms and how to handle that?" Great question. Take people at their word, and have boundaries when your instincts tell you to. That's my attitude, and listen. I'm a fucking psychic, but if you don't say it to my face, then I don't know it. Now, you don't say it to my face, but I can fucking feel it in my guts; then I'm going to have boundaries. I'm going to have boundaries because trust is earned.

But I'm not going to fucking try to psychic you behind your back and figure it out. I don't care about pattern recognition. I don't care about psychic. I don't care about astrology. We are meant to deal directly with each other. And if somebody is not really saying what's on their mind, if they don't criticize you to your face or they don't criticize you or whatever, but in your gut, you're like, "Something is off here," all right. Boundaries. Boundaries.

[redacted] says, "One challenge I keep bumping up against is I tend to habitually see everything from everyone else's perspective when we actually talk. I suddenly just forget I'm upset or have a criticism to begin with." So that's, again, not belonging to yourself. It's poor boundaries. And I said poor boundaries; I'm not criticizing you. I hope you don't feel criticized. It's an acknowledgment.

When we have poor boundaries, then we look outside of ourselves for validation, affirmation, information. And when you belong to yourself and you have good boundaries—healthy, well-adjusted boundaries—then you're curious about other people's perspective, but you're not rushing to meet other people where they're at. It's very hard to do, so stay with this challenge of identifying what it is that is going on for you.

So what I did for many years in my 20s, and probably in my early 30s, is if I had something I needed to talk to a friend about, I would write it down. I would write it down in long fucking journal posts, and then I would distill that into bullet-point note form. So the first thing I would write is to flush out all my fucking feelings, all my twelfth-house drama. Oh my God. That was what I needed to get off my chest. And then I would figure out, "What do I need to say to the person?" which is different than what I need to get off my chest.

What I need to get off my chest is off-gassing and emo and not totally honest. It's very emotional but not really honest. What I need to say is what I want the other person to hear. So I might write three pages, and then what I need the other person to hear is, "I didn't feel like you were being respectful towards me, and it hurt my feelings." So, when I talk to my therapist or my bestie about it, there's just reams and reams of data. But at the end of the day, you didn't respect me, and it hurt. It just felt bad. And if a friend can't show up for that, then they're not a great friend. And then I need boundaries. Then I need boundaries.

If somebody wants to hear something as a criticism, you need to let them. You can clarify your position, but if somebody wants to be the victim, they're going to be the victim. Victimhood is powerful—it can be, anyways. This is where it's important to not play games, that you recognize there are games that you don't want to play.

So, if we have a relationship—I'm your mom; I'm your dad—and every time you criticize me, I'm like, "No. I'm the victim. I can't believe you're doing this to me," and you then play your role, being like, "No, no, no. Don't feel bad. Don't feel bad," or whatever, then we're going to keep on playing this game for-fucking-ever. One person has to stop playing their role. One person. Will it be you? Because if it's not you, it's not going to be the other fucking guy, generally speaking.

[redacted] says, "I feel comfortable being criticized usually, but really struggle to criticize people I love because it feels like a betrayal." So a lot of people—it's a very Neptunian feeling, that feeling of, "It's a betrayal if I speak critically to you about something you said or did or think or feel." And the truth of the matter is, if you can't speak critically to people that you care about, then you're not being honest.

Sometimes your criticisms are better left in your head, right? Sometimes your criticisms are better left at your therapist's office. And sometimes you need to say what you fucking think to the people in your life—what you feel, what you need, what you perceive. If you can't do it out of a need to see things from their perspective and agree with them all the time, then you know you're not being honest. And if you're not being honest with them, then there's no way they're consistently honest with you.

So criticism is a part of honesty when it's healthy and in balance. And when it's cruel, it's a power play. It's cruelty. If you're going to be critical of other people, you are going to miss the mark sometimes. You're going to say it in a way that really fucking hurts their feelings, and you didn't think you were doing it, but you did. And then you're going to have to take care of that. And that's hard for a lot of us. You have to be willing to be the bad guy sometimes. Or do you need to be the good guy all the time? It's a very important question to ask yourself.

[redacted] asks, "Can you say more or give an example of boundaries you're referring to when you feel that something is off but it's not being spoken?" That's a great question. You may be in a friendship with somebody who is like, "Everything's fine." You text; it's cute. You hang out; it's fun. You're friends. Everything's fine. But there's something underneath, and you're like, "Oh, there's a meanness to this person. They've never been mean to me. They've never been unkind to me. But sometimes, when I hear them talk about other people, I'm like, 'Oh, what's that energy?'"

There's something you can't put your finger on. It's not something you can specifically point to, but you can just feel, "Oh, there's a meanness to this person." I don't advise you to then go try to find it and be a sleuth. This is not a true crime podcast. It's your life. It's your friendships. It's—you're picking up on something. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right, but you're misunderstanding it.

Having healthy boundaries where you're like, "Okay. This person might have a mean streak. I don't know. So I'm just not going to bring terribly vulnerable things to them until I get to know them better"—it's about honoring, if you don't feel totally safe, that just means you don't feel totally safe. You don't need to fill in the blanks with data and story. Sometimes you just need to trust, "Okay. Something in my system is saying I'm not sure if this is safe for me." So honor that.

"What's an example of a boundary would you have if you feel someone's unspoken criticism?" I would ask them, "What do you think of x?" That's a boundary. Or if you don't want to know, then I would handle the discomfort of knowing that they have a fucking opinion that you don't want to hear and that they're not telling you. Tolerate your emotions. Tolerate theirs. Okay?

[redacted] says, "All my 20-something journals are also twelfth-house drama." I mean, all of us twelfth-house babies in our 20s—oh my God. We're so dramatic. I mean, everybody in their 20s is dramatic. Are you in your 20s now? You won't be this dramatic forever.

Okay. [redacted] asks an important question here: "How do you differentiate between detecting unsaid energies and your own projections and inner insecurities?" You don't. You can't. You can ask questions of people. You can be like, "Hey, am I picking up on something? Are you annoyed with me right now?"

Okay. I can think of an example. I have a friend who—I love this person. And I could feel—for like two weeks, I was like, "She is mad at me. She's mad at me. Why is she so mad? I just fucking know it. I know it. I can feel it every time we text," because we were living in different cities at the time. I was like—I could just feel she was mad at me.

And then I asked her, "Hey, did I do something to bug you?" And she told me she was going through a really terrible thing with her health, and she just wasn't ready to talk about it yet. It wasn't my fucking business. And also, I really was feeling it, and so I said something. She was a big enough girl to be like, "Here's my boundary." It was an uncomfortable interaction that actually made us a lot closer long term.

Whether you're picking up on—what did you say—unsaid energies, whether you're projecting or you're insecure, why is it either/or? Maybe it's fucking all of them. It's communication and boundaries. Sometimes people are unable to advocate for themselves. My friend didn't want to talk about their health issues. They didn't want to talk about their health issues. They just were in it, and they needed to just be in it. And it was not my fucking business, but I picked up on it, and then I personalized it.

If you are sensitive, then you personalize shit that has nothing to do with you. And that makes us narcissistic. Oh my God. Isn't that annoying? Much like a bunch of people in the comments are being like, "Oh, when I criticize my mother or my father, they became the victim"—it's because they're personalizing it. They're like, "Oh, you're saying I'm a bad person by criticizing me." The fuck are you going to do?

[redacted] says, "I remember reading the quote, 'All unsolicited advice is criticism.'" I think that there's a real world in which that's true. And also, there's some contexts where—like somebody mentioned earlier, using ableist language, right? If I'm using ableist language, I do want to know. And I can't know what I don't know. I can't know what I don't know.

I remember—what was it? Lizzo put the word "spaz" in a song, and a bunch of people when the song came out were like, "That is very fucking ableist." And she genuinely didn't know, and when she found out, she changed. Tidy, right? Tidy. And I want to just hold, please, because I mentioned Lizzo, and I know she's a divisive person. But being able to hold space for—some people do some things right and other things not great, and your opinions are not the only opinions, and all those things—I think I just want to hold space for all of that.

But being able to receive criticism without asking for it sometimes is what you need because you don't know what you need all the time. And also, if you're talking to a friend and you're giving unsolicited advice, 50/50 it's not going to land well. So asking a friend—this is a practice I've developed over recent years. When a friend is telling me a bunch of shit, I will say, "Do you want me to listen, or do you want feedback?" And if it's unclear to me and they say they do want feedback, I'll be like, "Do you want me to gas you up, or do you want heavy—you know, do you want my Capricorn shit to come now?" You know what I mean? And sometimes my friends are like, "Gas me up." And that's great. That's fucking cool. That's great.

It's really important to be able to talk to people. And when people say no to you, they're not saying no to you. They're just saying no to the thing. You know what I'm saying?

[redacted] says, "It's wild how people don't even consider asking honest questions directly. Love a mature, direct convo." Real talk. I mean, fucking real talk. It's so rare that we just have direct, open conversations because we're scaredy cats, not because we're bad. Because we're scared.

One last thing I'm going to say and then wrap this up—when you're around your family this holiday time, if you are a person who celebrates holidays or interacts with your family, you're going to feel criticized, and you're probably going to make somebody else feel criticized. This is going to be a great time for you to reflect. Just notice how you feel and reflect. Notice how, when you feel criticized, you pull back. You pull back from yourself. This is Plutonian, right?

What you want to practice doing is noticing when you abandon yourself, and then apologize, be nice, and meet yourself again. There's no world in which everyone likes what you do. There's no world in which you get everything right. I wish there was because then I would do everything right, and everyone would like me, and I would be much happier. But it's important to just hold space for that messiness.

You know what somebody wrote as a criticism of my podcast recently? They said, "Stop saying meat suit." I've been saying meat suit for like two and a half decades. I love the term "meat suit." I am nothing but a spirit in a meat suit. But this person is just grossed out by the term. And I have obsessed on that. I am sharing it with you; that's how much I've obsessed on that. Was this person criticizing me? It feels like it, but come on. Come on. That's not really a criticism of me. But again, it's about the feelings. It's about, "I like it, and you don't like it. And what does that mean? Should I not like it?" I have a wobble with it. Somebody criticized something I never thought they'd criticize, and then all of a sudden I was defensive. I still am. I'm talking about it.

It's okay to be a messy, meaty, insecure person. It's just about how we meet that, with what kind of awareness, with what kind of energy, with what kind of intention. I'm not going to lie to you. I've read that review multiple times a week ever since that person wrote it. That's right. I have. I'm a fucking asshole. And it feels bad when I do it, and it's stupid. But every time, I'm like, "This is stupid, and I'm giving it power." And that is really good information for me to have about my own self shit.

And so whatever your self shit is, whether it's with a stranger on the internet or it's with your dad or it's with your sibling or your bestie or your partner, it doesn't make you a bad person to be vulnerable, to be insecure, to be a victim, to be a perpetrator—I mean, depends. I mean, of course, there's boundaries of where it gets into bad person behavior. But I think most of what we're talking about here is not about bad person/good person stuff. It's about person stuff. It's about being a tender being navigating a lot all at once and struggling to meet the moment with kindness towards yourself and others. It's about navigating triggers and activation.

And that's what being an adult is. It's about trying and failing and succeeding and adapting and changing and trying, and on we go. That's what it is. So try to have empathy and grace for the ways in which other people are fucked up without losing track of your boundaries as much as they are needed. And have empathy and grace for yourself while holding yourself accountable to being respectful of other people's boundaries and honoring and holding your own. Okay?

I'm just glancing at the comments and seeing people are gassing me up about "meat suit." And I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that. I was being really needy and insecure, and I will continue to be. But I'm going to try to hold on to all this stuff. So thank you for supporting me in the stupidest insecurity a person could possibly have. And if you're the person who wrote that and you happen to be here, too, no harm, no foul, man. You have your preferences. I respect you.

And thank you so much for joining me here. It's been good. It's been a good hour. We got into some shit. And I hope you have a wonderful weekend. More soon. Bye.