Okay so I had a revelation today while playing drums - in my imagination I have my father standing behind me and saying "okayish", "now you screwed up", "ah couldn't you play less boring?!", "it's crucial to keep the rhythm and you can't even do that", "why don't you put more effort", etc. And then I thought:
Can't I maybe, for once, enjoy it!?
No, I don't enjoy. I have this critic in my head, and again the effect of having to be the best, imaging how everyone else is observing and judging me, how everyone else has super high expectations of me. Feeling that I just can't afford to make a mistake, and every mistake I actually made felt like I was going to be killed for it.
Any, any situation where there is some grading possible, I am killing myself over to get approval from my imaginary dad. It just pops up automatically, so automatically that I never realised I do it. And effectively it's the ego which fights for this approval, for survival. And it's also what's limiting me soooo much!
No, I didn't manage to enjoy. But I could observe how some other people had the same critic and some didn't. And I could observe mine. Every word, every sneaky remark.