Acquaintances may speak well of us.

熟人可能會說我們的好話。

Colleagues may praise us.

同事們可以稱讚我們。

But there is an inner critic inside who has a very different verdict.

但是，內心深處的評論家卻有截然不同的評判。

You are a piece of nonsense.

你真是一派胡言。

You're laughable.

你真可笑。

You're repulsive.

你真可惡

This critic is extremely assiduous and determined.

這位評論家非常勤奮、堅定。

They are a world champion of sorts.

他們是某種意義上的世界冠軍。

They'll get into an argument with our best friend to insist that no, despite what they think, we really are awful.

他們會和我們最好的朋友爭論，堅持認為不，儘管他們這麼想，但我們真的很糟糕。

They'll disregard the evidence of a promotion or a surprise birthday party and keep returning to the same theme.

他們會無視升職或生日派對驚喜的證據，繼續回到同一主題。

You are repulsive.

你令人厭惡。

Why does this inner critic exist?

為什麼會有這種內心的批評者？

Why are they so remorseless?

他們為何如此無情？

If they are inaccurate, why do they go on as they do?

如果它們是不準確的，為什麼還要繼續呢？

To find an explanation, we have to go back in time.

為了找到解釋，我們必須回到過去。

Let's posit the following scenario.

讓我們假設以下情景。

Early on in our lives, those of us with a harsh inner critic are likely to have faced a very troubling situation.

在我們人生的早期，那些內心有嚴厲批評的人很可能會面臨非常麻煩的情況。

Someone close to us, it might have been a mother or a father, didn't seem to especially like us.

我們身邊的某個人，可能是母親，也可能是父親，似乎並不特別喜歡我們。

They were cold and forbidding, they often got angry, or they simply disappeared and maybe married someone else in another country.

他們冷酷無情、咄咄逼人，他們經常發怒，或者乾脆消失不見，也許在另一個國家嫁給了別人。

Or else they fell into depression or became an alcoholic.

否則，他們就會陷入抑鬱或酗酒。

Why did all this happen?

為什麼會發生這一切？

This is the question that would have faced the younger version of us, though we forget this now.

這是年輕時的我們會面臨的問題，儘管我們現在已經忘記了這一點。

It's very hard for a child to deal with a vacuum of explanation.

對於孩子來說，要面對真空的解釋是非常困難的。

The mind has to try to find some way of accounting for things, because otherwise the mystery threatens to be unbearable.

人的大腦必須設法找到某種解釋事物的方法，否則神祕感就有可能讓人無法忍受。

Better some answer than a void.

有答案總比空洞無物好。

Unfortunately, the childish mind doesn't have an accurate grasp of adult psychology or the workings of the grown-up world.

遺憾的是，幼稚的心靈無法準確把握成人的心理和成人世界的運作。

Nevertheless, it is an energetic and vibrant machine, and eventually it is likely to land on an explanation that feels very powerful and that in time ceases to reveal that it is just a good guess rather than an iron truth.

儘管如此，它是一臺充滿活力和生機的機器，最終它很可能會找到一個讓人感覺非常有力的解釋，而且隨著時間的推移，它不再會顯示出這只是一個很好的猜測，而不是鐵一般的事實。

And that explanation runs as follows.

解釋如下

The bad thing that has happened to me has done so because I am bad.

發生在我身上的壞事都是因為我不好。

Father has left home because I suck.

父親離家出走是因為我太差勁了。

Mother is screaming because I suck.

媽媽在尖叫，因為我太差勁了。

My sibling died because I suck.

我的兄弟姐妹死了，因為我太差勁了。

It's almost certain, we hasten to add, that this is not the right answer to why things unfolded as they did, but that's not the point.

我們急忙補充說，幾乎可以肯定的是，這並不是事情發展的正確答案，但這並不是問題的關鍵。

This was the answer we landed upon and that felt most plausible.

這是我們得出的答案，也是我們覺得最合理的答案。

A child will prefer to think that it lives in a rationally ordered world where things happen for logical reasons, even if this means having to think that they are bad, rather than take on board the terrifying notion that things happen that are entirely unfair, entirely undeserved and entirely reprehensible to the interests and hopes of a child.

孩子更願意認為自己生活在一個合理有序的世界裡，在這個世界裡，事情的發生是有邏輯原因的，即使這意味著必須認為這些事情是不好的，而不是接受這樣一種可怕的觀念，即事情的發生是完全不公平的，完全不應該的，完全應該受到譴責的，完全不符合孩子的利益和希望。

Better to insist that one sucks than to have to believe in an amoral, chaotic, senseless universe.

與其相信一個無道德、混亂、無意義的宇宙，不如堅持認為自己很糟糕。

It's easy from here to see how the child who decided that they suck, to be precise, who had to conclude that they sucked in order to make sense of an unbearable pain, then grows up into an adult who continues to maintain, in the face of any evidence to the contrary, that they are dreadful, that all good news about them is merely a cover for hatred, that everything nice is undeserved and that they are, despite key bits of evidence to the contrary, a piece of excrement.

從這裡我們不難看出，一個認定自己很差勁的孩子，準確地說，是一個不得不認定自己很差勁才能理解無法忍受的痛苦的孩子，長大成人後，面對任何相反的證據，仍然堅持認為自己是可怕的，所有關於自己的好消息都不過是仇恨的幌子，所有美好的事物都是不值得的，儘管有關鍵的相反證據，但自己就是一坨排洩物。

The way to break out of this prison is to realize that we are made up of parts.

要走出這個牢籠，就要認識到我們是由各個部分組成的。

The inner critic is not the whole of us.

內心的批評者並不是我們的全部。

It is a part of us that was formed early on in response to a particular situation.

它是我們早期為應對特定情況而形成的一部分。

We might now thank it very politely for its work because, at an early stage, it did in fact do a rather good job of making sense of life.

現在，我們可以非常禮貌地感謝它所做的工作，因為在早期階段，它確實在理解生活方面做得相當不錯。

At a cost, it was responsible, we might say, for getting us to the next stage.

我們可以說，它為我們進入下一階段付出了代價。

It tidied us over.

它讓我們變得更加整潔。

It was very clever for a six-year-old.

對於一個六歲的孩子來說，這是非常聰明的。

But at the same time, we can now afford to take our leave of this helpful but profoundly mistaken part.

但與此同時，我們現在也可以告別這個有用但卻大錯特錯的部分了。

Thank you, inner critic, we might say.

我們可以說，謝謝你，內心的批評家。

You did something bold, and you meant well, but now you threaten to ruin what remains of the rest of my life.

你做了一件大膽的事，你的本意是好的，但現在你威脅要毀掉我的餘生。

It's time to say goodbye to the critic and assess reality through a fairer, less biased, less uninformed lens.

是時候和批評家說再見了，用更公平、更少偏見、更少不知情的視角來評估現實。

We don't suck.

我們不差勁

Something awful happened to us.

我們遭遇了可怕的事情。

We aren't bad.

我們並不壞。

Something bad happened to us that we tried to rationalise by blaming ourselves.

在我們身上發生了一些不好的事情，我們試圖通過責備自己來使之合理化。

We aren't awful people, and we don't deserve an awful future.

我們不是可怕的人，我們也不應該擁有可怕的未來。

We just came from a rather difficult place.

我們剛從一個相當困難的地方過來。