Judgy Judy

Last week was a slice of living hell. Working 6 ten hours days in a row left me feeling mentally, physically, emotionally, socially, and even spiritually drained to the last drop. The day after my work streak ended, I showed up for a therapy appointment feeling cranky AF and unwilling to discuss anything difficult. Naturally, when my therapist told me I tend to be judgmental toward people who still drink, I began to spiral.

How dare he call me judgmental? Isn’t he supposed to help build me back up? Why is he tearing me down further? Should I find a new therapist? Am I judgemental? Is it normal to judge people who still drink while attempting sobriety? Am I crazy? A bad person? What’s wrong with me?

To help straighten out the spiral, I took a much-needed 4 hour nap when I got home from therapy. And then, I remembered an article Holly Whitaker wrote a few years back called Why Do I Still Judge People Who Drink? A reader given the pseudonym Judgy Judy wrote in and asked Holly, “Is this normal? Have you felt this way? Am I just hyper-aware of people's alcohol consumption now that I've made the decision to not drink? I don't want to be judgmental or assume that everyone has a problem just because I did and wanted to stop. Any advice?!”

Holly’s response to the question is brilliant. It makes me feel seen and heard, like my experience might actually be normal. She references the shadow self, a concept from Jungian psychology, which, “represents the things present in ourselves that we disassociate from because we deem them bad, ugly, dark, and less than. The shadow is all the things we suppress, reject, or deny in ourselves—the things we would rather not be. We think that if people were to see our shadow elements, we would not be liked, regarded, loved, and so on.”

This makes me wonder if the reason other people’s drinking bothers me so much is because it reminds me of my own out-of-control drinking days. It reminds me of my own lurking shadows: the incoherent text messages, the ruined relationships, the blackout drinking at work and family gatherings. Deep down, my judginess is not about other people’s drinking at all. It’s about my own suppressed relationship with my past hurting self. Underneath my judginess is shame, fear, and self-hatred.

Holly continues to write, “The point of this story is to prove one very big point to you—and that is that seeing other people drink wouldn't drive you so crazy if you didn't still hold yourself in some judgment for having binge drank and gotten ridiculously drunk in your previous life.”

Maybe over the next several weeks (or years) of therapy it would be helpful for me to work on the judgments I hold toward myself. Maybe I can learn to reframe my judginess as a natural, totally normal, newly-sober human response, instead of yet another thing to beat myself up over. Maybe being judgmental of others is easier than dealing with my own shit. And maybe, now that I understand why I judge, I can also learn to stop.

Progress.