Taming Your Inner Critic
By: Alexandra DeWoskin, LCSW
Most of us in Chicago are familiar with those negative thoughts that tell us we are not good enough and that cast doubt on our goals and undermine our accomplishments. This is your inner critic, the silent voice judging your thoughts and behaviors. We all possess an inner critic or this negative internal commentary on who we are and how we behave. It tells is horrible things like:
- You’re stupid
- You’re ugly
- You are not worthy of something
- Nobody cares what you think or what you have to say
- You are an impostor (Imposter Syndrome)
We all have two different voices inside us: one that is nurturing and one that is critical. The nurturer lifts up and the critic weighs us down. Both of these voices have a role to play. Our inner nurturer brings self-compassion and encouragement while the inner critic helps you recognize where you’ve gone wrong and what you need to do to set things right. Often, however, the inner critic goes way overboard by scolding, shaming, nit-picking and faultfinding.
While our inner critic can help us to avoid failure or embarrassment and encourage us to move forward and succeed at achieving goals, we give it a lot of power to wear down our mood, self-worth and resilience. The inner critic can be viewed as a type of survival mechanism used to identify potential environmental threats. It tries to protect us by shaming us before someone else might.
The critical inner voice is formed out of painful early life experiences in which we witnessed or experienced hurtful attitudes toward us or those close to us. As we grow up, we unconsciously adopt and integrate this pattern of destructive thoughts toward ourselves and others. We start telling ourselves those critical messages. It may sabotage our successes or our relationships, preventing us from living the lives we want to lead and becoming the people we seek to be.
A highly active inner critic can take a toll on one’s emotional well-being, self-esteem, self-worth, self-doubt, motivation, and identity. It can damage your ability to trust yourself and your instincts. This inner critic can be like a nagging voice that questions each decision and undermines each accomplishment, leaving one with difficult feelings such as shame, inadequacy, or guilt.
The inner critic is similar in some ways to the Freudian superego, which acts as a conscience. However, the inner critic has more negative connotations than the superego and typically serves to undermine accomplishments rather than encourage appropriate behavior and obedience to cultural norms.
Sometime, the nagging sensation of an inner critic is the product of depression or anxiety. People experiencing these conditions sometimes feel chronically inadequate and are highly critical of themselves. And this ongoing self-critical thinking can also lead to the emotional lows of depression or anxiety.
[See our therapy for depression in Chicago page]
There are steps you can take to teach your inner voice to show self-compassion and kindness. You can work to distance yourself from the inner critical voice and hinder its ability to produce negative and judgmental messages. While it may never go away completely, we can learn strategies to reduce its destructive power.
Identify your Inner Critic
Try to identify what your critical inner voice is telling you. Acknowledge that this thought process is separate from your real point of view and not a reflection of reality. It is a viewpoint you adopted based on destructive early life experiences and attitudes directed toward you that you’ve internalized as your own point of view.
Consider how self-critical attitudes developed in you
Try tracking down where these negative thoughts originated as a way to gain greater insights about them. When you’re mindful of your inner dialogue, you might notice there’s something familiar about the words, tone or attitude in the self-criticism. It may feel reminiscent of messaging received from a parent, sibling, relative, teacher, or coach.
By listening to yourself, you can hear the harshness and irrationality in much of what the inner critic has to say. Stepping back from the criticism to observe it can help you stop reinforcing and identifying with it and can make the voice of your less intense.
Separate from your inner critic
You are not your inner critic. It is a part of you. It holds values that are contrary to your truth. Notice how hostile this critic of self can be.
Stay mindful: Mindfulness can be a distancing technique. When we hear the inner critic being harsh, notice it, recognize it, acknowledge its attempts to help, remind ourselves that we would never say things like that to someone we care about, and try to be a little more kind to ourselves
Use the inner critic for growth: Once understood, the inner critic brings something important to our attention, and we can use the experience to align our actions with our values.
Practice self-kindness
When the critical inner voice arises, show yourself the same compassion you would show others. Be empathetic toward your behavior, thoughts, and feelings, including self-judgment and self-critical thoughts.
Consider acceptance & commitment
Observe and accept what our inner critic has to say and then try to let it go. Treat the inner critic like a mind-chatter and seek to shift attention away from it.
Try Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT is a short-term therapy that helps people detect their self-defeating thoughts and reshape these thoughts so that they are healthier and less destructive.
Don’t act on the directives of your Inner Critic
Take actions that represent your own point of view, who you want to be and what you aim to achieve. Your critical inner voice may get loud. However, by identifying, separating from, and acting against this destructive thought process, you will grow stronger, while your inner critic grows weaker
When the inner critic starts pounding away, turn to your inner nurturer.
This part of yourself is protective and encouraging when other people are critical of you or when things are stressful, disappointing or terrible. It’s a source of confidence and resilience.
Argue against your inner critic and offer counterevidence.
Write down three or more believable rebuttals to your critical voice. Look at the facts when you’re your imposter syndrome intrudes. Tell yourself the opposite of what the inner critic is saying.
Try to see yourself the way others see you as essentially good, capable, and worthy.
This can be quite hard to do. If it’s all right to recognize basic goodness in others and it’s all right for them to recognize it in you, then it is also all right to recognize it inside yourself.
Acknowledge and accept that the Inner Critic Voice will not disappear
Accept the fact that we all have an ongoing inner dialogue with ourselves that helps govern our thoughts, behaviors, and actions. Alter the relationship you have with it so it becomes more of a friend than a foe. Keep an internal dialogue going.
Rather than trying to suppress negative thoughts, learning to live with the inner critic is an essential skill that we can learn. Just as the inner critic developed over the course of years, so too can our inner nurturer get stronger over time and the practice of new tools. We can train ourselves to tolerate the discomfort that comes when we refrain from self-criticism, accept positive feedback, and use more encouraging language with ourselves.
