“I hate the way I look.” “Why am I such an idiot?” “Of course I messed this up.” “I should know better.” “My work doesn’t even compare to theirs.” “I can’t do something like that.” “It’s all my fault.”
If you have said any variation of the above statements, you may be among the many people plagued by a relentless and brutal inner critic. The inner critic lives in our heads and barrages us with harsh, negative messages about ourselves. Often stemming from low self-esteem, it may echo a person who has said hurtful words to us in the past and/or focus on the area we feel most vulnerable about.
Despite its vicious appearance, I tend to see the inner critic as having a caring purpose. Namely, it generally wants to motivate us to become a better version of ourselves and/or protect us from hurt or disappointment. In theory, those are not bad objectives. Ideally, we do want to and will strive to learn, grow, and improve throughout our entire lifetime. Additionally, we want to minimize hurt and capably deal with challenges. However, in practice, there are better and worse ways to go about that work. The inner critic’s efforts count among the less helpful ways.
It means to help, but it doesn’t do so effectively. In the cases where it does push you to improve, consider how much effort any progress takes while the voice constantly beats you down and predicts failure; evaluate the sense of reward and pride versus exhaustion and unworthiness after what may count as a victory. In cases where it did prepare you for disappointment, calculate how many items it worried about that did not occur or it overestimated the danger. After considering the cost of its efforts when it has proved somewhat effective, ask yourself how often it has discouraged you so much you didn’t try something at all or caused you to only feel overwhelming hurt and disgust with yourself.
Once we can clearly see the negative effects of a fierce inner critic and can use that as motivation to begin a difficult task, we can begin the work of taking back our self-esteem and using sustainable ways of achieving our goals. It’s not always as simple as complimenting ourselves in the mirror or listing our strengths though. Sometimes we must start by reducing the inner critics power and get them to be less loud so that our inner guide or inner coach has a fighting chance. There are multiple ways to start doing this, but I’ll just share my current favorite one for now.
I found inspiration for this when rewatching the Harry Potter series. In the third book, one of the teachers has the students learn to combat a “boggart,” which is a shape-shifting creature that takes on the form of that which its opponent most fears. To combat it, the students must conjure a mental image of what will make the boggart look amusing, cast the spell to force the boggart to take that shape and defeat it using laughter. For this technique, one considers the inner critic as the boggart and identifies the form it would take. Then, one simply pictures an appearance or situation would make the inner critic appear comical to them. This helps create some psychological distance from the inner critic, demonstrates you have more control over them than originally thought, and helps you to take the inner critic less seriously.
In addition to humor, self-compassion and cognitive behavior therapy can be very helpful in overcoming an inner critic. These approaches help you speak more gently and kindly to yourself as well as identifying thinking errors that contribute to distress. If you would like support in improving your self-talk and self-esteem, feel free to reach out at (270) 943-7178 or [email protected]. You can also learn more about the services we offer by visiting us at https://www.amandapatrickmft.com/ and clicking on the Services tab.