4 Ways To Tame Your Inner critic

“ You will never be beautiful enough for that guy, forget him. You are average.”

“If there was somebody else in your place, they would have done a better job”

“Why did your voice shake so badly in that zoom call today morning”

Just the few insights from our dear inner critic that we are fated to hear every day.

According to Lisa Firestone in Psychology Today, critical inner voice is formed from painful early life experiences in which we witnessed or experienced hurtful attitudes toward us or those close to us.

This could be the voice of a parent who repeats our incapabilities on a regular basis or that professor from college who loved predicting our lousy future for the entire class to be entertained or the ex-wife girlfriend who termed you the rudest person ever.

Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way” ( the pioneer of the morning pages routine!) calls this the “Censor” that resides in the left side our brain which is the leftover part of our survival brain. This side of our brain intends to essentially safeguard us from any danger by giving us logic.

“the Censor who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as truth”

The problem arises when we fail to differentiate this voice from who we are and assume it as our identity.

We become from “ I have skills to work on to improve in my career” to “ I am the dumbest person to ever work here, I cannot do anything well”.

It impacts our career and social lives. Any reaction from the people we interact with, we filter them through these beliefs. When people fail to act as per our expectations, it becomes a huge blow to our self-worth.

Rejections become too personal and devastating. The struggle to learn a new skill at the early stages (which is how anyone learns a skill), makes the voice takes over and we give up entirely.

Can we fight this inner voice and make peace with it?

Can we somehow tune out this voice from calling us a worthless piece of shit and make it our ally?

1. Awareness is the first step

Eckart Tolle says to become aware of your own mind and what it is saying and doing.

A good question to ask yourself is, “What kinds of thoughts go through my mind all day long?”

Julia Cameron in turns suggests us imagine this critic like cartoon serpent, maybe shark from Jaws and add an X on top of it.

Just making the Censor into the nasty, clever little character that it brings to pry loose some of its power over you and your creativity.

When we start seeing these thoughts as just they are — thoughts, we take it’s power away. When we observe these thoughts a step further, we see that instances from past and how it was interpreted (in it’own horrible way) by the critic. The trick here is to again only observe without reacting to them.

Isn’t this all about mindfulness? Yes.

The more we are aware and present in the moment, the inner critic loses its power over us. It eventually becomes the he sound of a badly tuned radio that no one is listening to.

2. Writing it down

Once we identify the repeating thoughts, writing it down helps to pin them down to a paper.

My therapist would ask me to put a filter to these self-critical statements by presenting the counter arguments from my side.

For example for statements like:

“ I am a huge disappointment to my parents in the way I turned out.”

My counter argument would be:

“ I am doing my best in work and life. I am giving all my efforts. Also, they love me no matter what”

This is simple but profound approach and it helped me.

3. Asking yourself if it were your best friend will you be advising this way

No way, not even to our worst enemy would we speak the ruthless language that our mind chooses to tell us.

Practice self-compassion by changing the narrative.

Instead of “This project of yours will never work. The whole idea is a joke” rephrase it as “I am doing my best in this project. Whatever maybe the result, I will learn from it.”

4. Can we finish this work now and maybe discuss later approach

Yes, it sounds evasive but this trick works, atleast for me when the negative voice is focused on what I am doing at the moment .

I interrupt the speech with a “let me finish this for 3 minute and think about it later”. Once the focus sets in, I have successfully diverted energy to the task and not to the self-critical voice.

Final thoughts

Learning to make peace with ourselves is a marathon, not a sprint.

Here is a quick takeaway:

1. Be aware if the voice, know that it is not who you are

2. Write the negative thoughts, provide your counter arguments

3. Change the tone and rephrase the voice as if you are talking to a best friend

4. Let’s me do this one thing and let me think of all the obstacles later mindset

Having an inner critic is part of how our brain works. There is no escaping from what nature has given us, Practicing awareness will help with getting our goals accomplished with a nod to our mental well-being too.