We all have an inner voice. The voice that is the narrator of our everyday lives as we move through different situations and events in our day to day. For some of us our inner voice is critical, judgmental, and demeaning. For others, and not many others, our voice is caring, compassionate, and nurturing.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, It’s the voice that tell’s you you’re a loser after no one laughed at your jokes at work; the voice that says you’re an idiot when you make a mistake; the voice that says you’re not good looking or smart enough to be with them; the voice that convinces you that you’re not good enough to apply for that job. Sound familiar? There are many names for this voice, but I like to call it my inner critic.
When I was younger and before I started healing my inner child and building up a strong sense of worth for myself; my inner critic was loud!! Louder than anything I tried to retaliate with, louder than any other loved ones voice. My inner critic governed my every feeling and all that I experienced in this world.
“I’m too fat to be friends with them!” – “I’m not worthy of love!” – “I’m not good enough to succeed!” – “I’ll never be as beautiful!” – “I don’t belong!” – “Nobody likes me!” – “I’m a failure, so why try!” – “I don’t deserve any better!”
If you have a negative inner critic that you’re finding difficult to manage then you need to keep reading. If you find yourself feeling this way but you’re not really aware of the voice in your head that makes you feel this way, then you also need to keep reading. If your behaviour reflects that of someone who doesn’t believe they’re worthy or good enough. e.g. You can’t say no to people who walk all over you; you don’t take risks because you’re afraid to fail; you sabotage your relationships because you’re afraid people won’t like or love you; or if you isolate yourself from social settings because people are not going to accept you, THEN, you too need to keep reading.
Your inner critic is created by childhood experience and most times the motivation behind the inner critic is to protect you from the painful experiences in life that bring about uncomfortable emotions. The inner critic’s intention is to prevent you from the disappointment of finding out that someone may not like you, so it convinces you not to go out to begin with. It wants you to be safe from rejection, so it justifies why you should not ask them out on a date. It doesn’t want you to be let down by failures or mistakes so it stops you from even trying. Your inner critic has good intentions, but it is not serving you well by trying to protect you from the experiences and feelings in life that are inevitable, unavoidable, and absolutely necessary for growth and happiness. It’s the attempt to avoid these uncomfortable emotions that is the cause of this entire mess up to begin with. Uncomfortable emotions are part of life and avoiding them, suppressing them, or trying to think your way out of them is not going to bring you any long term comfort, or joy. But that is a conversation for another time. A conversation about how we all need to change the way we think about emotions. We’ll get back to that in a different post.
So how do we manage this inner critic now that we’re stuck with it and now that it has completely taken over the way we respond to the world? Let me share with you how I have and still manage my inner critic:
1. Become Aware!
Become aware of your inner critic, it’s intentions and the core beliefs that drive it
If you’re not aware of your inner critic then self-awareness is where you need to begin. At this stage you need to start watching and listening to yourself as though you’re outside of yourself, monitoring, eves-dropping and taking notes. Like spying on yourself, objectively. The best way to do this is to start noticing yourself in the moments when your emotions change. For some this can be multiple times a day. The moment you notice an emotional shift, you ask yourself 4 important questions. 1. What just happened to make my emotions change? 2. What did I tell myself about what just happened? 3. How did this all make me feel? 4. And what does this situation/thought/feeling make me want to do?
E.G. You have a family member that often asks you to do things for them and you can’t say no, even when sometimes you sacrifice yourself or your priorities to please them. One day they text you asking you to run an errand for them. and immediately you notice that you’ve had an emotional shift and you’re irritated and annoyed.
1. What just happened to make your emotions change?
– Your family member texted asking you if you can run an errand for them.
2. What did you tell yourself about what just happened?
– You probably told yourself that they just want to take advantage of you. They don’t understand that you also have a life and things to do. You probably also told yourself that you can’t say no because then they’re going to think you’re being rude and then you have to deal with their comments about how you’re too busy to help them out. And you don’t want to upset anyone in the family because they might just not like or love you anymore.
3. How did all of this make you feel?
– angry, irritated, annoyed, guilty, then angry again, then resentful
4. And what does this situation/thought/feeling make you want to do?
– It probably made you say yes and inconvenience yourself. Then b*tch and moan about it to your friend or partner and you may even have made a rude comment to this family member a few days later without anyone knowing why.
Its very important to become aware of you inner critic in scenarios like the example above. You’re likely to pick up a pattern. It is even more important to recognize it’s intentions through a non-judgemental, objective and compassionate lens. Don’t beat yourself up when you notice your critic has a pattern of people pleasing. It’s okay, you’re just there to observe and take notes. Your critic is already judgemental, let’s not make it worse with more judgement of it’s limitations in your life. When you start noticing patterns in the way you speak to yourself then you’re able to question what it is you believe to be true about yourself that drives the critic. E.G. In the scenario above. You may believe that if you say no or stand up for yourself then you will be judged and love will be taken away from you. You may believe that other peoples’ needs are more important than your own. The belief system here is subjective. When you learn what the core belief system is that drives the inner critic, you have the power to believe something different. Watch this space for “How to challenge a limiting belief system?”
2. Getting it to SHUT UP
Once you’ve practiced and become comfortable with being aware of your inner critic, you can begin to use a few techniques to shut it up and discover which of these techniques works best for you.
You will find many different techniques to challenge, disarm or unmask the inner critic. There are several experts in their field who are happy to share their findings. However, I will share with you 3 techniques that work well for me.
1. Shut it up immediately – Here you’re cutting it off in it’s tracks. As you notice your inner critic. The purpose of this technique is to stop the negative thought as you begin to recognise its presence. Do not engage, argue, analyse, or defend it. Just shut it up!
2. Acknowledge it for what it is – This technique is about being aware of what is happening and labeling it for what it is. When you’re experiencing your critic and it’s negative thought, you simply say to yourself: “I’m experiencing my critic speak to me in a negative way.” OR “It’s only a negative thought. It’s only a negative thought.” This technique will remove the power of the thought.
3. Question & Challenge – This one is my favourite. Ask yourself if what the critic is saying is true, false, or inconclusive. Ask yourself where the critic is getting it’s facts from? Are these thoughts truly what I think about myself?
Once you succeed at quieting, disarming, or unmasking your critic; you can’t just leave your mind to it’s own demise. That’s too risky. We already know what happens when we allow our minds to be on autopilot.
3. Replacing it with a HEALTHIER more NURTURING voice
We’re always thinking, interpreting, and creating stories about what is happening around us. It’s how we’re wired. So when we choose to silence the critical, judgmental, and negative inner voice; we cannot just leave the space empty. Our minds will automatically want to fill the space and create an interpretation. The only difference here is that at this stage you have laid a pretty good foundation to decide what you’re going to fill the space with. You get to choose how you want to speak to yourself.
Remember – your inner critic is responding to a situation, event, or occurrence of some sort. It’s interpreting the behaviours of someone else or it is interpreting your own behaviours.
At this stage you have the power to think different things about people. You can choose to think thoughts about people that have a way of benefiting you and your feelings. You can find out more in my previous post – “The Benefits of Practicing Empathy”. You also have the power to start thinking different thoughts about yourself. Thoughts that are nurturing to your self-esteem, sense of worth, and thoughts that express self-compassion. I usually ask myself how I would want to be spoken to if I was a little kid in the same situation. The answer is usually in a non-judgmental, caring, loving, and encouraging way.
This is the voice you need to start developing to replace the inner critic. A voice that is rational, honest, loving, compassionate and motivating.
4. Consistency / Repetition / Strengthening
It took you this many years to develop your strong and powerful inner critic. Do not think that developing a healthier more nurturing voice is going to take you 10 days. These tools and techniques are not here to brings quick and easy results. If that’s what you came here for then you read all of this for nothing. You may as well stop now. I’m also not saying that it’s going to take 27 years before you see real results.
The great thing about your current situation is that by the time you get to the stage of practicing your healthier inner voice, you would have self-awareness down like a pro. You can begin to see and feel changes immediately or in a few weeks. This!! is all up to you.
The key here is to remain consistent. I have been aware of my inner voice for over 10 years and I still practice these techniques everyday. The only difference is that my healthy voice has developed and is often on autopilot.
In the beginning, your healthy voice will be much smaller than your inner critic and the critic may win sometimes. The point of all of this is to no longer feed your critic. You need to starve it into silence. Nourish, grow, and feed the healthy voice until it gets to a stage where it is so much louder and more powerful than the teenie tiny inner critic and the healthy nurturing voice can be left alone for a days and checked on weekly.
Like any skill in life, practice makes perfect. Mo Salah was not born a great football player, Serena Williams doesn’t sit around waiting to kick ass automatically, They train everyday to be great. And you can too.
“Knowledge is NOT power. Knowledge is only POTENTIAL power. ACTION is power.” – Tony Robbins
Original article posted here.
