Reparenting Your Inner Critic
For many of us who are high achievers, perfectionists, procrastinators, or really anyone who’s heard the familiar voice that sounds something along the lines of “why can’t you just get it together?” you’ve been well acquainted with your inner critic.
We all have an inner critic to some capacity. Contrary to how it may feel, our critic isn’t out to “get us” (although the result of it can leave us feeling down and unmotivated), and it doesn’t have an intention to make us feel stuck, although ironically this is what usually ends up happening.
To create some space and understand how to change our inner critic’s voice, let’s dive a little deeper into where our inner critic comes from, and how to understand and work with it so it doesn’t run the show.
Here are 5 steps to understand and soothe your inner critic:
1. Be curious
Usually we feel a certain type of way about our inner critic. Hearing it tell us things like “you’re not good enough” or “try harder and be better” feels pretty bad, so it makes sense why we may not have positive feelings towards it. However, taking a stance of curiosity rather than judgement towards it can help to better understand why it’s there in the first place.
Many times our inner critic(s) form due to how we attached to our caregivers growing up. If we felt a consistent sense of compassion and understanding in regards to our mistakes, and if they were dealt with in a way that didn’t make us feel small, we most likely developed a strong sense of self. If we grew up with highly strict, critical, and/or controlling caregivers it is likely we struggle with self esteem, self trust, and a strong inner critic.
So, how do we build understanding and compassion for our inner critic? After all, it doesn’t seem to be showing us much of that.
If we explore the reasoning as to how our inner critic showed up in the first place, we can usually trace it back to phrases that came from someone else. This could’ve been a parent, older sibling, coach, teacher, etc. It’s important to note that tracing the inner critic’s voice back isn’t for the purpose of blaming this person, but rather lessening the threat of the message it carries. If we can see how our inner critic’s voice sounds strangely similar to our 8th grade soccer coach’s or our parent’s responses to our mistakes, it makes the message less all consuming, and feel far less “true”.
Questions to ask your inner critic to practice curiosity:
“Why does it feel important to tell me what I’m not doing a good enough job at?”
“Whose voice do you sound like from growing up?”
2. Understand what it fears
Our inner critic has the intention to protect us. Usually this looks like the critic believing that if it’s hard enough on us, it’ll get us do what it believes we need to.
Our critic is scared. Scared of us failing, not becoming something it believes we should, being ridiculed by others, it meaning something about us if we can’t get it right, etc.
Once we can hone in on what our critic is so afraid of, we can begin to soothe it’s fears by letting it know we can approach things differently and still get our needs met.
Sometimes our critics don’t trust this is possible, but don’t worry. In the next point we’ll talk about how to help our critic get on board.
Question to ask your inner critic to understand its fears:
“What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t do your job?”
3. Build trust to change its job
As I mentioned, our critic may feel pretty skeptical about not doing its job anymore. Remember, it’s most likely been doing this for a while so not having a backup plan even if you can agree the result of its current role isn’t helpful, feels scary.
Instead of getting “rid of” or fighting your inner critic to go away, we can ask it how it feels about its current job. Many times our critic feels pretty exhausted from all the work its doing to try and keep us on track and avoid mistakes. Once we listen to how hard it works, we can ask if it’d be willing to consider a new role that is far less taxing.
What if instead of responding with a pass/fail mentality and shame, it helped you notice where you could do better and helped you learn from mistakes?
This might feel like uncharted territory for your critic and awkward at first, but as it considers this new job remind it that it might actually get the results it was hoping for all along.
Question to ask your inner critic to create a willingness to shift its role:
“It sounds exhausting working so hard to help me do things perfectly, how would it feel to still help me, but in a way that might actually get the results we’re hoping for in the long run?”
4. Remind it you can handle it if you’re not perfect
Many times our critic forms because we felt like we had to “never get it wrong”. Mistakes were not handled in a way that promoted self reflection and growth.
Our critic may believe that being perfect is the safest route to take in order to avoid shame. So we can understand how shifting its role to allowing mistakes in as learning opportunities would feel pretty threatening.
Our critic needs reminders that we are safe and okay, even if mistakes happen. Getting it wrong does not mean anything about who we are as a person, it only means we have an opportunity to do something differently.
Be gentle as you offer these new ways of thinking to your critic, after all they’ve been trying to look out for you all along.
Reminder for your inner critic to soothe its fears about imperfection:
“I know you’re scared if you don’t do your job that shame will overwhelm us and it’ll all be too much. I am here for you and with you, we can handle this together and you don’t have to do it alone.”
5. Show gratitude
Let your critic know you appreciate it for all the work its done to keep you safe and for allowing you in to understand and shift its role. Let it know that you’ll come back to it and its ok if it gets activated again, you’ll be there to listen and soothe it if it does.
Interested in inner critic work and/or Internal Family Systems Therapy? Click the button below to book your free consult call with me to see if we’d be a good fit!
