What we get wrong about the inner critic

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

Happy Sunday, Soothers. In honor of my upcoming workshop on Healing Your Inner Critic on February 27th (replay provided), I wanted to tell you a little bit about my inner critic journey and how I’ve come into right relationship with her.

I think we have a misguided approach to our inner critics. Most of the guidance on how to “rid” ourselves (I don’t even like that term) of an inner critic is centered on repressing, ignoring, invalidating, berating and shaming that voice inside of our heads that tells us nasty things about ourselves, stuff like how ugly or stupid we are, tells us not to bother trying, tells us that we’re an embarrassment, that has us replaying past exchanges in cringe loops, that tells us we must be perfect to deserve love but probably that even perfect isn’t good enough.

Since the inner critic can be so cruel and nasty and debilitating, it makes sense that many of the tactics used to try to repair it can center deeply on expelling it from our brains. If you had an infestation of pests in your house, you would work with an exterminator to get rid of them.

It’s a nice idea, and seems logical, but there’s only one problem I see with it:

It doesn’t actually work.

I know, because I tried. For years in addressing my inner critic I tried everything to rid myself…