Turn Your Inner Critic Into an Ally
“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked.
Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”~ Louise Hay
An inner critic seems to be a function of being human; everyone I know has one. And every recovering perfectionist I know seems to have a particularly challenging relationship with theirs.
But what if this voice, though harsh, is actually trying to help us? The key is learning to manage this voice and transform it from a bully into a wise guide on our journey.
Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash
Understanding Your Inner Critic's Role
I believe our inner critic is there for a reason and a season. When we are out of sync with our cycles and doing our best to ignore our inner critic, it turns up the volume until we start to pay attention.
For a while, I've been noticing my inner critic most active in the Autumn - the Complete - phase of my cycles.
The Autumn phase of any cycle is an invitation to wrap up and complete after the busy creative and productive focus of Summer. Your attention starts to move inwards. You can use this time to bring things to an end, even if it’s for the briefest of pauses. It’s a time of harvesting all the fruits of your labour and letting go of what no longer serves you to be composted for a new cycle.
This shift is challenging for many of us who have so much of our identity defined by what we do or who we are in relation to other people. It’s particularly challenging for perfectionists because we come face to face with the gaps between our aspirations for the cycle and reality. Our mistakes, our imperfections, the things we neglected to finish or even get started on all come into focus.
Often in the form of an inner critic.
This internal voice is usually harsh, brutalising and belittling. It can be painful to hear this voice speak to us in a way we would never dream of speaking to others - and yet, this internal criticism can often leak out attacking those around us without us even realising.
I believe one reason our critics are so aggressive is that we are so resistant to hearing what they have to say. We resist the end of the cycle, preferring to stay in Summer or jump straight back into Spring. We certainly don’t want to admit that we’ve fallen short of our own impossible standards.
And yet our critic has an important role to play in the Autumn of any cycle. It’s there to help us learn. To look critically at the intentions and plans we had in the Spring and our resulting actions. What worked? What didn’t? What can we be proud of? What could we do differently next time?
Its job is to discern and to help us let go of what's no longer necessary. It's there to help us say no and keep true to our values and our purpose. One of my clients calls her critic The Keeper of My Values. Imagine your inner critic like a mountain guide who points out dangers on the path. Their warnings might be stern, but they ultimately want to help you reach your goals. It's an ally.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then perhaps our inner critic is here to keep us sane.
When we start to listen to what our inner critics have to say, we start to learn from their wisdom. Even if it's painful.
Manage Your Critic by Setting Boundaries
Like any relationship, it's important to have healthy boundaries with your critic.
But not many of us do.
We let our critics run roughshod through the entire cycle, outside of its natural home in Autumn. And it can cause chaos. An inner critic let loose in Spring will kill ideas like a frost killing new shoots. In Summer, our critic will never let us fully express because it's trying to do its job of editing. And in Winter, well we all know what it's like to be questioning whether we're even resting correctly, right?
So the first thing is to gently, yet firmly tell your critic to f**k off every time it shows up somewhere it doesn't belong.
But that means you have to reciprocate by listening to it well in the Autumn.
An Inner Critic Exercise
Here's a guided meditation that you can download to get to know your inner critic in a different light. Below, you'll find some questions to journal on afterwards (or separately if guided meditations aren't your thing).
Where does your critic live in your body? Where and how do you sense it?
What is it trying to protect you from?
When did it come into your inner world?
What purpose does it serve?
Does it mirror someone else’s voice?
What would it like you to know?
Is there anything that it needs?
How could you work together in a healthier way?
Could it protect you differently?
Does it have a different name that it would like to be known by?
As you start to get to know your inner critic, you'll be more attuned to when it's showing up when it shouldn't be and how to listen to it at the right time. Engaging your inner critic on a regular basis isn't always easy but as you make more time and space for it, you might notice that it doesn't have speak quite so harshly to get your attention.
Nurturing Your Inner Champion
You don't have take everything your inner critic says at face value. It seems to me that inner critics only learnt to speak at full volume.
Your critic is welcome to give you feedback on what you did (or didn't do) and how you did it. It does not get to extrapolate and make that one mistake you made with a client mean that you're a terrible person and should immediately give up. It doesn't get to comment on who you are.
Something that can be helpful here is to strengthen the voice of your inner champion. If your inner critic is the first to point out the flaws, think of your inner champion as the first in line to be your cheerleader and point out all the fantastic things you did. This can feel quite alien at first - we're rarely encouraged to celebrate ourselves and, in fact, we're often told not to be too big for our boots if we take pride in what we do well.
You might like to start a Boasting Book: it's simply a notebook where you write down anything and everything nice that people say about you. You could have a daily practice of writing down one thing each day that you like about yourself or you're proud of doing - if you like a challenge, see if you can get to 50 things.
You can also practice a Big Buff-Up. With someone you trust to listen well, set a timer for 15 minutes and tell them all the things you want to acknowledge and appreciate about yourself. Take your time - you don't have to fill the time with words. Fifteen minutes is a long time and it can be deeply revealing. When you've finished, have your partner simply say "thank you for sharing" and swap over before sharing what came up for you.
By learning to connect with and set boundaries with your inner critic, you can transform it from a harsh bully into a wise guide on your journey. Ready to turn your critic into an ally and finally take action on your dreams? Learn how you can work with me.
In the comments below, share your biggest struggle with your inner critic or what you gained from these practices.
Acknowledgments: The idea of the Big Buff-Up and much of what I've learnt about the inner critic's home in Autumn comes from the teachings of Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo-Wurlitzer - the founders of Red School and the authors of Wild Power and Wise Power.