Taming the Inner Critic

Hello Courageous Pals,

Thanks for joining me for the March edition of Courage Pie! We spent some time learning to tame our inner critic. Self-critique is a natural part of our inner landscape, but when those voices get too loud, they lose their usefulness. We want critique to be a friendly house-pet, not a scary lion.

There are a few ways into this: one popular way is to imagine that you’re having a conversation with your wisest friend, one who knows you very well and respects you a great deal, and asking what they would say to those noisy, shouty voices you can hear – the ones that tell you you’re not good enough, or you’ll never do it, or you’re too lazy (or whatever your voices say to you; we’ve heard enough from mine now!) Another is to imagine that you are the wise friend, and one of your friends has come to you for advice about these pieces of self-critique: what would you tell them? Or imagine that you’re the annoying smart-alec who needs to “Well, actually…” someone’s fact – but in this case, you’re going to “Well, actually…” your self-criticisms: what, actually, would you say to them? Here’s a picture of what I did:

Special thanks to my coaching colleague Doug who joined us last night and reminded me that pretending your inner critic is a cartoon character and giving it a name (Mrs. Bossy-Pants; The Purrfectionist; Uncle Underestimator) can be another helpful way to take the sting out of those critical voices. Just because your head is saying it doesn’t mean it’s true!

Science behind the Slice

The inner critic is a well-known psychological feature. For more tips on understanding why we have one and how to work with it effectively, take a look at this article from Psychology Today, learning to approach yourself with self-compassion from leading psychologists and mental health nurses, and if you want to go full-on academic, here’s an article on the inner critic in the journal Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapies.

Stay tuned for next month’s Courage Pie on the theme of hearing your inner wise self – the other side of the coin from your inner critic! We’ll be meeting on Tuesday 29 April at 7 PM.

Bit of admin – we’ve been kindly borrowing Casey’s Creative Researcher zoom room for the past few months (thanks Casey!) but I’ll be setting up my own cosy little Courage Pie Zoom kitchen before our next session. If you’re already signed up for Courage Pie using Casey’s Zoom I’ll transfer you over, but I’ll also send out a link in advance just in case. Thanks for your patience with all the registration moving about over the past few months! See you next month for another slice of courage pie.

Very best,

Caitlin