Imagine that a mean, judgmental person followed you around all the time, criticizing you. As you went about your life, they were there putting you down and accusing you of doing things wrong. To make matters worse, let’s assume that you believed everything that they said to you. How do you think that this would affect the way you feel about yourself, and how you live your life?
This scenario is obviously far-fetched; it’s hard to imagine how it could come about, or why you would allow it to happen. However, I want you to consider that it may not be that different from your actual experience because of the critic that exists inside your own head. An inner critic is harder to recognize, but it is just as harmful as an outer one, and it’s not far-fetched to say that it goes with you everywhere and you generally believe whatever it says.
Although its form varies, nearly all of us have an inner critic, a judgmental part of our mind which tells us that we are bad and wrong. Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, referred to this as the “superego.” It’s a mental structure that develops in early childhood as we internalize interactions with our parents and other inputs from our environment. The superego becomes our inner authority figure, which seeks to control our thoughts, feelings, and actions through shame and guilt.
The creation of this regulating inner force is a normal part of our development because children need to learn social norms, adopt beliefs about what is right and wrong, and develop control over their behavior. At the same time, it limits our freedom to be ourselves, establishes patterns of self-rejection, and imposes beliefs that will become harmful to us later in life.
As young children, we are completely dependent and vulnerable, so we automatically adapt ourselves to the world around us in order to try to get our emotional and physical needs met. Based upon our interactions with caretakers – usually our parents – we form beliefs about how we should be. Generally, we learn to view parts of ourselves that receive a negative response as bad, and those that receive a positive response as good. Therefore, we develop an inner regulation that rejects aspects of ourselves. For example, if a parent is critical, punishing, or distancing in response to our emotions, we’ll come to believe that our feelings are bad. This is automatic because we need to avoid our parent’s rejection.
Depending on how we are treated, which is related to the psychological/emotional state of our parents, we develop particular expectations for how we have to be. These might include beliefs like: we shouldn’t cry, we shouldn’t be angry, we shouldn’t need anything, we have to make other people happy, and we should always feel positively about our parents. In addition to the many direct and indirect messages we receive from our family, we also incorporate ideas about how we should be from churches, teachers, peers, and society as a whole.
The superego, or what I’m calling the inner critic, is the internal mechanism for enforcing our conformity to the beliefs we adopt. It talks to us in a harsh and judgmental way in order to keep us in line, punishing us with shame and guilt if we don’t live up to its expectations. If we experience abuse or neglect as children this will usually make our inner critic more powerful and cruel because it will absorb the mistreatment we receive and reflect the self-blame that children naturally engage in. Self-control, through a strong inner critic, is also essential for surviving a dangerous environment, and navigating harmful adults.
Although it is created in childhood, the inner critic continues playing a major role in the lives of most adults. If we undertake therapy or some other inner work, the critic usually acts as a significant barrier to our progress. It tells us what we should think and feel, which interferes with the exploration of ourselves in an open way. It has ideas about how we are supposed to be, which limit our personal growth. For example, if it thinks we need to be small and deferential, it will act to prevent us from becoming big and powerful by shaming us if we try. If it thinks we are supposed to maintain an appearance of strength, it will try to stop us from showing vulnerability, calling us weak or pathetic.
Reaching our potential requires liberating ourselves from the critic’s control. We need to recognize that it is a harmful force and to stop identifying with it, taking it to be who we are. Usually, we are not conscious of the critic; its comments just seem like our own thoughts, which we assume to be true and helpful. We need to see that the critic is a distinct part of our mind which is making hostile attacks on us and lying to us. We can develop this awareness by paying careful attention to our inner dialogue, perhaps keeping a log of self-judgements for a certain period of time.
If we observe the critic objectively, we’ll see that it invalidates us, puts us down, holds us to impossible standards, and predicts our failure. It claims that other people are judging us and rejecting us, projecting its own view on to others. All of this, of course, affects the way that we feel – it deflates our mood and keep us feeling like ashamed children who can never get things right.
Accurately seeing the critic and how it affects us exposes the fact that is not a source of truth, or a valid guide for our life. The critic obviously can’t know what we really need because its simplistic, judgmental perspective is rooted in childhood self-blame and a mishmash of immature beliefs. We are actually sophisticated and powerful adults, capable of functioning without being shamed or put down. We can handle the challenges that come our way; we don’t need the critic to make us terrified of making a mistake or displeasing others. Furthermore, we wouldn’t treat other people the way our critic treats us, so why would we accept this treatment for ourselves?
The problem is that our critic continues to believe that it’s essential for our decision making and self-protection, and we are accustomed to listening to it. It has the advantage of being familiar to us, entrenched within our personality, and capable of wielding shame to keep us under its control. The most essential factor in freeing ourselves from it, is our determination to stand up for ourselves. We need the will to fight back and stop giving it power.
We have to become vigilant and unrelenting in stopping the critic’s attacks on us. We need to feel a fiery commitment to ourselves, reclaiming our power and energy from the critic, and refusing to be undermined, diminished, put down, and unfairly judged. We don’t always recognize when the critic is attacking us, so we have be on the lookout for it, considering shame and self-doubt to be indicators that it is affecting us. If we can be steadfast in our effort to free ourselves from the critic within, it can positively transform our relationship to ourselves and others, and change our lives in ways we can’t imagine.
