Imagine that there was a mean, judgmental person who followed you around all the time in order to put you down and point out your supposed mistakes and flaws. Throughout your day, you’d get an earful of commentary about how you don’t measure up. To make matters worse, let’s assume that you believed everything that was said about you. How do you think this would make you feel and affect the way that you see yourself?
This situation is far-fetched, but I want you to consider that it may not be that different from what is actually happening inside your own head. Your inner critic, while not a separate person, may be treating you just like the judgemental bully in my scenario and you probably believe what it says. If so, it is having a significant negative impact on your life.
Nearly all of us have a judgmental part of our mind which we’ll call the inner critic. It originates in childhood as an inner authority figure, a critical voice in our heads, that tries to protect us and help meet our needs by controlling what we do. The inner critic make us feel shame and guilt if we don’t meet its expectations. Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, referred to this regulating mental force as the “superego.” It’s normal and necessary to develop this inner regulation, although it usually comes to play a harmful role in our lives.
As children, we automatically adapt ourselves to our caretakers, in order to try to get our emotional and physical needs met. Based upon our interactions, we form beliefs about how we should and shouldn’t 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. For example, if a parent rejects us if get angry, we’ll come to believe that our anger is bad because we need our parent’s love. Interactions that make us feel ashamed, bad, or wrong become part of our inner critic’s perspective.
So in response to how we are treated, which reflects the psychological state of our parents, we develop particular expectations for how we have to be. We take on a variety of limiting beliefs, e,g, it’s bad to be emotional, we shouldn’t need anything, we have to make other people happy, we should always feel positively about our parents, abuse is normal or deserved, etc. In addition to the many direct and indirect messages that we receive from our family, we also incorporate ideas about how we should be from churches, teachers, peers, and society as a whole.
The inner critic becomes the internal mechanism for enforcing these expectations. Its harsh judgements keep us in line, and we get punished with shame if we don’t live up to its demands. If we grow up with controlling or critical parents, our inner critic becomes especially powerful. If we experience abuse or neglect, our critic blames us because that’s how it believes it can protect us.
By the time we reach adulthood, the inner critic is entrenched in our personality and we are accustomed to listening to its judgements. We rely on it to make decisions and work to meet its expectations. If we undertake therapy or some other inner work, the critic tries to direct the process, but actually acts as a significant barrier to our progress. It tells us what we should think and feel, and therefore it interferes with the exploration of ourselves in an open way.
The critic’s beliefs about how we are supposed to be limit our personal growth and keep us stuck in familiar patterns. For example, if it thinks we need to be small and deferential, it will shame us if we start to step out of that role. 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 if we try to be more authentic.
We can’t reach our potential unless we liberate ourselves from the inner critic’s control. The first step is recognizing that it is a harmful force that is interfering with our life. 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 that is attacking us and preventing us from being ourselves.
Awareness of the critic can be developed by paying careful attention to our inner dialogue. If we try to observe our thoughts objectively, we can see how often the critic makes us feel inadequate, wrong, and filled with doubt. It’s always telling us that people don’t like us, that we are going to fail at things, and that there is some other way that we have to be, in order to be good enough. The critic tries to make us “better” by making us feel bad about who we are, because it thinks that is helpful to us.
However, it doesn’t really know what we need; it can’t be a source of truth, or a helpful guide for our life, because its simplistic, judgmental perspective is rooted in self-blame and distorted childhood beliefs. In fact, when we listen to the critic, it keeps us unconsciously believing that we are powerless children, afraid of displeasing our parents. We don’t recognize that we are powerful adults, capable of facing our challenges and making our own decisions, without being shamed or beaten up.
When we see this situation clearly, we can stop identifying with the inner critic and taking it be the voice of our true selves. Instead of allowing it to undermine us with its judgements, we can find the determination to fight back against the critic and stop giving it power. If we develop a vigilant awareness of the critic and a fierce commitment to protecting ourselves from its attacks, we can reclaim our lives and the freedom to be ourselves.
