Imagine that some mean, judgmental person followed you around all the time, putting you down and accusing you of screwing up. From the time you woke up in the morning, until you went to sleep at night, they would be there pointing out your supposed mistakes and flaws. To make matters worse, let’s assume that you believed everything that they said about you. How do you think this would affect the way that you see yourself, and how you live your life?
This situation is obviously far-fetched, but I want you to consider that it may not be that different from what is actually happening in your own head. Like the judgmental person in my scenario, your inner critic may be a significant part of your daily experience, and you probably believe whatever it says.
Nearly all of us have an inner critic, a judgmental part of our mind which tells us that we are bad and wrong. It originates in childhood as we learn to control our behavior and adapt ourselves to our environment. Through interactions with our parents and other experiences, we automatically construct this inner authority figure which tells us what to do. The inner critic tries to control our thoughts, feelings, and actions by making us feel shame and guilt if we don’t do what it wants. Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, referred to this regulating mental force as the “superego.” It’s necessary to develop this inner regulation, although it unfortunately tends to manifest as criticalness and self-rejection.
Even when parents are generally loving and well-meaning, children’s vulnerability and dependency tends to lead them to develop patterns of self-rejection. As children, we have no choice but to adapt ourselves to our caretakers, in order to try to get our emotional and physical needs met. Based upon our interactions with these people – usually our parents – 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 doesn’t like our emotions, we’ll come to believe that our feelings are bad. This is automatic because we need to seek our parent’s love.
So in response to how we are treated, which reflects the psychological and emotional 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, 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 superego, or what I’m calling the inner critic, is the internal mechanism for enforcing these expectations. Its harsh judgements keep us in line, and we get punished with shaming thoughts about us 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 usually entrenched in our personality. We continue listening to its judgements about us, relying on it to make decisions, and working to meet its expectations.
As adults, if we undertake therapy or some other inner work, the critic usually acts as a significant barrier to our progress. Because it tells us what we should think and feel, it interferes with the exploration of ourselves in an open way. Its 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 which is making hostile attacks on 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 self-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 sophisticated 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 fierce commitment to protecting ourselves, and become vigilant about stopping these mental attacks on us, we can reclaim our lives and the freedom to be ourselves.
