Inner Critic: How To Call Out Your Inner Critic And Take Control

No one likes receiving criticism, yet we often allow our inner critic to gob off in our heads like it owns the place. Therefore, I thought I’d put together this article so we can all put our critical inner voice in its place and improve our quality of life.

 

 

What Is An Inner Critic

 

The self-critical voice that most, if not all of us have, isn’t some form of auditory hallucination (Firestone, Firestone, Catlett, and Love, 2002) but rather our inner voice, except in some rare cases. For the latter, that’d be known as hearing voices, and that’s very different from an inner critic. I knew someone at Mind who trained me and who hears voices, and from what they told me about living with that condition, it’s a very different experience.

 

This form of self-criticism isn’t just a minor annoyance. If left to its own devices, it can become a significant contributor to a wide range of mental health issues. For example, people can develop other issues like an anxiety disorder, body image concerns, an eating disorder, impostor syndrome, and suicidal ideation. People diagnosed with depression frequently experience self-criticism, namely in the form of an inner critic, leading to considerable psychological distress (Kroener, Mahler, and Sosic-Vasic, 2024). 

 

This is because living with a harsh inner critic erodes self-esteem, increases feelings of worthlessness, and creates a negative mindset that can trap us in a negative feedback loop. Thus, addressing this critical inner voice issue is important for our mental wellbeing and our quality of life.

 

The main problem with our harsh, critical inner voice is that it can become a consistent stream of self-destructive and anti-self thoughts, which causes us to stop acting in our best interests (Firestone, Firestone, Catlett, and Love, 2002).

 

Our inner critic can also interfere with our ability to benefit from therapy because of the sense of hopelessness it can bring and because it can make it harder to self-reflect, becoming a barrier to change.

 

Unfortunately, we may never be fully rid of our inner critic (Romriell, 2019) because it can be adventitious at times, such as when it can lead to growth. However, we also don’t have to let our critical inner voice dictate our lives.

 

Thus, trying to completely get rid of our critical inner voice, as much as we may like to be able to, isn’t a solution and would be setting us up to fail (Helge, 2012). All we need is the ability and freedom to distinguish the pathological inner critic from our abilities to engage in critical thinking. Or, more simply put, learning to filter out the harmful inner dialogue so we can focus on the helpful dialogue.

 

 

The Two Roles Of The Inner Critic

 

It can also be useful to think of our critical inner voice as coming in two roles: one of the internalised abuser and one as the protector critic (Kroener, Mahler, and Sosic-Vasic, 2024). The internalised abuser often evolves from our experience with abuse, neglect, and harsh criticism. This means our inner critic replicates those experiences, leading to us feeling guilt, shame, and worthlessness.

 

Another way this version of our inner critic can develop can be as a result of absorbing the expectations of our loved ones and society, mimicking the judgments we’d get from those sources (Pearson and Wilson, 2024). This is why the term “Man up” can be so harmful and why I wrote an article on the harms of other people’s expectations.

 

Whereas, the protector critic develops as a coping mechanism which is meant to protect us from further harm (Kroener, Mahler, and Sosic-Vasic, 2024). This version of our inner critic is meant to help us avoid failing and being rejected, based on the belief that this will avoid further abuse. But instead, it causes us harm in other ways, such as holding us back and isolating us. We can’t be afraid to make mistakes, because to “err is human”. Being able to make mistakes without beating ourselves up is freedom.

 

 

Naming Your Inner Critic

 

Because our critical inner voice can manifest as a demanding internalised voice, it’ll use uncompromising language of “musts” and “shoulds” (just like how “should” statements are a cognitive bias) and make us feel guilty and shame as a way to affect our behaviours (Gershman, 2020). So much so that it’s like it’s another person working against you. Therefore, why not treat it as such?

 

Separating ourselves from our critical inner voice can be an effective strategy to get the critic outside of your head. According to Dempsey (2018), this can be done by writing down what your critical inner voice says or by drawing an image of your inner critic. But you can also do this by naming your inner critic.

 

Finding a focus for our self-criticism by naming it can help make sense of it, especially for children (Pearson and Wilson, 2024), such as understanding why we didn’t get the support we needed in our earlier lives.

 

The process of giving our inner voice its own kind of identity is called personification (Gershman, 2020). Thus, we’re taking the abstract concept of our inner critic and giving it a form of life so it can help unlock conscious details, such as who it might resemble in our lives. Alternatively, it can also be a reflection of an unresolved event.

 

 

If we want, we can give our inner critic a full identity, even a backstory (Garratt, 2023), but we don’t have to go that far as a way to create a separation between ourselves and our critical inner voice. After all, our inner critic is still part of us. But for some people, taking those extra steps can help create that separation.

 

This can help us look at the part of us that is bullying us (Dempsey, 2018), stealing our power, and robbing us of the quality of life we could be living.

 

According to Scott (2023), there was a Saturday Night Live character known as Debbie Downer who would find the negative in any situation. This makes for a great comparison of how naming your inner critic can be helpful, especially if that name is goofy because it helps us to realise we don’t agree with that character, our inner critic. It can also make that inner critic seem more ridiculous and, thus, less threatening.

 

In many ways, giving your inner voice a name, and even a face and a back story, is a lot like using the empty chair technique or talking to your inner demon. As these methods give us a chance to “talk” to those issues (Pugh, 2018).

 

Thus, if you want to better manage your inner critic, you have to acknowledge the pain it’s causing you, understand that self-criticism is a common human experience, treat yourself with kindness, and challenge negative self-talk (Kroener, Mahler, and Sosic-Vasic, 2024). It can also be beneficial to accept that our inner critic is a part of us and that, when correctly managed, it can function as a useful tool.

 

 

Summary

 

Giving our inner critic a name can help create distance, helping us understand that the voice may be part of us, but it isn’t inherently us. It isn’t giving us objective truth (Garratt, 2023) but rather a reflection of opinions and expectations that we’ve taken in and incorporated into ourselves.

 

I can’t stress the fact that it’s not objective truth enough, because our inner voice can be so utterly convincing that it is (Helge, 2012) when it isn’t. In that sense, it’s a lot like the cognitive bias of confusing feelings for facts, but instead, we’re confusing our critical inner voice with facts.

 

It also helps us increase our awareness of when our critical inner voice pops up its ugly head, helping us to challenge those thoughts. It reduces the power our critical inner voice has over us, helping us to feel less overwhelmed by it. Self-compassion also becomes easier to engage in, and it can help motivate us to replace our self-critical thoughts with ones that are more positive.

 

Remember, everyone has an inner critic, except, I guess, the people who don’t have an inner voice at all. So you’re not alone with the self-doubt such an inner voice can cause.

 

It’s important to note that the goal isn’t to eliminate our inner critic entirely. It often has good intentions, like protecting you from failure by helping you identify potential issues or pushing you to improve. The key is to recognise when it’s helpful and when it’s being overly harsh or critical and to manage it accordingly. Because our inner voice only has power if we let it have power over us (Helge, 2012).

 

As always, leave your feedback in the comments section below. Also, please share your experiences with your inner critic in the comments section below. Don’t forget, if you want to stay up-to-date with my blog, you can sign up for my newsletter below. Alternatively, click the red bell icon in the bottom right corner to get push notifications for new articles.

 

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References

 

Dempsey, K. (2018, July). How to diminish the power of your inner critic. The Awareness Centre. Retrieved from https://theawarenesscentre.com/how-to-diminish-the-power-of-your-inner-critic.

Firestone, R. W., Firestone, L., Catlett, J., & Love, P. (2002). Conquer your critical inner voice. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger. Retrieved from https://www.psychalive.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Conquer-2016-Online-Version.pdf.

Garratt, S. (2023, October). Take control of your Inner Critic. The Creative Life. Retrieved from https://thecreativelife.net/control-your-inner-critic.

Gershman, N. (2020). I Am the Very Worst Person on Earth and Other Myths: Understanding and Reconciling With the Inner Critic. Pacifica Graduate Institute. Retrieved from https://delos-inc.com/articles-b/THESIS%20N.%20Gershman%203_5.pdf.

Helge, D. (2012). Conquer Your Inner Critic. Coaching By Doris. Retrieved from https://coachingbydoris.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Inner-Critic-EBook-9-21-11.pdf.

Kroener, J., Mahler, J., & Sosic-Vasic, Z. (2024). Working with the inner critic in patients with depression using chairwork: a pilot study. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15, 1397925. Retrieved https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1397925/full and https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1397925.

Pearson, M., & Wilson, H. (2024). Guiding clients towards self-kindness and acceptance: Wrestling with the inner critic. Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of Australia, 12(2). Retrieved from https://pacja.org.au/article/123356-guiding-clients-towards-self-kindness-and-acceptance-wrestling-with-the-inner-critic.

Pugh, M. (2018). Cognitive behavioural chairwork. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 11, 100-116. Retrieved from https://chairwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Pugh-2018-Cognitive-behavioural-chairwork-IJCT.pdf.

Romriell, A. (2019). Of Writing, Teaching, and Tutoring: Banishing the Presence of the Inner Critic in the Writing Center. Writing Center Analysis Papers, Paper 25. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/wc_analysis/25.

Scott, E. (2023, November). The toxic effects of negative Self-Talk. Verywell Mind. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/negative-self-talk-and-how-it-affects-us-4161304.