How to Silence Your Inner Critic
Our collective conscience is saturated with this question (and its multiple variations): How do you overcome, get rid of, lose, manage, conquer, tame, control, quiet, or banish your inner critic? A simple google search reveals the inner critic is the monster with a thousand faces that must be banished. It's the demon that must be exorcised, the villain that must be conquered, the monkey mind that must be tamed, the vicious superego that won't stop. "You can be your own worst enemy," refers to this aspect of our Being.
The avatars appear infinite but the theme remains the same: the inner critic stands in the way between you and your inner peace, joy, and ability to live in the moment. You want to show up with love and compassion for yourself and others but your inner critic (which has been known on occasion to unleash its wrath outwardly) won't let you.
Perhaps there is no other part of us more universally maligned, abused, rejected, excommunicated as our inner critic. And for good reason. This is the part of you that says you're not enough, you don't matter, you'll never be loved, you don't belong, you don't measure up, you don't deserve your success, you're bad, you can't handle this, you're weak, you're an imposter and you will be figured out. Sound familiar?
The best way to overcome your inner critic is to start listening.
The external laws of physics apply to the internal world: for every action there is an equal in size and opposite in direction reaction force. The more you fight to overcome, the stronger, louder, and more intense the internal jabs become. Your inner critic carries a message and it needs to be heard. When doing this work with clients, I often share the scene from the Wizard of Oz when the curtains are pulled back and there is a little old man orchestrating the whole nine yeards. In your inner world, it’s usually a lonely, lost, exhausted child doing its best to keep you going. At one point in time, chances are your survival depended on it.
4 Steps to Overcome Your Inner Critic
1. Love the questions themselves.
As poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes, "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves." Love the questions themselves because they most often arise from something inside you that yearns to be loved. Take a moment to sit with the question, "How can I overcome, silence, get rid of (choose your flavor or insert your favorite variation here) my inner critic?" This question is emanating from a deep woundedness in your Being.
Who inside wants to get rid of your inner critic? Who has been hurt by the war raging inside? Who has been the target of the attacks? Who has been caught in the crossfires? Who is most scared of the inner critic? Who has been on the receiving end of the criticism? What happens to this vulnerable one inside when the inner critic is activated? These are important questions to love. They are leading questions of the best kind—leading you back inside to the inner child parts of you that long to be rescued, held, and cherished. Perhaps they picked up messages early on that you are bad, shameful, not enough, unloveable, undeserving, an outsider. These young vulnerable parts are not the ones that have to face with the inner critic. There's a greater you here that transcends these messages, that has the clarity to see the bigger picture and hold space for both the one doing the shaming and the one carrying the scars of shame. This greater you has access to other messages from beyond—ones that align much closer to the truth of your Being.
2. Create a home inside your Self.
Rumi writes, "This being human is a guest house." I would say this being human is a home. Perhaps the greatest task of becoming human, or owning our humanity, is coming home to ourselves. The guests belong here. They are you. They are us. The inner critic is a part of you. It's a wave within the vast ocean of You. The ocean cannot fear the wave. And yes, sometimes it can feel like a tsunami but there is an expansiveness within you that cannot fear it. The ocean can look at the tsunami and say, "Hey, that's me. I can be big and powerful. I can harness that energy. I can play, express, Be." The question here becomes can you open your mind and your heart enough to dip your toe in the ocean of your vastness? What would it be like if you could look at your inner critic not through the lens of your wounded inner child but through the inner eye of the expansive you, your core Self as we say in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy?
3. Invite the inner critic in.
See if you can be curious about this stranger—this inner critic. Can you open your home and heart? Gather around the fireplace of your soul. Sit at the round table of your heart. Give cookies. Give tea or coffee. Welcome in the stranger who was forgotten outside in the cold.
Share your curiosity. Allow the light from your open heart to shine through to this guest before you. Invite this one to share with you what has it been doing all along? What has it been hoping to achieve for you? How did it come to do what it does? What is its origin story? What would have happened to you if it didn't play this role? How does it feel doing its job? If it could be freed up to return home to the ocean of You, what would it prefer to do? How would it like to harness its energy, play, express, or be?
From my experience the inner critic is a type of inner hero that has been forced to take on the role of the "monster." It's both the hero and monster with a thousand faces. It is often tasked with taking on great feats. It may be trying to keep you in line so you can "fit in" and receive the sense of belonging and love never given to you. It may be trying to make you small and invisible to keep you safe and secure because when being seen was dangerous there was no other place to hide but inside. It may be trying to help you measure up, "should-ing" all over you, so that you can become the ideal you, a person of worth who matters. There are endless possibilities here. There is no one answer. It's about loving the questions and seeing what's there for you when the curtain gets pulled back. Who is the inner critic without its armor? What hero lies behind the monster? This is your story and it can be one of redemption, transformation, and transcendence.
4. Be grateful for it is a guide from beyond.
When the curtain gets pulled back, it's easy to feel a sense of appreciation and gratitude for the inner critic who has been driven by a positive intention. Perhaps it's been wanting you to belong, be safe and secure in the world, and feel worthy and loved. Are there any nobler intentions? The truth is that it has played an important role to get you to where you are today. You have the choice to honor it and thank it for its devotion and commitment to service despite how exhausted, depleted, and desperate it was for change. You can help it to heal and be free from the past using various protocols and resources, including psychospiritual healing modalities like IFS Therapy.
As an adult, healing is not only about having the choice to be free from the past but also seeing more clearly with precision. The mists part, the veil lifts, the curse is broken and we become awake—seeing the hero within the monster (or inner critic) and witnessing the primal wounds it has been protecting. We are able to hold the paradoxes that make life imbued with contradictions, possibilities, and untapped potential. The wounds of the past become vehicles for transcendence. Wounds are initiations that demand of you to embark on a hero's journey, returning home to yourself with elixirs of wisdom, resilience, and mystical, mythical, and magical ways of living. You don't have to just recover from the past. You can create your future by harnessing the energy within your ocean of vastness. This is a sacred space where synchronicities arise seemingly out of nowhere and flow becomes effortless. You can realize your dreams and manifest realities into being.
Far too often our traumas are being medicalized, clinicalized, and weaponized against us as a means to disempower or force us to find solace and even virtue in victimhood. The opposite is true: if you have the courage to voluntarily face your traumas, or wounds, they become sources of empowerment for within them lie hidden treasures from beyond. We must own our wounds and reclaim their power as both the hero and monsters we are, as both the victims and perpetrators, as both the dragon and the princess, as both the wave and ocean, and, ultimately, as the divine beings we are having a human experience. I leave you with this wish from Danielle LaPorte, May you seek to know the vastness of your light. Because it is vast.