How to Silence Your Inner Critic

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.

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Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

Why Therapy Doesn't Work and What to Do to Heal Your Trauma

Why therapy doesn’t work

"I have the awareness, the insight so to speak, and it's not enough. Nothing is changing for me. If anything, my awareness makes me feel more frustrated and disconnected from my self and my life. If I know why I am the way I am, shouldn't I be able to do something about it? And if I can't, does that make me insane?"

This is what I commonly hear from my clients when we first meet. Change for them often means getting to a point where they can let go of trying to control everything, surrender enough to allow themselves to be—just be. It sounds so simple theoretically yet this is the peak of their individual mountain. They yearn to pause, rest, take in the view, and experience the joy of their lives. On the peak they don't have to do anything else or be anyone else. On the peak they are enough. Being is enough. They are already complete.

What gets in the way between them and their Peaks of Being? What weighs down on them as they attempt to make the climb? They are like Sisyphus, condemned to carry a boulder up a steep hill only to find that just as they are about to reach the peak the boulder rolls down hopelessly forcing them to begin again. This is what traditional therapy, especially talk therapy, often feels like.

Traditional therapy is not for everyone. I would go so far as to say, the more intellectual, analytical, and hyperaware you already are, the less effective it will be for you. Chances are you have a strong critical thinking mind, you can shift between perspectives easily, you can relate to many sides of an argument, and you can focus your attention so inwardly you drown out the noise of life altogether. You may have a special knack for dissociating from the present and disconnecting from what matters to you most. And what matters most is showing up for yourself and others authentically and wholeheartedly with a sense of purpose, belonging, and aliveness.

Traditional therapy can pull you in the opposite direction. It can throw your boulder back down the mountain and force you to begin again regardless of how hard you try. That's because it reinforces the already hardworking intellectual parts of you that believe knowing more and knowing better will make you feel better and feel whole at last. You may seek to gain an understanding of what plagues you as a means to get rid of vulnerability and never again feel the same pain. Knowledge and information can become a type of armor, shielding us from the deeper wounded parts of our psyche that don't need to know more. They need to be known by us and communed with. The more they are ignored, silenced, or exiled, the louder and more intense they will become to get our attention and be seen, heard, and loved by us.

Traditional therapy can leave you feeling more stuck, traumatized, and desperate for change than ever. I can relate because I've been there. I've made it my life's mission to help other trauma survivors not have to go through what I went through, especially since I now know there IS another way.

4 reasons why therapy doesn’t work:

1. It’s unsafe and re-traumatizing.

Traditional types of therapy, especially talk therapy, either focus on symptom management without addressing the underlying root cause of trauma or go straight to the deepest pain point bypassing, invalidating, or challenging defenses and coping mechanisms that have been essential for the client’s survival. These survival strategies need our acknowledgment, gratitude, and compassion in order for true transformation to occur. If they are not given the respect they deserve, the result is no change and/or backlash leading to a worsening of symptoms, re-traumatization, and a downward spiral of hopelessness and helplessness. In other words, therapy can not work in the best case and make clients worse in the worst case.

2. It’s pathologizing and stigmatizing.

As a culture we have focused all our efforts on squelching or turning away from pain and suffering while moving toward “positive” experiences. We have lost touch with the Yin-Yang nature of Being. We want the impossible—the ascent to our Psychic Heavens without the descent into the Shadow Underworld. Everything in our Shadow Underworld has become medicalized or clinicalized to the point of being devoid of meaning that resonates on a soul level in deep primal, ancestral, and mystical ways. The misguided world of traditional psychotherapy has helped vilify and exile the vulnerable parts of our selves dwelling in the shadow realms. These are the very parts of us that hold hidden treasures and powers buried within them. Trauma at its most fundamental level is a vehicle for transcendence and traditional therapy misses the mark.

3. It’s one-dimensional and outdated.

Transformation is not linear and we are not monolithic minds driving around in flesh vehicles. We contain multitudes. There are entire worlds within us that carry personal, universal, spiritual, and biological truths. The parts of ourselves that we experience in our everyday life are more than meets the eye. We are divine beings having a human experience. At our very core, there is a Self that remains intact, undamaged, and a source of unimaginable wisdom and healing regardless of our wounding. Our bodies are sacred living, breathing organisms that shape and are shaped by our experiences. We now know more than ever what trauma does to our bodies and how healing interventions can target different pathways or structures in the brain and nervous system to bring about real change. Modern day psychotherapy still has not integrated this cutting-edge, evidence-based knowledge.

4. It overlooks the high-functioning trauma survivor who has coped with their woundedness by performing and achieving.

In traditional psychotherapy and psychiatry, there is a huge emphasis on functionality. For example, a patient meets the criteria for a diagnosis based on the degree to which the symptoms impair functioning in personal, social, and/or work domains. What about those amongst us who are the walking wounded? We look like we are thriving yet we are struggling to survive in the psycho-spiritual dimension of life. Perhaps our traumas have propelled us upward on an ascent from which great feats of success have been attained in the visible world. All the while we suffer an invisible spiraling descent into the Shadow Underworld. The walking wounded are masters of their hyper-functioning, orderly, busy, external lives and slaves to their chaotic, unknown, mystical yet mystifying internal lives. These individuals need specialized trauma therapy and a customized healing process that honors their outward journey of achievement and their inward journey toward deep healing and transformation.

What can you do now? How can you heal your trauma?

1. Envision your healing journey.

Visualize, journal, reflect or meditate on what your ideal healing journey would look like and feel like. What do you wish therapists could get about you and your experience? What frustrates you about the current booming culture of therapy, healing, self-help, or self-care? How would you like to feel as a result of embarking on your own unique healing journey?

2. Open your eyes and look beyond your current horizons.

There are so many types of therapy today that are cutting-edge, evidence-based, and trauma-focused. Do your own research, read the books, attend the workshops or retreats, and expose yourself to diverse ways of deepening and expanding your healing. You can start by reading books like "The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. You may want to look into Internal Family Systems therapy, Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. You can stay up to date on the latest through the Trauma Research Foundation.

3. Widen your circle and play.

You can widen your circle of healing to include other types of therapy and a spirit of play. You get to define what therapy is for YOU. Therapy can be contributing to your community, expressing through art, moving your body, finding a mentor, becoming a mentor, learning a new skill, providing a service for others, reconnecting to the divine or your higher power through spiritual practices. The beauty of the wound, trauma, or whatever calamity has befallen you is that it becomes a door, a passageway, an initiation leading you back home to your Self. Sometimes finding your home, your center, means widening your circle to welcome the vulnerability and woundedness of others. Sometimes healing means withdrawing into the caves of safety nursing your shadows and sometimes it means venturing out into the seas of freedom riding the waves as they come. You get to experiment and play with it. There is no one solution for everyone and there is no one solution for every season of your life.

Therapy becomes another way to fight or flee from our vulnerability that is desperate to be known, loved, and healed.

It's human nature to move away from discomfort or reel from pain. It's also within our human capacity to move towards our pain and suffering. We can become intimate with our own vulnerability and gather around our own and each other's woundedness with love and compassion. Our body knows what to do—white blood cells migrate toward the infected, vulnerable part of our body to help us heal without us having to thinking about or understand the mechanism behind "leukocyte extravasation." Similarly, our core Self, who we are at our core as divine beings, knows what to do.

And I hope by now I've made it clear, no—you are not insane for being aware and not being able to change or transform in the way you want to. Yet. You are awake and present to the fact that healing happens at a deeper, primal level that calls you to brave the inner wilderness of your psyche and befriend your vulnerability. You know deep down that there's a missing piece here and there's some divine wisdom that can lead you back to wholeness and inner peace. I'm here to tell you that yes, you can climb your Peak of Being, release your boulder, and ascend to your Psychic Heavens to experience your joy, peace, love, and aliveness. But first, let’s get to know who in there is stuck carrying the boulder of your woundedness. Let’s honor and celebrate all the parts of you that got you to where you are today. If you’re a survivor of complex trauma, you showing up at all for your healing is a miracle.

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Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?

Letters from Sofia #3: How to Live with Meaning

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Let’s Go Inside

Last month I found myself in the second largest surf capital of the world, Ericeira, Portugal. I was there for my Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy Level 3 training. I arrived at 3am and made my way to the hotel right on the coast. I was met by the warm glow of the full moon, the sound of crashing waves, and the intoxicating ocean smell. Every afternoon upon finishing our 8-hour training a group of us, who came to be known as the "Wave Warriors," would answer the call of the ocean. The "call" is the only way I can put it into words. The waves possessed their own gravitational field pulling us in despite the parts of us that feared for our lives.

The ocean became a sacred space filled with splashes, swells, and surges. Everyday we returned to the waves as though we were making an offering. We were baptized by the water that beckoned us to bring forth what lay dormant within us. Heraclitus' words come to mind, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." With each ocean embrace we surrendered our past self to give birth to our future self. The water became the meeting place, where past, present, and future converged. We reached the point of no return over and over again with each rising crest.

We entered the alchemical liminal space in which lead becomes gold, fear becomes joy, pain becomes pleasure. We met each wave as if we were meeting life, with equal force knowing full well each surge was an initiation demanding us to be present...or else. We were called to experience the power of nature. We answered this call by creating our own gravitational field pulling in the playfulness, laughter, and aliveness we yearned for--that was our birth right. Poseidon would be pleased with us, that's for sure.

This is catharsis, purification, and metamorphosis. It's what we're born to do. Trauma draws a veil over our minds and hearts, blinding us to our truth. It makes us feel like we deserve the fear and pain and are destined to carry the unbearable weight of lead for eternity. It makes us feel like we are not entitled to joy, pleasure, and life itself. The forgotten truth is that transcendence is our default. We have forgotten the rapture--the mystical experience of overwhelming emotion leading to divine knowledge. It's the inevitable result of accepting and embracing your unique hero's journey. We are destined for gold and other hidden treasures that lie in the depths of our wounded Being.

I invite you to think about the moments in your life when you're called to step into the "river" or dive into the "ocean" that beckons you to bring forth that which lies dormant within you. It could be a challenging project, a tumultuous relationship, an illness, the death of a loved one, a sense of disconnection or alienation from yourself and others. These are moments of potential transformation and transmutation. Perhaps they are dark nights of the soul. Perhaps they are an opportunity to throw caution to the wind and to surrender to something greater within you and beyond you. In this surrender, you can find the freedom that awaits you. “Whatever it takes for you to find your freedom, that's what you've lived," as author and teacher Byron Katie states.

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Questions

• Under what conditions or in which situations have you felt the call to step into your "river" or dive into your "ocean" and be transformed? When have you experienced a sense of rapture and undergone an emotional or spiritual baptism? What was that like for you?

• I invite you to wonder about how this present moment can induce a state of rapture. What “lead” is here that can be transmuted to gold? What is your call to adventure in the here-and-now?

• Can you get to know with curiosity and compassion the parts of you that are scared to be present and open-hearted to this moment? How are they burdened by past experiences and what are their concerns today?

• What if transcendence was your default? What if you could turn whatever trauma or tragedy befalls you into your own myth? How would you rewrite your story so you can fall "upward" and come away with a greater sense of meaning and aliveness?

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More from Sofia

Letters from Sofia #1: Your Way Into the Light / newsletter

My first newsletter in case you missed it. I share with you the hero's journey of trauma recovery, how to reconnect with your Self, and the importance of feeling at home in our minds and bodies.

Letters from Sofia #2: Your Invitation to Magical Living / newsletter

My previous newsletter on finding your magic inspired by Halloween. I invite you to reflect on your “mask” or persona, what lies beneath the “mask,” and how to integrate your “shadow” to live in more alignment with greater joy and fulfillment.

Invitations for Exploration

• I'm Reading: 

Dark Nights of the Soul: A guide to finding your way through Life’s Ordeals by Thomas Moore. This book by Thomas Moore provides a reframe on the classic dark night of the soul. Reading it feels like a balm for the soul and make it feel not only okay but also essential and worthwhile to sit in the darkness and wait for the hidden treasures or elixirs of your unique underworld to shine forth.

• I'm Watching: ​

Johanna Under The Ice by Nowness. This is a video of Johanna, who began cold water treatment to prevent the amputation of her broken leg. Through the brokenness and pain a beautiful, peaceful new world was revealed to her. This has become a metaphor for how the brokenness and fragmentation of our psyches can act as trailheads leading us to deep healing, transformation, and freedom.

• I'm Listening To: 

​Doctor Gabor Mate: The Shocking Link between Kindness and Illness | The Diary of a CEO. Dr. Gabor Mate shares the link between relational patterns and the potential for illness. He reveals how emotional dynamics playing out in your relationships may be impacting your mind-body connection and overall physical health. By sharing his vulnerability and transparency, he invites you to reflect on how your body may be saying “no” and how you can say “yes” to being in alignment with your true nature.

Ready to heal from trauma and find your aliveness?