Do you have a voice inside your head that can sometimes be your worst enemy? Chiding you, berating you, shaming you? Or perhaps rehashing the same thing over and over? Do you wish you could love yourself more, but that seems impossible until you’ve changed certain things about yourself?
My Journey
My inner critic’s favorite channel is the “not enough” channel. I’m not doing enough, I don’t know enough, I’m not good enough. There’s not enough [money, support, time…]. When I’m tuned into the “not enough” channel, my whole nervous system gets jangled up. My mind then starts spinning even more, ostensibly to try to get things back on track, though usually it just derails me further.
After years of resisting my inner critic and trying to get her to shut up, I have found that the best way to calm that voice is to acknowledge that part of me. “Hi inner critic” I say to her, “I hear you. You have a lot to say today. OK, I’m paying attention.” It’s counter-intuitive, I know. Most of us learned that when there’s a behavior we don’t like, we need to do whatever we can to change or resist it.
Where the Inner Critic Comes From
The thing is, in order to transform our inner programming, it is important to get to the root of it. To understand each part. First, there is our inner critic. The tactics our inner critic uses often mimic those used by our parents or other authority figures to get us to behave. This might have involved punishing, yelling, ignoring, reasoning, arguing, shaming, or a mixture of tactics. Behind the often misguided tactics, however, there is generally something that part is trying to achieve for us.
The Inner Child Part
Then, there is the other part – the behavior or trait our inner critic is trying to change. I call it the inner child part, because it is often linked to coping strategies we developed early on to minimize or avoid difficult emotions or situations. Underneath the behavior is generally some early wounding. The message we received as children that certain parts of us were not OK or not acceptable. That we needed to trade-off parts of ourselves to get love.
Changing the Pattern
When we engage in the behavior or trait we want to change, it is often an indicator that our inner child part is needing reassurance. When we chastise ourselves, or make ourselves wrong, we perpetuate the very wounding that led to the behavior in the first place. Which then only reinforces our inner child’s resistance, and leads to the sense that we have a battle raging inside us. And may replicate the tug-of-war relationship we had with our parents or other authority figures growing up.
What I have found to be the most effective way to break the whole cycle is to be able to give understanding and acceptance to both the inner critic and the inner child parts. In the following 8-minute guided meditation, I walk you through that process. And you might find that your inner critic has become your greatest ally!
Guided Meditation for Befriending Your Inner Critic
© Jenny Brav
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