3.10 Breaking up with your inner critic
What’s the inner critic? It’s no mystery. Everybody has one. Ask around and people will tell you…
It’s that voice inside that hammers me.
It’s a constant nag.
It’s a mean little bastard.
It’s keeps me scared.
It’s never happy with me
It kills my joy.
I’ve never once heard anyone say…
I love my inner critic.
There are therapists who argue that…
We should make friends with our inner critic.
Because it’s got value for us, because it’s on our side, because it’s our…
Inner protector.
But what exactly is it protecting us from?
From getting shamed by other people.
How does this work?
The inner critic is the inner personification of shame.
It’s an instrument of shame, which is an instrument of enforcement. Enforcement of the tribe’s rules. Like shame, it comes from the outside, from the tribe, but it’s designed…
To feel like it’s part of you.
Like it is you. Like it’s the very essence of you.
In terms of our tribal way of life…
The inner critic was quite a brilliant invention.
It takes shame deeper inside you. It polices you. It keeps you submitting to shame. It keeps you from defending yourself against it.
It tells you how to behave so you can stay in alignment with your group, your tribe, your society, and thus…
Avoid shaming.
Which is the main reason why we bond with it. It gives us this protection.
I’ve had a complex, tangled, changing relationship with my inner critic, which has gone through four phases and landed me in a fifth phase where I am now, and where I’m happy to be.
1. Submitting
All through my childhood and teen years, even though I didn’t like my inner critic, I didn’t protest it because it seemed like if you were a human being, you had an inner critic. That’s just how it was and there was nothing to be done about it.
I never asked why we had to have one of these things. I never asked about its origin. I just assumed I had to put up with it and suffer.
2. Squirming.
Once I grew up and started to understand how my inner critic was hurting me, I tried to get it to leave me alone…
I tried bargaining: “Hey, let’s look at this rationally. When you pressure me and scare me, you throw me off balance and I actually do worse, so how about toning it down?” But the inner critic is driven by fear, so reasoning doesn’t work.
I tried begging: “Please, please stop hurting me.” But that only proved to it that I was too weak to take care of myself and therefore needed even bigger doses of its “help.”
I tried counterattacking: “You’re a bully! I hate you! Shut up and leave me alone!” But that meant I was playing its game on its turf where it had the home–field advantage. It was far better at attack than I was at counterattack, so it always won.
I tried taming my inner critic, as a popular self–help book tells us to do. But what a wretched thing to keep as a pet.
None of these strategies ever worked.
3. Warming up
I heard a therapist say that you could have a healthy relationship with your inner critic. He was sure of it. Then I heard the same thing from several more, so I decided to give it a try.
I thought maybe if I treated my inner critic with consideration it might return the favor and treat me with consideration. Maybe together we could work something out.
And since I believed my inner critic was part of me, I didn’t want to attack it because that would be the same as attacking myself, and I didn’t want to do that.
And then since the inner critic is a personification, I started talking to it like it was a person.
I decided to start with a thank–you first, then ask for an adjustment in our relationship…
You know I’ve been trying to get rid of you. That’s no surprise is it?
Of course not, I live inside you, I’ve seen you trying to remove me. Not nice.
I wasn’t doing it to hurt your feelings. I was just trying to take care of myself. And speaking of that, I’d like to thank you, which I’ve actually never done before.
Okay, this is more like it. What are you thankful for?
You got me through childhood. You kept me in line. It was because of you that I remained a member in good standing in my church, which was my tribe.
I didn’t love that church, but I can’t imagine what would have happened to me if I had rebelled openly. I would have gotten in so much trouble because my mom and dad were committed to that church. And life at home would have become hell.
There were so many situations in which you saved me from making serious mistakes. And it would have been awful if I had turned my parents and my church against me. It scares me to even think about it.
It should scare you. I was your salvation.
I remember you were always vigilant. You never got to take a vacation, you never got a day off, you didn’t even get coffee breaks.
You were always in critic mode. You never got to be happy. Think about that. You never got to be happy.
You had to be on duty during every one of my waking moments. It was too dangerous to let me be my real self for even a minute, because I might have edged over into rebellion.
You scared me, but I’m suddenly realizing I also scared you. You saw the restless unhappiness in me and you worked overtime to keep the lid on it. You were dutiful and diligent. So I do feel empathy for you.
You nailed it. My life has been a grind. Still is. It’s about time you showed me some respect. And some gratitude.
You’ve got it, you’ve definitely got it.
Thank you. Finally.
You’re welcome. And I’d like to ask you for a favor. I want to ask it because I want us to have a better relationship. We’ve just made a bit of progress wouldn’t you say?
Yes, I’d have to admit that’s true.
Now I want to make more.
Uh–oh. Is this where you lower the boom on me?
That’s not how I’d put it, but I do need to bring something up.
I don’t know if I want to hear it.
Well, it’s something I need to say. And if I don’t I’ll be lying to you—by omission.
I don’t mind lies.
Yes, I guess I know that about you. But I mind them. So here goes. You helped me get through childhood, and bless you for that, but to help me you had to hurt me. And hurt me badly.
I was just doing my job.
I understand, but the point is you hurt me.
Water under the bridge.
No, because you’re still hurting me, and I want you to stop.
Don’t be a wimp. It’s not that big a deal.
To me it is a big deal. And to make it clear how strongly I feel about this, let me put it this way. All through childhood, I followed your commands, and I needed to do that. There was no other realistic option for me.
Being raised by you was like being raised on poisoned milk. I needed the milk—the safety you provided. But the poison that came with that safety—me shutting down, me despising myself—that poison damaged me long–term.
Don’t be a drama queen.
I’m bitter about the relationship we had during those years. And that hasn’t changed. You’re still attacking me and hurting me. Hurting my feelings and making me less able to make a life I might love.
I’ve been with you from very early in your childhood. What’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you gotten used to me by now?
Truth is I’m getting more dissatisfied with you every day. That’s why I’m asking for an adjustment to our relationship.
That’s not how this works.
It is now. I’m asking you to back off on the attacks and instead give me support when I do well. I want you to help me pursue the love I want in my life.
That’s not in my job description.
I would like to add it in.
No can do. I don’t negotiate.
Really, that’s your answer?
Yup, steady as she goes.
This “conversation” was really me talking to myself, taking both parts, but it was revealing.
4. Breaking up.
When my inner critic refused to respond to my requests, when it exposed its limitations, I saw that there was no future for me in that relationship, so I decided to break up with my critic.
The critic talks to us in what sounds like a personal voice, and it is a personification, and so we come to think of it like it’s a person. But it’s not.
Instead…
The inner critic is a compulsive function of our genome.
And…
It can only see our behavior, not our hearts.
It only cares about survival and has no feelings at all about how much it hurts us in the name of survival.
And when I understood this, I realized I needed to…
De-personalize my critic.
I needed to stop thinking about it as a person and think of it as an impersonal function. After all, the reason it can’t see our hearts is that it doesn’t have a heart of its own. And that’s why it can’t show us empathy.
So I quit having conversations with it.
And I decided to stop thinking of it as a part of me. As I said, it’s an instrument of shame. It’s an instrument of social control. And given this, “critic” is too light a term. What we’re really talking about is…
The inner enforcer.
Which is focused on my relationship with my tribe or group, not on…
The relationship I want with myself.
So I decided to break up with it. Why that choice of words? Why not say I decided to terminate it?
Because I wanted to acknowledge the long–term relationship I’d had with it, and how personal it felt, and how conflicted I was, how…
This was a love-hate relationship.
I hated my critic, but at the same time…
I depended on it.
It really did get me through childhood.
But finally I realized…
I don’t need to be grateful for its help anymore. Because it’s unfair in the first place to put little kids in the position where they need an inner critic constantly attacking them just so they can remain in good standing with their families.
The inner critic helped me manage my way through a context where I was in jeopardy and needed to watch my step and had to censor myself every day. But truth be told, I’m not grateful for that context or the critic or any of it.
So forget breaking up. I decided I did need to terminate my critic.
5. Defending and Transcending
I’m able to watch out for myself now, so I don’t need an inner critic watching out for me.
I’ve gotten good at making my own moral decisions, so I don’t need any outside forces telling me what to do.
I’ve got my own mission to upgrade love, and the inner critic can’t even begin to imagine what upgraded love might be like, so it can’t help me with this mission.
Add this all up and it’s clear that the inner critic has nothing, absolutely nothing, to give me anymore. Not even one little bit of one single thing.
Knowing this, feeling this in my bones, frees me up to fight it like never before. And I still sometimes need to fight it. I may be done with the inner critic, but it’s not done with me.
When I’m tired or feeling down, and the inner critic smells an opportunity to come after me, it does. But I’m now able to fight it, holding nothing back. And I like this. I like it a lot. I like how…
I don’t need to worry about hurting its feelings because I now know it has no feelings.
I don’t need to pull my punches, because I know it can’t feel them.
I don’t need to make any compromises with it because it doesn’t negotiate.
So I get to defend myself 100%.
When I was a kid the critic shut me down, but…
Now I get to shut it down.
And what’s the result?
First…
I didn’t understand just how much the inner critic was hurting me until it was gone.
While it was still in charge I couldn’t let myself feel just how bad it was. I needed a certain amount of denial to buffer me through those years I had to live with it. To be conscious of how bad I was hurting and not know what to do about it would have been too hard.
Now I understand it and its origin and its function and now I get to blast it and thoroughly enjoy blasting it.
Second…
Whenever the critic attacks, I use the attack as a reminder to feel for myself and fight for myself.
Which if the critic were really a person–like being would put it in a double bind. And if I were still talking to it, I’d be saying something like this…
“You want to attack me? Come on, bring it. Because every time you attack, I just get fiercer and more determined about stopping you. About terminating you.”
So attacking just puts the critic in a worse position. And I can tell you putting the critic in a double bind is really fun.
And third….
The stronger I become in and of myself, the more the critic recedes into irrelevance.
I have moments when I get to enjoy peaceful transcendence. I get to be with myself, just me with myself, with no interference from the critic’s punishing voice of fear.
I get to be free of attacks and put downs and shut downs. And often these moments stretch into hours and days and weeks.
And this is something new in the world. It’s a post–tribal experience.
And then there’s all that energy I put into the critic—or that the critic took from me in its commandeering way. I get to take it back and put it into nurturance so I can take care of myself better than ever before.
Whenever I fight the critic, I feel like I’m reaching back through time and saying to that hurting little boy I once was…
“You couldn’t stop the inner critic. You just couldn’t. You were too young.
“But look! You grew up to be me, the person who can stop it and does stop it. And when I do, I’m doing it not just for me as I am now, but for you, too.”
