Everyone has an internal monologue; that voice that is constantly running in your head. Most of this monologue is necessary to help us make good decisions, filter out unimportant information in our environment, and protect us from danger. However, embedded in this innocuous dialogue is the voice of the internal critic. This is the voice that tells you that you are fat when you’re trying on jeans at the mall, or tells you that you are stupid when you get a B on a test instead of an A, or tells you that you will never amount to anything when you get passed up for a promotion at work.
The internal critic is brutal and unrelenting. It shows no mercy. It calls you fat, lazy, incompetent, and stupid. It can contribute to depression, anxiety, and a range of other mental health problems. The internal critic has a powerful arsenal of weapons that it uses to systematically destroy your self-esteem. In the therapy world, we call these weapons cognitive distortions or thinking errors.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common thinking errors:
Overgeneralizing: You get rejected by a guy at a party and your internal critic tells you that all men are uninterested in you and that you are universally unappealing.
Polarized thinking: It’s all or nothing for your internal critic. If you got a B on a test instead of an A then you are a complete and utter failure. You will never amount to anything.
Filtering: Everyone has flaws as well as strengths and assets. Unfortunately your critic chooses to focus exclusively on what went wrong and ignores what went right. It focuses on what you didn’t get done, and ignores what you did accomplish. It sees the flaws and ignores the assets.
Mind Reading: Your boss walks right past you in the hall one morning and doesn’t acknowledge you. There could be many reasons for this (she’s preoccupied, had a bad day, in a hurry). But your internal critic knows why because the critic can read minds. The critic tells you that your boss doesn’t like you. Your boss never liked you and never will.
Shoulds: The internal critic takes our values and the expectations that we have for ourselves and uses them against us. The critic turns these into a list of rigid standards for our behavior. When we do something or say something that doesn’t meet those standards, the critic blasts us with a barrage of “shoulds.” You should have taken your kids to the park today, you should have cooked a homemade meal rather than sticking a pizza in the oven, you should always be the life of the party.
Self-Blame: When things go wrong, the critic knows who is at fault and it is always you.
Comparing: The critic mercilessly compares you to everyone around. The models in the magazines, the actress on television, the girl next door who happens to be 15 lbs slimmer than you. Someone is always smarter, more attractive, and more accomplished than you and the critic is more than happy to point it out to you.
So how does the critic get a toe hold in our brain and why does it stick around and start to take over? To answer this, we need to understand some basics of behavioral science. Although it seems counter-intuitive, negative thoughts about ourselves actually get reinforced. Usually we talk about behaviors being reinforced (those with children probably know a thing or two about that); however, thoughts can be reinforced too, in just the same way.
Negative thoughts get reinforced when they either result in something positive or they help to ease a negative feeling or emotion. They are not reinforced very often, but they are reinforced once in a while and on an unpredictable schedule, which is enough to keep the thoughts coming. For example, many people rely on their internal critic to push them to succeed or to keep them on the path of the straight and narrow. Berating yourself for getting a B on a test may occasionally motivate you to study harder the next time. Berating yourself for being a fat, ugly pig may occasionally lead you to skip that high fat dessert at dinner. In this way, there is a perceived positive outcome that follows the negative thoughts.
More often than not, the critic gets reinforced by removing or controlling a negative and unpleasant emotion. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, and guilt are just a few examples. For instance, if you tell yourself that you are unattractive and no man is ever going to like you, it may sting a little less when you actually do get rejected. The critic is reinforced because every great while, it accurately does predict a hurt or rejection, and since you were prepared, it hurt a little bit less. The critic is encouraged to keep mind reading. Your critic may protect you from the fear of failure. Perhaps you were thinking about running for city council, but you were nervous about the additional workload and the public exposure. If your critic is constantly telling you that you can’t succeed at anything - why even bother to run for city council, you’ll never be elected. You may decide to not try. Once you make the decision, your anxiety immediately lessens and your critic is reinforced because it lessened your anxiety (the anxiety that comes along with trying something new).
How do we beat the critic? Here are a few suggestions:
1. Expose it.
We need to expose its content and purpose. Some people are very conscious of their internal critic while for others, its voice seems to be just under conscious awareness. Start filtering your critic out from the background noise of your internal monologue. Start writing down the negative comments of the internal critic and look for themes. Spend some time trying to figure out how your critic is being reinforced - what purpose your critic serves. Does it serve to motivate you to be more successful or stay on the right path? Does it protect you from feelings of anxiety that accompany trying new things and taking risks? Does it compare you to others in an attempt to drive you to meet an unrealistic standard?
2. Develop its arch nemesis.
Foster your healthy voice. Develop some healthy statements in response to your critic’s most common negative attacks. Every time your critic strikes, fire back by shouting your healthy response. Shouting thinks like “Stop! I am fine the way I am!” “I’m not going to listen to you!” “Everyone makes mistakes.” Develop a few statements that feel true and believable to you. Although it may seem odd at first, it becomes easier with practice. Your internal critic didn’t develop overnight and neither will your healthy voice. Affirmations about your assets are helpful too; they tend to drown out the critic. But they must be realistic. In order to really challenge our critic, you have to have a realistic idea of what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. So take stock. Perhaps you aren’t a great student, but you have a keen intuition about people and have great social skills. So your affirmation can be, "I’m great with people."
3. Find alternative ways of meeting the needs that your internal critic currently meets.
If your critic constantly compares you to others and motivates you to achieve perfection, you may need to develop a more realistic view of yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and learn to accept yourself the way you are. If your critic motivates you to achieve things at work, you may need to find new, positive motivators, such as envisioning the positive consequences of your success. If your critic helps you avoid fear of failure, you may need to re-evaluate the meaning of mistakes and failures and learn to handle mistakes in a healthier way.
Following these few simple techniques can have a powerful impact on your self-esteem and can be very effective at silencing your inner critic. Give them a try!
The internal critic is brutal and unrelenting. It shows no mercy. It calls you fat, lazy, incompetent, and stupid. It can contribute to depression, anxiety, and a range of other mental health problems. The internal critic has a powerful arsenal of weapons that it uses to systematically destroy your self-esteem. In the therapy world, we call these weapons cognitive distortions or thinking errors.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common thinking errors:
Overgeneralizing: You get rejected by a guy at a party and your internal critic tells you that all men are uninterested in you and that you are universally unappealing.
Polarized thinking: It’s all or nothing for your internal critic. If you got a B on a test instead of an A then you are a complete and utter failure. You will never amount to anything.
Filtering: Everyone has flaws as well as strengths and assets. Unfortunately your critic chooses to focus exclusively on what went wrong and ignores what went right. It focuses on what you didn’t get done, and ignores what you did accomplish. It sees the flaws and ignores the assets.
Mind Reading: Your boss walks right past you in the hall one morning and doesn’t acknowledge you. There could be many reasons for this (she’s preoccupied, had a bad day, in a hurry). But your internal critic knows why because the critic can read minds. The critic tells you that your boss doesn’t like you. Your boss never liked you and never will.
Shoulds: The internal critic takes our values and the expectations that we have for ourselves and uses them against us. The critic turns these into a list of rigid standards for our behavior. When we do something or say something that doesn’t meet those standards, the critic blasts us with a barrage of “shoulds.” You should have taken your kids to the park today, you should have cooked a homemade meal rather than sticking a pizza in the oven, you should always be the life of the party.
Self-Blame: When things go wrong, the critic knows who is at fault and it is always you.
Comparing: The critic mercilessly compares you to everyone around. The models in the magazines, the actress on television, the girl next door who happens to be 15 lbs slimmer than you. Someone is always smarter, more attractive, and more accomplished than you and the critic is more than happy to point it out to you.
So how does the critic get a toe hold in our brain and why does it stick around and start to take over? To answer this, we need to understand some basics of behavioral science. Although it seems counter-intuitive, negative thoughts about ourselves actually get reinforced. Usually we talk about behaviors being reinforced (those with children probably know a thing or two about that); however, thoughts can be reinforced too, in just the same way.
Negative thoughts get reinforced when they either result in something positive or they help to ease a negative feeling or emotion. They are not reinforced very often, but they are reinforced once in a while and on an unpredictable schedule, which is enough to keep the thoughts coming. For example, many people rely on their internal critic to push them to succeed or to keep them on the path of the straight and narrow. Berating yourself for getting a B on a test may occasionally motivate you to study harder the next time. Berating yourself for being a fat, ugly pig may occasionally lead you to skip that high fat dessert at dinner. In this way, there is a perceived positive outcome that follows the negative thoughts.
More often than not, the critic gets reinforced by removing or controlling a negative and unpleasant emotion. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, and guilt are just a few examples. For instance, if you tell yourself that you are unattractive and no man is ever going to like you, it may sting a little less when you actually do get rejected. The critic is reinforced because every great while, it accurately does predict a hurt or rejection, and since you were prepared, it hurt a little bit less. The critic is encouraged to keep mind reading. Your critic may protect you from the fear of failure. Perhaps you were thinking about running for city council, but you were nervous about the additional workload and the public exposure. If your critic is constantly telling you that you can’t succeed at anything - why even bother to run for city council, you’ll never be elected. You may decide to not try. Once you make the decision, your anxiety immediately lessens and your critic is reinforced because it lessened your anxiety (the anxiety that comes along with trying something new).
How do we beat the critic? Here are a few suggestions:
1. Expose it.
We need to expose its content and purpose. Some people are very conscious of their internal critic while for others, its voice seems to be just under conscious awareness. Start filtering your critic out from the background noise of your internal monologue. Start writing down the negative comments of the internal critic and look for themes. Spend some time trying to figure out how your critic is being reinforced - what purpose your critic serves. Does it serve to motivate you to be more successful or stay on the right path? Does it protect you from feelings of anxiety that accompany trying new things and taking risks? Does it compare you to others in an attempt to drive you to meet an unrealistic standard?
2. Develop its arch nemesis.
Foster your healthy voice. Develop some healthy statements in response to your critic’s most common negative attacks. Every time your critic strikes, fire back by shouting your healthy response. Shouting thinks like “Stop! I am fine the way I am!” “I’m not going to listen to you!” “Everyone makes mistakes.” Develop a few statements that feel true and believable to you. Although it may seem odd at first, it becomes easier with practice. Your internal critic didn’t develop overnight and neither will your healthy voice. Affirmations about your assets are helpful too; they tend to drown out the critic. But they must be realistic. In order to really challenge our critic, you have to have a realistic idea of what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. So take stock. Perhaps you aren’t a great student, but you have a keen intuition about people and have great social skills. So your affirmation can be, "I’m great with people."
3. Find alternative ways of meeting the needs that your internal critic currently meets.
If your critic constantly compares you to others and motivates you to achieve perfection, you may need to develop a more realistic view of yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and learn to accept yourself the way you are. If your critic motivates you to achieve things at work, you may need to find new, positive motivators, such as envisioning the positive consequences of your success. If your critic helps you avoid fear of failure, you may need to re-evaluate the meaning of mistakes and failures and learn to handle mistakes in a healthier way.
Following these few simple techniques can have a powerful impact on your self-esteem and can be very effective at silencing your inner critic. Give them a try!
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