Dump Your Inner Critic
I’ll bet you have a toxic friend. You the know the kind. She gives you back-handed compliments, takes her bad moods out on you, and makes you walk on egg shells. In fact, you spend most of your time together trying not to set her off. You hold your breath before she opens her mouth, never quite sure what hurtful comment she’ll utter next.
Oh sure, she lavishes you with praise when you least expect it. Not often, but enough to keep you wanting more. Then she apologizes for her bad behavior, claiming she didn’t mean it. And you’ll forgive her, of course. You two have known each other a long time.
But no matter the depth of your forgiveness, her words become increasingly impossible to forget. They’re a part of you. You think she knows you better than anyone else. You think she’s the only one who tells you the truth.
You spend a good portion of your time trying to please this friend, trying to win her approval. You want her to like you and respect you. You wait around wide-eyed, hoping she’ll say you’re smart, worthy of her love, of anyone’s love, that you’re exactly the right weight, and that your hair isn’t completely hopeless.
If you’re a writer, you wait for her to say you’re not wasting your time. You live for the day she calls you talented. Of course on the rare occasions she says it, you don’t believe her. Then you criticize her. You say she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You usher her snarky side back because it’s the side you think you need, the side you’ve told yourself you like.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of my bossy old friend, The Inner Critic. Why does she think she’s such an expert, always criticizing every line and idea? I’d like her to stop reading over my shoulder every second. I think the only way to shut her up is to dump her.
If you know how to get rid of “friend” like that for good, let me know.
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
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27 Responses
We seem to be having the same kind of day — because I’ve spent my morning with your Inner Critic’s good friend Self Doubt. In fact, I’d just sat down to write a blog about feeling like a writing fraud when I decided to check email instead and found your great blog. Thank you for helping me feel like I’m not the only one… and here’s to dumping toxic friends, imaginary and real!
oh, geez…. the whole time I’m thinking, Oh my gosh, Nina, are you going to name names????? This blogging thing has made you brave (if not insane). Then you name her. HA! Yeah, you definitely need to ditch her. One sure way: three gin and tonics before you sit down to write.
Anne took my answer — I was going to say, “large quantities of alcohol.” I have no idea how to shut her up by natural means. Maybe when your book hits the best-seller list, she finally quiets down? No, probably not.
Ha! Amanda, I wish that were true. From the writers I’ve spoken to the self-doubt never ends. Oy vey!
Getting rid of that friend when she isn’t IN you is soooooo much easier!
Oh, do I ever know her. In fact, I have a sister who’s just like her. That said, I do know a way around both – just get started. I’ve learned that if she thinks she can simply keep me from getting started, I’ll have justified her opinion. I write and paint, and she shuts up fast after the first few brush strokes or sentences. Our inner self is our worst critic.
But part of me is happier to have her as a friend than the one who would tell me everything I do is fantastic from the onset. That just isn’t true either. Wish it was….:)
Leigh- so true. There is definitely such a thing as a healthy dose of self-criticism. It certainly doesn’t help your craft no matter what it is to think you’re wonderful all the time.
Ah, yes. The inner critic. I often think that is the hardest to please myself. When we have high expectations for ourselves it can be challengeing to make the inner critic happy. I think it is about having the conscious belief that you are doing your best and feeling good about what you are doing. Whether the inner critic admits to it herself, you have to know it yourself! Although, obviously, I’m not a writer I can apply this to much of my life.
Yes! For sure anybody, not matter your vocation or place in life probably has an inner critic badgering them about something.
I too have an inner critic, but she usually goes by her more common name: mom.
Btw, love the new avatar. Really cute. In a purely platonic, blog-to-blog comment way of course.
Thanks Pop!!
The inner critic is especially hard to deal with when you had a parent (or two) with this type of ultra-critical personality, like Pop above. It’s harder to banish the critic from your head when she’s been there since your birth. But it can be done. Thanks for this!
That’s very true. I’ve been very lucky to have two parents who are SO not like that. I’m much harder on myself than they ever were.
Great post. You know. My Inner Critic lives right next door to my Inner Inflated Ego. Maybe they should move in together and things would even out.
When my friend comes to visit I just tell her to shut up, lie down and take care of me. Damn, did I really just write that. Nah, it is part of the joy of being human and MOT.
It is ok to have that nagging friend provided that her nagging doesn’t prevent you from doing what you need to do.
I think the older you get, the more you tame that wild inner critic. She loses the baggage and turns into a simple helper who asks you to go back and check your grammar. Later, she gets even more laid-back and simply drops by to ask if you proof-read. That’s been my experience. Hope yours mellows for you soon!
Oh my gosh! I thought I was the only one who could fit a giant pointed finger inside my house…
That IS me, right? In the bottom left-hand side of the picture above? In the tiny black suit?
No. I guess not. That guy’s way too dressed up. I’m in sweats and slippers – something my inner critic wants to point out. NEGATIVELY.
Oh, how I want to tune that voice out. And all the unproductive rhetoric that attends it. I will now, in my mind, imagine that hand clapping instead of pointing. And I’m putting that little guy in old sweatpants, too.
This post is a great reminder – to all of us – to treat ourselves a little more gently.
Thanks, Nina. I really needed this today.
I love that–the hands clapping instead of pointing!
Yep, I’d say lose her…who needs that stress??
~Penelope (I love to write about beauty tips!)
I am so glad you were one of the two ahead of me in roll call this week (SITS)! What a great post. I tell you, my husband (aka, The Chef!) tells me often that I don’t know how to accept a compliment. “False humility,” I guess. But I had an aha moment this week from one of the featured bloggers through SITS…
I have always known I was a perfectionist, and so always my own worst critic, for sure. What I realized this week that I think is going to be huge for me in helping me deal with this inner critic more effectively, or maybe shutting her up before she even starts (!!!) is that perfectionism is simply the application of striving for excellence taken to an unhealthy extreme. If I retrain my mind to think in those terms, then it’s okay if certain things aren’t ever “perfect” because they never would be anyway and I know I’m doing the best I can do since it’s just part of my nature to “strive for excellence.”
We’ll see how it works. I’m hopeful. 🙂
I like that, Lucky Wife! Going to check out your blog now. 🙂
She is very cunning. I get so used to ignoring her in one area of my life, I think I’ve finally shaken her off.
Then WHAMMO, she pummels me with the whack-a-mole mallet where I least expect it.
I have one of those friends. She’s a real pain. Sometimes I wish I could stab her in the eye and show her who’s boss 🙂
Thank you for stopping by my blog on my SITS day! I appreciate it.
My inner critic is half asleep right know after years of talking non stop, telling me I wasn t skinny enough or I don t deserve to be loved by such an amazing guy like my husband.
My tips? Make a simple math: 20% let the inner critic unleashed, 80% be YOU. You wont make a full of yourself, instead you ll have the strength to raise your inner warrior. The one that never gives up and wants to win!
I like that math!
Haha.
I have a real person in my life like that, I don’t need to cultivate the inner one.
Lucky me, huh?