In the ideal scenario, the inner critic would be a part of us that suggests to us, with kindness, deftly and with tact, ways in which we could act in the world to produce better outcomes. Its goal would be to better our wellbeing and the wellbeing of those around us.
Its focus would be on gently differentiating between self and other.
Self: What I do, my volition, my voluntary decisions, things that are within my power to act on.
Other: Environmental factors outside of our control, including the agency of other people. Among these factors is considering who is responsible and liable for what.
After mapping the terrain of these factors, the inner critic might suggest:
“I think we misunderstood this one”
“If we’d like to feel less lonely, we could reach out to a friend to reconnect”
“We can’t control whether this matter ultimately goes our way, but we can practice presenting our viewpoint as clearly as possible, or prepare ourselves for all outcomes”
In other cases it’d be quick to be fair when that’s what’s called for:
“This is not our fault. This is just something that happened to us”
“We couldn’t have known at that time. We know better now though. ”
It would be focused on choice and agency in the present circumstances; the decision to take responsibility (or not) in the present, and avoid allocating blame in most cases.
Unfortunately for many of us, the inner critic doesn’t communicate with us in such measured terms. If we were to turn our attention towards it, we might receive a torrent of vitriol:
“You really fucked up”
“You’re disgusting”
“You’re worthless”
Or, if you’re from Australia:
“Ya dumb cunt!”
Why would anyone talk to themselves like that?
Psychodynamics offers a compelling answer; it’s not merely that we’re talking to ourselves that way, but we were once talked TO that way.
Decades after childhood, we still have the voices of early caregivers or significant others rattling around in our heads. Perhaps they were indeed cruel or unskillful, or more poignantly, perhaps they were simply tired, exhausted, stressed out, sad, frustrated, or angry (for all sorts of reasons).
The pitch of their voice in those emotional states reverberates through time. It is what radicalised the inner critic when it was still a young and vulnerable part of our psyche.
Now nothing we do is ever good enough. We’re awful. We haven’t just made mistakes or stumbled here and there, we’re a failure.
In our worst moods, things can get so bad that we want to die. Sometimes we want to die because the inner critic says we don’t deserve to live. And other times we want to die because the chronic, incessant harshness of the inner critic has made life unbearably miserable for us.
When these moods strike, we can disengage quickly. The problem isn’t that we screwed yet another thing up, the problem is that we hate ourselves. Our inner critic is ill and malfunctioning. It’s ingested too much harshness, too many “shoulds”. As a result now we’ve fallen into a very imbalanced relationship with it. Perhaps now we can’t stop chasing admiration, respect, accolades and awards (we haven’t yet realised those kinds of attention are of limited value). Or in other cases, our relationship with the inner critic has broken down to such a degree that our lives are now falling apart without the potentially valuable guidance and support that it’s desperately trying to offer to us, but the message isn’t getting through because it’s cloaked in so much nastiness (and so another part of us has to step in to protect us, and we become dismissive towards the frantic criticisms of the inner critic).
It might take years for the inner critic to release all of its burdens and purge all of its anxious harshness. It might take therapy, deep friendship, meditation retreats, psychedelic journeys, and good books. But the healing journey is paradoxical; it’s always now and we can’t wait for perfection to arrive before we start living. The problem comes and goes in waves, and so does the healing.
In some of the hardest times mindfulness offers an immediate antidote. As we focus on the thoughts and feelings we take to be the “inner critic”, an experiential realisation might emerge:
“That’s not me”.
We’ll recognise that as much as the darkness seems to have us trapped within its veil, it too is trapped within ours.
It’s just you here. It’s just your mind. They’re just thoughts. How could they be so powerful?
