Inner Critic Vs. Inner Coach
Is your inner monologue critical, harsh and a bully? Do you place judgments on yourself when you feel you don’t do things right? Have you told yourself that you are not enough? Maybe you have unrealistic expectations of yourself, making you believe that you will never succeed in life. This is your inner critic. Your inner critic will often:
Think in black & white
Focus on problems
Not recognize or celebrate progress’
Use shame, guilt, and fear to motivate
Focus on scarcity/never being good enough
Perhaps, your inner voice is friendly, encouraging and compassionate. Maybe your inner voice empowers you to try new things or to get out of your comfort zone! You may have an inner voice that even has the ability to be compassionate toward your experiences or can uplift you when you are down. This voice is your inner guidance. A voice that has the capacity to:
Recognize complexity/gray area
Focus on solutions
Celebrate progress and small victories
Use desire, love, and compassion to motivate
Focus on gratitude, what is possible and what feels good
As you can tell, we all have inner voices—one that judges and belittles and one that is nurturing and up-lifting.
However, for many the second inner voice often sounds like a fantasy. In fact, it feels impossible to even comprehend talking to yourself in a kind way because for most of us…the critic often always wins. The critic always tells us that,
“You should…”
“Why didn’t you…”
“What is wrong with you…”
“Why can’t you…”
This, I imagine, sounds more familiar to you. As we can imagine or have even experienced, our inner voice can be a destructive force that can impact our overall mental wellbeing. This damaging voice magnifies negativity and often isn't satisfied until we are left feeling defeated and sometimes even paralyzed.
So, how can we regain balance within our own system? How can we reset the inner critic and strengthen our inner coach?
First, we want to observe how our inner critic operates within us. Notice how this part of us works. Does it minimize your pain or emotions? Does it dismiss your needs or rights? Does it downplay your accomplishments? Maybe the critic makes you doubt yourself and/or discourage your hopes and dreams? Being aware of the inner workings of your own inner critic is important work and central to developing a new way to respond to your critic. Once we gain an insight into our critics’ operation system, we can learn about how to respond to our critics in a different way.
We want to begin responding to our inner critic with our inner coach. We want to tap into our inner nurture who is our ally!
Taking space to change the ways we respond to our inner critic is essential. What we say to ourselves and how we say it really does matter. Our inner monologue can be the part of us that encourages us to take chances or the one that limits our true potential in life. And listen, we all have an inner critic, and sometimes it can be harsh! But we shouldn’t let it drag us down because we are not the voices in our heads. We are so much more than what our inner critic leads us to believe about ourselves. And we need to be mindful of that!
