Self-talk: Turning off your inner critic

We all have one - the demanding, critical and usually negative inner voice that judges our thoughts, actions and even emotions. Usually, it sounds something like, “How could you do something like that,” or “You shouldn’t…” or even “What’s wrong with you?”. Even though we all have negative internal self-talk, the intensity and frequency with which we talk to ourselves in that manner differs from person to person. Sometimes, we are so used to our negative inner talk that we don’t even notice it’s present. What we may notice instead is our mood and emotional well-being that comes from having an overly active inner critic, such as feeling filled with shame, confusion, fear and questioning our resilience and self-worth. While the inner critic may be loud and powerful, we can work towards a reset by encouraging and growing the nurturer within ourselves with self-compassion.

STEP I

Start by noticing when you are being self-critical. Whenever you experience a shift in your mood and emotions, check in about what you’ve just said to yourself. Try to be as accurate and detailed as possible by paying attention to content as well as tone of voice. Do you notice common words and phrases that repeat over and over again? Does your inner critic remind you of someone from your past that was critical of you? For example, if you said something that you regret to a friend, does your inner critic say things like, “How could you say something like that,” “What is wrong with you,” “You’re a terrible person” and so on? Try your best to become aware of your inner critic and how it sounds.

Then, try to soften the inner critic by engaging with it and responding with self-compassion. This may sound something like, “I feel so overwhelmed and insecure when I think like that.” This is mindfulness. It focuses on how it feels when your inner critic is active and helps us recognize that our negative inner thoughts are hurtful, disproportionate to the situation and extremely unhelpful.

STEP II

Reframe your inner critic's thoughts into more balanced, positive and friendly ones. There are various ways to do this, but you can start by imagining how you would respond to someone that you care about (e.g. friend, parent, child) if they were in the same situation as you. What would you say to them? Generally, the way that we comfort and show up for others is much kinder, warmer and more supportive. Try to channel that in the way that you speak to yourself. You may also find it helpful to come up with a phrase that you connect to that would help you express kindness towards yourself when you need it most. Lastly, try to think of examples from your own life when you lived out the positive characteristics that you are trying to remind your inner critic of. For example, if your inner critic is telling you that you are a bad friend for saying something that you didn’t mean and regret, try and remember times when you were a good friend. What did that look like?

STEP III

Remember that your inner critic is different from self-accountability. When we talk about turning off our inner critic, we are not also talking about turning off our inner accountability. It is possible to have one without the other. Self-criticism tends to attribute mistakes to permanent personality and character traits, whereas self-accountability requires accepting responsibility for personal actions by objectively reflecting on what went wrong in a given situation. In the example above, rather than telling yourself that you are a terrible person for saying something you didn’t mean to a friend (self-criticism), you could reflect on what happened and how you plan to show up next time you are in a similar situation (self-accountability). In this way, you are separating who you are from what you did, while also creating space for reflection on your actions, behaviours, and expectations so that you can make amends when needed and create more effective plans for the future.

STEP IV

Establish reflection practices that will help you stay on track and practice your new self-compassion skills. This can look like journaling, talking to yourself out loud, reading, talking to a friend or family member, or going to therapy.