7 Things You Need to Know About Your Inner Critic

Meet the enemy inside your head.

“It’s not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life. It’s what you whisper to yourself that has the most power.” — Robert T. Kiyosaki

Do you judge and beat yourself up?

If the answer is yes, when was the last time you did it? Last week? Yesterday? 5 minutes ago?

We all seem to have a special talent for being hard on ourselves. The most common way for us to beat ourselves up is through our inner critic, which is that negative voice inside our heads.

It can be downright nasty and mean, and says things like, “You are pathetic!” or it can be more subtle like, “It’s not possible.”

It gets even louder when we’re going through a rough time, triggering our deepest insecurities and all we see are our faults and nothing else. For me, working from home with a toddler during a global pandemic (that doesn’t have an end in sight) qualifies as a rough time. How about you?

But it doesn’t mean we have to be a victim of our inner critic. Here are the 7 things you need to know about your inner critic, so you can come out on top instead of being always at its mercy:

1. Your Inner Critic is Not You and It’s Not an Enemy

Your inner critic is a normal and natural part of the human psyche, so when you hear its negative voice, it doesn’t mean you’re crazy.

A great way to see your inner critic is like an over-protective parent. We need to explain and ease its anxiety with kind, good-humoured patience rather than see it as the enemy and trying to fight it at all costs.

Also, guess what? You are not your thoughts or your feelings. You are so much more, and your inner critic is just a part of you, much like your inner guide and your inner child.

2. It’s Caused by as Much by Our Society as Our Biology

Our inner critic is made up of the negative messages that we’ve received throughout our life from various external sources, ranging from our family, friends and partner — including ex-partners — to the media and the broader culture.

And because we’ve received these messages throughout our lives, those messages have been internalised over time. In other words, they have become a part of us, often unconsciously. This is especially the case if we received the messages as kids because we had few filters and we trusted our parents or other caregivers, so we took everything on board.

In addition to these external messages, most of the thoughts we generate internally every day are also negative. This is due to the nature of our thoughts and our hardwired “negativity bias”.

Did you know we have up to 60,000 thoughts per day, and about 90% of these thoughts are repetitive? In other words, we are ruminating machines, and we are stuck in the same thought patterns day in day out.

Also, we have a neurological preset called the “negativity bias”. Our brains are hardwired to pay more attention and react more strongly to negative than to positive news. Good evolutionary reasons exist for this negativity bias, as negative events — pain, illness, injury, or even death — are much more costly in survival terms than positive events.

In short, good things are nice, but bad things can kill us, so we are biased towards the bad.

Combining the repetitive nature of our thoughts and our negativity bias, this means most of our repetitive thoughts are also negative. We bombard ourselves with negativity all day long.

I don’t know about you, but that’s rather depressing and it seems we’re basically living in our own private hell. No wonder we are our own worst enemy!

3. It Tries to Protect You, But is Doing a Lousy Job

Our inner critic tries to protect us from getting hurt by keeping us in our comfort zone and not taking any risks. It hopes that by so doing, we won’t make any mistakes or hurt ourselves either physically or emotionally. Therefore, it has good intentions.

However, the way it goes about trying to keep us safe — by being negative, critical, or downright mean and derogatory — is often counter-productive and ends up keeping us scared and small.

It thinks it’s protecting you from failure and disappointment by resisting change. After all, if you don’t try, you won’t fail, right?

4. It’s a Big Fat Liar, and It’s Very Convincing

It makes up stories and lies about who you are and what you’re capable of (or not), including all your perceived weaknesses, mistakes and other imperfections. And the worst part is its moral judgment and shame.

Our inner critic behaves like a broken record, latching onto our worst fears and endlessly generating negative thoughts and feelings such as “I’m never be good enough” or “I’m unlovable.”

It’s fine to think a negative thought seven times a day, but when we ruminate over it 700 times a day, we have a problem.

Indeed, the real power of the inner critic lies in repetition. Whenever we have heard, repeated and internalised the same things to ourselves so much they feel true, we stop questioning what our inner critic says to us and start believing in all its lies.

5. It Feeds on Perfectionism and Comparison

In addition, there are other factors or triggers contributing to our self-critical tendencies. We might be doing okay on most days, but when we are triggered, all of a sudden we find ourselves in a deep, dark pit of self-loathing and despair. Two of the most common triggers are perfectionism and comparisons.

First up, perfectionism. It’s the refusal to accept any standard short of perfection, often caused by having unrealistic expectations or a fear of mistakes.

Perfectionism naturally leads to self-judgment and self-criticism; when you have impossibly high standards, it doesn’t take much to fall short of those standards and beat yourself up subsequently.

Alternatively, you won’t even try because you believe you don’t have the skills or resources to do it perfectly, so why bother? And guess what? You have another excuse to criticise yourself harshly for being lazy, scared or not having “what it takes”.

So you are doomed if you try, and you are doomed if you don’t.

Then, we have comparison. With easy access to other people’s lives on social media today, we are inundated by information that has been heavily edited. We end up “comparing and despairing”, when we compare our pitiful “insides” with other people’s shiny “outsides”, and wonder why others have it all together while we fall short by comparison

Rather than looking inward and appreciating our unique talents and strengths, we look externally for validation. And when we don’t get it, we turn on ourselves with harsh self-loathing.

6. Love Your Inner Critic to Death

Your attitude — how you do things — is just as important as what you do when it comes to outwitting your inner critic. Instead of being at war with yourself, try to be kind toward yourself. In particular, forgive yourself for giving yourself a hard time (again!). Know that you did your best and let yourself off the hook.

At the end of the day, ask yourself, “Would I say this to a friend?” If not, don’t say it to yourself! Instead of being your worst enemy, make it your mission to be your best friend. We often abandon ourselves when we need to be our friend the most.

Remember, the way you treat yourself is one of the few things you control in life. There’s no reason to be anything but kind to yourself, including in the way you talk to yourself.

7. Support is Vital

“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” — Louise Hay

Last but not least, don’t struggle on your own and beat yourself up for beating yourself up! Get support, especially if your inner critic is out of control, chronic and pervasive that it undermines your self-esteem and well-being.

By the way, your inner critic may tell you that you don’t need help or that help is for losers. Just ignore it and give yourself what you need.

For once, listen to your kind and wise inner guide, instead of your anxious and neurotic inner critic.

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Annie is an ICF-certified life coach and the author of Brave Again.