Shutting Down the Inner Critic to Liberate Your True Self
Six ways to banish the inner critic, rebuild your self-confidence, and enjoy your life
Self-consciousness was once my constant companion, granting boundless hours of contemplation and self-reflection. Following this lead, I stumbled upon numerous insights, one revealing the inner critic masquerading as self-consciousness.
These insights not only led to the discovery of early traumas and difficulties in my upbringing but also pointed out solutions. My favorite is the redemptive narrative. This narrative has provided a well-lit path to salvation and self-worth.
Now, however, I am ready to clear out the role of the handy partner and shut him down. Why?
Because he has become an overly conscientious and paranoid security guard; he now voices doubts, fears, concerns, warnings, and primarily irrelevant panic alarms. In short, he is acting like an inner critic. I am ready to put him to rest. You can too.
He issues these warnings without regard to my wishes and plans. He is slowing me down and tends to fill me with bad feelings like anger, dread, and frustration.
Self-consciousness is a preoccupation with oneself. It is often correlated with self-awareness and introspection. It involves recognizing yourself about other people and the environment.
The voice of self-consciousness makes me feel unprotected and vulnerable if I don’t watch closely. I want to introduce this concept briefly before discussing strategies to deal with it effectively.
The Concept of Self-Consciousness
Self-consciousness is often associated with self-awareness and introspection. It involves a recognition of self as it relates to the environment and others. This recognition can lead to feelings of vulnerability as you become aware of your individuality and uniqueness.
In social interactions, self-consciousness can be both beneficial and detrimental. As I discovered in my case, it led to excessive anxiety and concern with how others perceived me. More importantly, it led to heightened concern with how others judged me.
But self-consciousness can also lead to empathy and understanding as you see how your actions affect others. On the other hand, excessive self-consciousness can lead to social anxiety and fear of judgment.
The research literature reports that fear of others’ judgment, also known as social anxiety, is a common concern that many experience. It’s the fear of being negatively evaluated by others in a social situation. This fear can lead to feelings of embarrassment, humiliation, and depression.
On deeper analysis, it turns out that social anxiety disorder (SAD) or social phobia is defined by an intense fear of social situations in which the individual may be scrutinized by others, i.e., judged and evaluated.
My self-consciousness accurately showed that my fear of judgment related to an underlying anxiety disorder.
SAD is one of the most common anxiety disorders, affecting between 7 and 13% of the Western population at some point in their life (Furmark, 2002). SAD is debilitating and causes significant emotional distress and functional impairment in work and social domains, including relationships (Acarturk et al., 2008).
Socially anxious individuals are not only afraid of the judgment of others, whether negatively or positively (Weeks et al., 2009), but also are harsh and critical of themselves (Clark & Wells, 1995).
Studies show that self-criticism is robustly associated with SAD, and socially anxious (SA) people demonstrate particularly elevated levels of self-criticism (Cox et al., 2004; Iancu et al., 2011).
Overcoming Fear of Others’ Judgment
My efforts to overcome fear of others’ judgment have taken the form of increasing self-confidence. I have done this through skill development in writing, cooking, and self-care.
Boost in self-confidence from these efforts has now shielded me from my inner promptings that warn of judgment and evaluation.
Other ways of boosting self-confidence can be found in this source. If you are hounded by sensitivity to others’ opinions or suffer from social anxiety, there is help from the source mentioned above.
Turning down the volume of self-consciousness and, therefore, the inner critic has many benefits: you get more freedom of action, you tend to be more courageous and adventurous, and the burden of worrying about how you will be received is less.
Strategies for Derailing the Inner Critic
I define the inner critic as the part of our personality structure that tells us how wrong, stupid, crazy, and worthless we are.
Excessive, ongoing self-criticism is useless, painful, and self-defeating. Hence, you must shut it down. How?
Here are six strategies that can help with that task.
1 — Forestalling
The failure to follow a should give the inner critic its power. A personal ‘should’ is an admonition to act in a certain way. They are just as hard on the person as on others. You feel compelled to be or act a certain way but fail to ask objectively if it makes sense. Psychiatrist Karen Horney (1939) called this the “tyranny of should.’”
One way to shut up the inner critic is to follow your ‘should,’ the directives of your conscience or inner guide. You don’t have to be a victim of the inner critic. Focus on achievement and accomplishment to forestall the inner critic. Positive outcomes always shut down the inner critic before he can launch an attack.
2 — Disidentification
Use a transformational formula to move from fear, uncertainty, and doubt to faith, assurance, and trust. The formula I used to teach sales folk how to deal with their fears was the GIRDA formula.
Goal, Incremental improvement, Reframe, Disidentification with the inner critic, and Accountability. Of these elements, disidentification was the most important for me.
You are not your inner critic. You are constituted by various selves with different agendas. No universal law says you must give your critic a hearing.
3 — Counteraction
Counter the critic with more positive thoughts that derive from past accomplishments. Tune down the negative voice by thinking of one instance in your life when you made a change that turned out positively. Record your positive ‘evidence’ by writing it down repeatedly if necessary.
4 — Normalizing
We all wind up with an inner critic as part of our ego structure. Just understanding this has been helpful for clients, who feel relieved to learn that being so hard on themselves is a natural part of human development and that they aren’t alone in having this struggle.
5 — Entitlement
Reject the inner critic by going for entitlement. You deserve what you’ve earned in life. Refuel your true self by dwelling on your gifts, accomplishments, and successes. You are entitled to be treated with respect and dignity by others. You are entitled to express your opinions and beliefs and can do this without fear of discrimination or persecution.
6 — Active Sharing
Make yourself vulnerable to others by sharing your battles with the inner critic. Sometimes, an external perspective can provide valuable insights and support. You may get aha moments when you show your authentic self to others.
Conclusions
Moving from embracing self-consciousness as a trusted partner to recognizing its oppressive role in our lives highlights the complex nature of self-awareness and introspection.
While self-consciousness can be a valuable tool for introspection, self-discovery, and empathy, it can also become a source of anxiety, self-criticism, and social fear.
I have found that effective ways of dealing with the fear of others’ judgment can be achieved through skills development and self-care.
The boost in confidence that results serves as a shield against the constant voice of self-consciousness, warning of judgment, and evaluation.
I covered effective ways to derail the inner critic and eliminate its effects. The benefits of reducing the volume of self-consciousness in action are profound. It grants us more freedom, courage, and adventure while lightening the burden of worrying about how others perceive us.
Now reduce the volume and enjoy your precious life.
Thank you for reading my story.