Make peace with your inner critic

In the stories I listen to, I can see how the difficulty of finding joy and satisfaction in life is often linked to the words we tell ourselves.

Words such as ‘Why did you do that?’ ‘You are a bad person’ ‘No one wants to talk to you’ ‘You are not good enough’ ‘Nobody cares about you’ ‘Nobody loves you’ ‘You will never achieve anything in life’.

That negative voice inside our heads, that judges, criticises, or demeans us, is our inner critic. The inner critic plays a critical role in how we see ourselves.

The inner critic originates from childhood experiences in which we witnessed or experienced unpleasant attitudes toward ourselves or people close to us. We then unintentionally and subconsciously accepted and integrated this pattern of negative opinions towards ourselves.

When we fail to recognise how the inner critic affects us, we enable it to influence our behaviour. It may negatively affect our achievements or relationships, keeping us from living the lives we desire and becoming who we aspire to be.

We may find that there are times when it is difficult to deal with our inner critic, or maybe we just don’t know how to, and this may lead to feeling ashamed and doubting ourselves.