Inner critic counselling: learning to stop being so hard on yourself

You’ve sent an email to your line manager with a typo, you want the ground to open while you mentally tear yourself down.

Going on Instagram sends you into a not good enough spiral – when did all your friends become so glamorous and sorted.

Giving yourself a pep talk but it sounds more like a dark comedy roasting that you’d never say out loud to another living being.

Being so tired at work because you couldn’t sleep for replaying conversations in your head and cringing all over again.

Feeling like no matter what you achieve, it’s never “enough”

The inner critic is the internal voice that uses criticism, shame, or pressure.

Negative self-talk isn’t about making you a better person – it’s an attack.

It leaves us feeling unworthy, not good enough or not capable.

When we achieve, it whispers that this was a fluke, and if people knew the real you, you’d be found out - keeping you trapped in a cycle of working harder in the hope you’ll eventually feel like you’ve earned it.

It is the driving force behind people pleasing, perfectionism, feeling stuck as well as a source of anxiety.

Many people seek counselling for working with the inner critic when this pattern has eroded their confidence and self-esteem and they want help in untangling this destructive thought pattern.

Constant negative self-talk is our default setting

Our brains are wired to notice things that are threatening to our sense of safety, so if you feel insecure about something it’s logical that your brain highlights it in an attempt to help you adjust course and “stay acceptable”.

An inner critic quickly moves from helpful reminders to a constant barrage of negativity that chips away and your self-belief and sense of capability faster than a playground bully. I mention school days because many of these rules are so old - we began forming them so young that it can feel like we’ve always been this way.

Problems arise when we don’t pause to examine where our ideas about “acceptable” behaviour originated. Some of these rules may be outdated, harsher than necessary, and — when explored — not values you actually agree with anymore.

The beneficial effects of the inner critic

The inner critic often gets a bad rap. You see articles like “10 ways to silence the inner critic” and clients often want to get rid of it entirely. Which given the level of self-loathing it can inspire makes sense. The critic often carries a message worth hearing - a grain of truth. The issue is it’s gotten so loud and obnoxious that it’s hard to sort through everything to find what’s valuable.

Overly negative thought pattens are set in place originally to try and protect you and to help you to fit in. Evolutionary speaking, belonging to a social group was a matter of life and death and when you’re establishing your place in the world, it can still feel that way at times. The critic is often also trying to protect you from making mistakes and potentially exposing your flaws to others. What starts as minor corrections can escalate if the critic takes hold and becomes increasingly strict, this is often when people identify as perfectionist.

Like so much we do, negative self-talk has a protective intention, it wants to keep us safe. However, its intention can lead to a harmful impact where safe tips into small and stuck. This is an outdated strategy developed by a younger version of you. It doesn’t account for the resources available to you now, including the ability to change how you respond to things including your own thought patterns.

The harmful effects of an overactive inner critic

When we fall into the trap of seeing danger in everything, from saying the wrong thing, looking the wrong way and making mistakes, it can stop us from trying. We won’t begin a project so it can’t go wrong. When don’t speak up in our appraisal so we can’t regret it. And we don’t put our profile on the dating apps so we can’t be rejected.

What starts are protective caution becomes a block to anything that could go wrong. In this way it starts to colour your life and sets in place self-limiting beliefs. Then you become trapped in circular arguments created by your thought patterns that prevent you from achieving your full potential.

Conversely, you might experience the inner critic to be the driving force behind your success. The risks it highlights keeps you hustling and working hard achieving more and more. If you were to soften up on yourself, or speak kindlier to yourself, there is a fear that you will slip and the imposture in you will be revealed. Externally, other people might see you as calm and capable, little do they know that you cut yourself down with criticism that leaves you with low-esteem and shaky confidence. You might be stuck in your own loop: you’re not good enough, if you rest people will see through your act, the fact that your tired means it doesn’t come easily enough to you, other people don’t struggle like this, this is evidence your not good enough.

Many clients come to therapy feeling knotted in their own thoughts. They can feel trapped without ever understanding way. Often, at the root is circular thought patterns like these. Counselling can work as a circuit breaker, a chance to challenge your thought process and consider a more balanced perspective.

How counselling works with the inner critic

The inner critic knows all your secrets, and it knows you don’t want other people to know them. The more you feel you have to hide, the louder the voice becomes. Counselling is such a value tool in learning that sharing aspects of yourself, that you’d rather hide doesn’t equate to the end of the world. In fact, you might be able to start challenging your beliefs that those secrets you carry even need to be a secret. Like the parent shinning a torch under their child’s bed and revealing a teddy rather than a monster. Client’s often speak about issues that they have boxed off in their mind and counselling is the space where you pull the boxes out, and look inside them – you might realise that they aren’t something you need to hide anymore. If you do this work by yourself, you could miss out on the chance to have a positive experience about sharing what you consider to be unacceptable aspects of yourself in a safe environment where you’ll be met with compassion and understanding.

Working with a counsellor is helpful because they can spot patterns that might occur outside your awareness and introduce a new perspective that challenges your automatic negative thoughts. Using theoretical models and skills interventions to work with what you bring as well as an external accountability to support you in the process of making positive changes in your life.

Research into neuroplasticity has shown that the brain is continually shifting and changing. This offers hope that no matter how entrenched a thought pattern has become the brain can be changed, adapted and reorganised.

My approach to the inner critic

First and foremost, I am really curious about the message the critic brings. Have you ever had something to say, and no-ones listened, so you have to speak louder maybe using more extreme language to catch someone’s attention. Sometimes, this is what negative self-talk is like and it can respond well when we stop villainising it and giving it validation, remembering that although it feels like an attack now, its origins were protectionary.

This is how we start to change our relationship to that internal negative voice because I think it’s unlikely we will be able to remove it entirely, and it might not be beneficial to even do that. So, our best approach is to change the way we relate to it. And develop skills to soften it’s edges. I find the concept of the growth/fixed mindset can be especially helpful with the critic helping it to realise that mistakes aren’t the end of the world and encouraging self-belief in our abilities to fall down, get back up again and move towards continual growth.

How I help

Self-acceptance and self-compassion are two of the most powerful skills to develop in changing how we relate to our thoughts. Part of self-acceptance is an awareness of your starting point and that battling yourself doesn’t motivate or encourage you like you might have hoped. Acceptance creates a strong foundation, allowing you to question and liberate yourself from the critic’s default barometer of what’s fine.

And self-compassion is the key to balancing the voice of the critic, developing a strong, supportive voice that rather than want to berate you in difficult times can encourage and be kind in times of struggle. Learning how to speak to yourself in this way means that you are more likely to be able to push yourself to grow in any aspect of your life because you are more connected to your self-belief and knowing that you are OK and can cope with any outcome.

Next step

If you would like to get in touch to find out more about working together, you can contact me via email to arrange a free 15-minute call.