How to Silence Your Inner Critic

I tell my clients that we are our own worst critic. We are far more critical of ourselves than others. We are also more critical of ourselves than of others. In this blog, I will share four ways I help my clients work on decreasing their inner critic voice while increasing their inner coach or cheerleader voice. The first way is teaching my clients how to practice meditation and gratitude. The second, is having my clients treat themselves as their best friend. Third, is helping them to stop comparing themselves to others. Fourth, is helping them learn how to practice self-compassion. 

Practice meditation/gratitude: 

We cannot change what we are not aware of. Becoming aware is the first step in the process of silencing our inner critic. Meditation can help us to practice mindfulness which helps us to be aware of our thoughts before acting on them. Mindfulness can also help us to change our thoughts which helps us to feel empowered. Being mindful is an important skill that will help us separate our thoughts from facts. When we have a negative thought about ourselves, we often believe it as a fact. Being mindful can help us to challenge our self-critical thinking. Gratitude is also an important skill in helping clients manage their inner critic. We are often so focused on the negatives, our problems and shortcomings. We fail to recognize our strengths and values. Gratitude can help us to remind ourselves of the things that we are grateful for. 

Treating ourselves like our best friend: 

Something I ask my clients when they are struggling with their inner critic voice is what would your best friend say? What are positive messages others have said about you that dispute the negative belief about yourself? Often, we find it easier to say nice things about others and we are most critical of ourselves. The practice of treating ourselves like our best friend helps us to practice being kinder to ourselves. For example, treating our bodies like our best friend. We support our friends, give them compliments, care for them, show them compassion and give them space when needed. So why do we engage in doing the opposite with our bodies? 

Stop comparing yourself to others: 

While treating our bodies like our best friend can be a helpful comparison, we often compare ourselves to others in ways that are not helpful. I tell my clients instead of comparing yourself to others, compare your progress from where you started to where you are now. We can always find someone who has something that we may not have, may be “better” at something then us or has something we value. If we continue to compare ourselves to others, it makes it difficult to accept ourselves for who we are. Comparing ourselves to others can lead to an increase in poor self-image, negative self-talk and increase our inner critic. 

Practice self-compassion: 

We all have problems and imperfections. The sooner we accept reality the sooner we can accept ourselves. Having difficult emotions, shortcomings, problems and imperfections is a part of being human. When we accept this, it allows us to move forward on our self-compassion journey. When we avoid and ignore our imperfections, we are sending the message that we need to be perfect. I tell my clients perfect is subjective. Our idea of perfect can be different from someone else’s. Perfect is not a thing. Therefore, there is no true definition of perfect. One skill I teach my clients to work on increasing self-compassion is using non-judgemental statements. 

If we are not aware of our thoughts, if we are not grateful for what we do have, if we make excuses for treating ourselves poorly, if we do not acknowledge when it’s okay to put ourselves first, if we continue to compare others to others and if we don’t treat ourselves with self-compassion, we will continue to struggle with our inner critic.