Have you noticed how, just when you’re trying to muster a bit of confidence, your inner critic steps in and pulls the rug right out from under your feet?

Perhaps you’ve just started a new job – you’ve had a promotion or moved to a new company.  You’re doing your best to focus on how to succeed in the job and all the while, your inner critic is telling you that you don’t have what it takes, with full and vivid detail of the reasons you’re unlikely to succeed.

Or maybe you’ve taken on new responsibilities at work – they’re everything you’ve been campaigning for and you know you have everything you need to deliver and still, your inner critic is ready to wade in the minute you get what you want with objections and concerns.

It seems there’s no end to the situations in which your inner critic can find fault.  Some are in your professional life and some are in your personal life.  What’s worse, it seems that the closer you come to realising your goals, the more the voice of your inner critic is amplified.  At times, it’s so overwhelming that you’re paralysed with fear and you wonder if you’ve made the right decision.  Maybe you’ve already started to look for the sign marked “exit”.

One common approach to taming your inner critic… and why it doesn’t work

Over the years of dancing with my own inner critic and of working with clients, I have found that the most common approach to taming your inner critic simply doesn’t work.

What’s the approach?  Put simply, it’s to dismiss the concerns of your inner critic – and maybe your inner critic him- or herself – using every means at your disposal.  One way is to use rational persuasion (“You say I can’t do X but I did X last week and it worked really well”).  One way is to dismiss your inner critic with anger, hatred and disdain (“Why won’t you leave me alone?  I’m not listening to you!  You talk such rubbish!”*)  When I ask clients how well these strategies are working for them they tell me, without exception, that they’re not.

Why not?  The answer is simple.  Your inner critic is a guardian for you of particular needs.  The more you ignore your inner critic, the more he or she fears that your needs will not be met… and the more s/he turns up the volume to make sure s/he gets heard.

If you can’t go to battle with your inner critic and win, you may find that the only alternative you can find is a sense of inner collapse.  In this state, you wonder if you really should have taken on the job, you tell yourself you’re bound to fail, you find no way forward.

There is though, a way forward.  You simply need to take a different approach.

Seven steps towards taming your inner critic

Even when the voice of your inner critic is overwhelming, there are ways to move beyond fear to achieve an inner calm.  These are seven steps towards “taming your inner critic”:

• Step 1, step outside and say hello:  Have you ever noticed how, when your inner critic is active, his thoughts are your thoughts?  His fears are yours?  Especially when you’re feeling overwhelmed, it can help to step out of being the inner critic.  Step out of your inner critic – stand up and shake yourself down, for example, leaving your inner critic behind on the chair.  Or hold out your hand and look at your inner critic – and take a moment to say hello.  Your hello is a way of recognising your inner critic and engaging in dialogue;
• Step 2, get curious:  Far too often, when you do battle with your inner critic, you lose sight of an important principle – that she loves you and wants to do you good.  Your relationship with your inner critic starts to transform when you start to really understand what she wants for you, so ask her!  Keep asking (“what is it that you really want for me?”) until you get under the skin of particular strategies (“I want you to say no to the job”) to the baseline need she is trying to protect.  This is usually about safety, security… she wants to keep you safe;
• Step 3, acknowledge your needs:  When you dismiss your inner critic, you arouse his fear that you don’t care about your needs for safety and security so that he redoubles his efforts to protect you.  It helps to let him know that you, too, want to be safe.  No ifs or buts – just let him know that for you, too, safety matters;
• Step 4, say thank you:  Take time to thank your inner critic for her good intentions.  Thank her for being the guardian of your safety and security throughout your life.  If this sticks in your throat it may help to separate in your mind her good intentions and her ways of trying to meet your needs – there’s no harm in saying that you’ve really struggled with her way of supporting you and still, you’re beginning to understand how much she has always meant well;
• Step 5, notice his skills:  Your inner critic brings a great deal of skill to the task of taking care of you.  When you try to dismiss him, you’re likely to dismiss his skills… his ability to think ahead and to see all the potential pitfalls, his imagination in conjuring safe alternatives.  The more you notice and acknowledge these skills, the more you can begin to see how it might be helpful to have these skills on your team and to collaborate with your inner critic;
• Step 6, share with her your other needs:  Your inner critic may be the guardian of your safety and security but you also have other needs – the kind of needs you meet when you take on a promotion, or new responsibilities or, in your personal life, embark on a new relationship or take on a bigger mortgage.  It’s never your needs that are in conflict – only the strategies by which you seek to meet them.  So, when your inner critic has been heard, she may be ready to hear you.  Let her know what other needs you want to meet – over the years, clients have talked about freedom, autonomy, self-fulfilment, intimacy and many more;
• Step 7, invite collaboration:  When you are confident that you have heard your inner critic’s need for security and that your inner critic has also heard your wider needs, ask him if he would be willing to collaborate so that you find ways to meet all your needs.  When you hear a yes, you have reached a point of departure – a moment where creativity begins.  At this point, you have moved from struggle into a creative embrace of “how can we collaborate to make sure all our needs are met?”

In truth, these steps are not so much about “taming your inner critic” as about building a different relationship with the guardian of your safety and security.  And it is a relationship rather than a once-and-for-all way to rid yourself of fear.  One implication is this – that the more you learn to engage in constructive dialogue with your inner critic, the more you can work with him or her to balance your need for safety with other needs.

(*And in case you’re reading this and looking over your shoulder – pretending you don’t talk to yourself in this way – well, I want to let you know that in my experience, we all do.  Healthy people have a rich inner community of parts, including their inner critic.)

When does your inner critic shout the loudest?  And what has worked best to help you to move out of overwhelm and into inner calm?