I think my inner critic is alive

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I also wanted to add that your dream makes me think of the Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Leguin. There is a "thing" that is "hunting" Ged, a shadow-being that escaped from the netherworld when Ged opened a passage to impress others of his abilities. The thing tracks Ged throughout the third book and it is not until Ged finally decides to stop running and face this thing that a resolution becomes possible. The Hunted must become the Hunter.

Your dream made me think of that. And in my opinion, this appearance of She is a big step forward. She has now come to full consciousness. You can interact and try different things. You have made a step forward, even if you don't know how to satisfy or satiate She. You can now work on it consciously. That's really great!

[NarcKiddo]

Aphotic, I took a quote from Dollyvee's journal where she explains John Bradshaw's definition of criticism and the distinction between that and "feedback". In my opinion, anyone who uses language like "Your art is awful, those lines are so sloppy" is clearly not using healthy language and the intention is not positive.

Thank you for sharing those methods in tackling the inner critic. So far I've been trying the Pete Walker method, of telling my inner critic to go suck an egg, heh. However a problem with that is that I have difficulty in deciphering what actually is the inner critic, or is it a genuine healthy criticism? Like, take for example: "Your art is awful, those lines are so sloppy." Is it the inner critic? Or is my lineart genuinely sloppy and I need to produce more care and time for my work? After all, critiques and reviews are how we improve, is it not? So how to differentiate the good (constructive) critique from the bad? I haven't figured that out yet...

He [John Bradshaw] says that criticism is the way to interpersonally transfer shame onto another person and makes the distinction between feedback (feedback is high quality sensory based observation without interpretation) and criticism (a subjective interpretation based on one person's experience and grounded in that person's personal history. As such, it is not very useful).

I agree.

However, if we are used to being very mean to ourselves then of course it is possible that the line art could indeed be improved. The critic has simply reverted to habit and expressed this in a nasty way. Everyone in my art class has many occasions of saying a particular piece of their work is rubbish, or ruined or whatever. We are lucky to have a teacher who will not put up with that sort of negativity, but equally she will not inject false positivity by saying a piece of work is marvellous. She asks the person what they were trying/hoping to achieve. She then asks them why they think they have not done so. She then points out the aspects of the work that she thinks help them in their aim. She then points out the aspects of the work she thinks are good or work for her as a viewer of the art regardless of the stated aim. Then she discusses with them how they could have done things differently or could now tweak the work so that it gets closer to what they wanted.

If we are going to work from the premise that there are no bad parts and/or that the inner critic has our best interests at heart even if they are really mean about it then maybe the approach of my art teacher might be something to consider when dealing with the critic.

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