How do I make my inner critic shut up?

[Kittylover]

This is something I've been dealing with for a long time . Their's a voice in my head that's always trying to find reasons that I'm bad or stupid or something....just like many adults in my life did when I was a child (my parents still do sometimes...). Anyone found a way to make that voice shut up?

[Anamiame]

ROFL!!!  LOLOLOL    (that's supposed to be the inner critic)

The other day, I was having such a hard time and felt like I had let things get out of control and needed to quit therapy and just get my old life back.  I decided to 'free write' which is closing your eyes and just writing whatever comes up. 

It was the inner critic with about three pages of nothing but pure vile and shaming against me.  I haven't gone back to look at it, but it was really interesting to see what all was there and how it just kept spewing non-stop. 

I don't know if there's a way to shut up the inner critic, but I loved your post!  Gave me a good laugh...

[schrödinger's cat]

We talked about this in a thread once... can't remember which one, sorry, but several of us do it with visualizations. So for example, you could visualize your Inner Critic as one of those hateful cartoon villains, the kind that looks a bit ridiculous. Someone said they picture theirs as a little mannikin consisting entirely of snot. And then you visualize the things that always happen to such villains in Tom-and-Jerry cartoons - a piano dropping on its head and so on. I once visualized putting all that crap in a containment chamber, then opening a wormhole that sucked it straight into the sewers of Ho Chi Minh City. That was fun.

Also, there's the sensible stuff suggested by Pete Walker here: http://www.pete-walker.com/shrinkingInnerCritic.htm

Another thing I tried is that suggested by Henriette Klauser in her book on Writing With the Right Side of Your Brain. She has an exercize in there about freewriting a dialogue with your Inner Critic (the one in charge of insulting your writing skills), and she said we must be very firm with it, reminding it that we're the boss and that such behaviour is unacceptable. That worked. Maybe that was because it was just the tiny Inner Crit in charge of my writing, not the nasty big one in charge of me. Who knows. I was so surprised when I stood up to it and it worked. Wouldn't have expected that.

[mourningdove]

So for example, you could visualize your Inner Critic as one of those hateful cartoon villains, the kind that looks a bit ridiculous.

This reminded me of a technique in a Francine Shapiro book that she calls "cartoon character." It's basically listening to what the Inner Critic has to say, but hearing it in a Donald Duck voice, or Popeye, etc. so that the ridiculousness of it sinks in.

[schrödinger's cat]

There's another method that I've used with my kids when they felt bad about themselves for no good reason (for example if someone at school had said something nasty). I got that from some book or other. So after explaining that this is like a tiny inner voice saying those nasty things to them, I pretended to catch that voice, put it in an empty jam jar, and screw the lid shut. Then we imagined that the jar had dials. You can make the little critter bigger, or tinier. You can make it louder, and you can turn the volume way down. It has buttons, and if you push them, your Inner Critic suddenly has polka dots or an elephant's trunk. That method never worked for me, but it worked excellently for my kids, so maybe it's different for everyone.

[Stella]

I've had some success with Pete Walker's idea of angering at the critic. When I realise she's going off on one I say 'Shut the f*** up, you don't get to speak to me that way anymore'.  It works quite well for me and I guess is based around the idea that the IC is my internalised mother.

But my therapist doesn't agree - she thinks my IC is my toddler self trying to protect me and so should be listened to and guided into different behaviour rather as you would teach a toddler how to behave. She feels that to bring yet more anger into the mix means all my inner dialogue is just more of the same.  Not sure what I think about this.

[no_more_fear]

But my therapist doesn't agree - she thinks my IC is my toddler self trying to protect me and so should be listened to and guided into different behaviour rather as you would teach a toddler how to behave. She feels that to bring yet more anger into the mix means all my inner dialogue is just more of the same.  Not sure what I think about this.

That's an interesting point. I'm just beginning my work at shrinking my inner critic and I'm hearing all these differing opinions and it's like, who do I listen too? I suppose what you have to do is try out an assortment of options and go with what works best for you.

[Sandals]

I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days, both from the perspective of loving the part that is criticizing you vs. minimizing it. For me, I think both are true.

I believe we need to strongly identify what these mistruths are - even recognizing that they are mistruths is a big step to take! And we need to turn those mistruths into truths that are reality. e.g. some of the phrases in my sig line. But I agree that the part of us that is saying these things still needs to be listened to and accepted while this work is going on.

When I think about how many parts of me I cut off to survive for so long, I believe it's critical for me to embrace all parts. If there's a part of me that's telling me I'm not good enough or that I deserve pain, that part is telling me that and holding that negative judgement for a reason. The talk track is wrong -- I am enough and I deserve love -- but that part needs to be healed to release the emotion that is driving that negative judgement. Is it fear behind the anger? Feeling invisible? Not worthy enough? Etc. And so what goes through my head is what can I say to that part in order to love it better.

Anyhow, I'm feeling like this is a bit of a ramble. Stella - your T sounds like a smart lady to me.

[Stella]

Stella - your T sounds like a smart lady to me.

Oh she most definitely is - I am so lucky to have found her.  I am resistant to hearing this because I find it easier to be angry with myself than compassionate and I find it really hard to be angry at my mother.  I want to be angry with her but end up being angry with myself. 

[Sandals]

Stella - your T sounds like a smart lady to me.

Oh she most definitely is - I am so lucky to have found her.  I am resistant to hearing this because I find it easier to be angry with myself than compassionate and I find it really hard to be angry at my mother.  I want to be angry with her but end up being angry with myself. 

I am exactly the same with anger & my mother. It's as if when I think about her and try to get angry, the anger just evaporates. It's really challenging and an area that I'm working on right now.

[Stella]

It's as if when I think about her and try to get angry, the anger just evaporates.

I am working on it too.  Intellectually I know that I learnt quickly when I was a baby that to feel angry with my mum was a dangerous thing to do.  But that translates into a weird emptiness when I try to direct legitimate anger towards her.  I can get angry with my son for stupid stuff but I can't get angry with her for the neglect and the abuse.  And I really want to.  Grief I can do but anger no.  Good luck with your work and please share your progress.  It's really helpful to me to find others struggling with the same issues.  It is such a long and tortuous process.

[Sandals]

It's as if when I think about her and try to get angry, the anger just evaporates.

I am working on it too.  Intellectually I know that I learnt quickly when I was a baby that to feel angry with my mum was a dangerous thing to do.  But that translates into a weird emptiness when I try to direct legitimate anger towards her.  I can get angry with my son for stupid stuff but I can't get angry with her for the neglect and the abuse.  And I really want to.  Grief I can do but anger no.  Good luck with your work and please share your progress.  It's really helpful to me to find others struggling with the same issues.  It is such a long and tortuous process.

Yes, exactly! For me, anger = physical abuse, so it's quickly redirected now.

As I work through various levels of hurt with my T, we talk about what might have happened to the people as a child that would make them act that way to generate compassion for them. She's shared with me that she finds this compassion freeing, knowing that the way that her mother treated her actually had nothing to do with her, and helped her regain self-love.

This past week, I told her that I don't think I can do that work side-by-side with anger, as I find it results in the anger being trapped and tamped down. Since high school, I have made up stories about my mom to account for her behaviour. Things like her dad had a bad temper and treated them worse, so she's doing the best she can, etc. But all of those things have just led to more repression, not release.

I don't want to end up in a place where I am trapped by anger and overall I wouldn't want her approach to be any different. But I think that maybe at this stage, I do need to see things as more one-dimensional to release that anger or it will remain repressed. And for me, that leads to things like self-harm.

I'm chatting with my T on Saturday, so may have more to share after that. Thank you for sharing back, it is extremely helpful to not be alone in this.

[Stella]

I agree - I cannot feel compassion for what led to my mother's actions and anger at the same time.  In fact I'm pretty sure that this dynamic is what caused me to be stuck in denial for so many years.  She had such a terrible life that I couldn't see that she is responsible for how I am.  It had to be down to someone else (her parents, my father, me).  But I believe now that I need to process all of my anger and pain before I can feel compassionate towards her.  Maybe one day I will but maybe not.  I understand where your T is coming from and that it helped her to see that it wasn't her fault.  But I know now it wasn't my fault and I want to redirect all the anger I have been giving to myself to where it belongs.  I don't want to confront my mum (she's got NPD - it wouldn't make any difference anyway) but I want to feel it, genuinely feel it. 

It sounds to me like you have a very good handle on where you are and a great relationship with your T so that you can talk to her about what works for you and what doesn't. I hope it goes well on sat.

[Boatsetsailrose]

Thank u for this post - I really like the make inner critic into a cartoon character - and am going to try this

I never found the getting angry with it works - getting angry and processing yes
My inner critic is so damaging and isolating

Here is a link I have been meaning to look at

http://www.compassionatemind.co.uk/downloads/training_materials/3.%20Clinical_patient_handout.pdf

[Kizzie]

Great thread Kittylover!  I really like Milarepa's approach - she wrote a recovery letter to hers thanking it for protecting her as a child and telling it could rest and take a less active role now that she (adult her) was in charge.  I also love the idea of giving it a cartoon voice or something equally silly - my IC would love that! 

I know what you mean Sandals, I wasn't able to get through the anger and feel compassion or understanding toward my NPDM (and other PD FOO) at the same time. I had to let myself (my IC?) feel the anger (wasn't allowed to express anger as a kid, gave it a good shot as a teen and paid dearly for that,  and mostly stuffed it down as an adult but it kept popping out of course).  Whenever I read something about forgiveness or compassion, I would cringe inside and feel lots of shame and guilt, but at the same time I would feel angrier because it felt like I was being invalidated.  Very confusing!   

Eventually I gave up on working on the two at once, have gotten (mostly) through the anger and grief, and seem to be arriving at a sense of compassion and understanding.  The abuse was about me or rather my IC because she was traumatized by FOO who should have loved her (thus anger and grief are very appropriate), but it was not really about me in the sense that my PD FOO were/are broken because of their own trauma (thus I can begin to feel some compassion and understanding which is freeing in the sense that it was not really about me being unlovable or bad).  Does that make sense?  It was a hard place to get to but that's what it feels like has been going on.