4 Ways To Embrace Your Inner Critic

Instead of finding a way to quieten or banish the inner critic, I want to show you four ways to embrace it.   Why?    Because your inner critic is a part of you.   It’s the part of you that developed beliefs from your perceptions of your life’s challenges.   

And although challenges cause tension, without tension there is no growth.  

Your inner critic points you to your soul growth, to your inner north star, your full potential.

When you lean into the inner critic you find it’s wisdom and you uncover your power.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a motivational theory developed by a guy named Maslow that is used in psychology and argues that as individuals not only do we aim to have our basic needs met, but that as humans we are constantly striving to find our purpose in order to give meaning to our life.

1 To satisfy your basic needs and in order to develop a good foundation to build on, you can look at your beliefs around issues such as trust, belonging and how safe you feel in the world.  

Your relationship with trust starts to form from the time you are born, because as a baby you rely on others to provide for your every need.    Mother is associated with this stage of development and its at this time you develop mother issues based on your perception of your relationship with her.   

Belonging is another foundational need we all have.  Your beliefs around whether or not you feel like you fit in have a huge impact on many areas of your life.  

If you feel that your needs were not met in any of these areas then your inner critic will confirm stories to you like “I don’t belong”, you will hold beliefs that you don’t trust yourself, and while these may be unconscious, listening to the true essence of what your inner critic says allows you to soften into the healing work that needs to be done to transform them. 

2              The next way you can lean into your inner critic is to develop a practice of self-acceptance.   There is no one who can do things the way you do them, they can try and copy you, but they are not you.    You are unique.   When you follow your bliss, that which brings you job, your energy comes from a more magnetic place than what the inner critic tells you, “I am not good enough, smart enough etc”.      

Fear of rejection in relationships can stop you showing up real.  Self-acceptance calls for you to be who you are and not who you think the other person wants you to be.   If you change yourself to please them, there is a price to be paid.    You are disowning your own unique self and the relationship is conditional, not on your needs but on theirs.    Balanced relationships require that there is room for growth for both parties.  If one party starts to grow more than the other in a particular area, leaning in to what your inner critic says will make conscious your beliefs around how you have disowned parts of yourself for another.       

3             When you second guess yourself and swallow your words down, you give your inner critic voice.  You give your power away to this voice, you sabotage yourself and shut down progress.     

Leaning into where you don’t express yourself freely or assertively will support you to build trust in yourself so you can give expression to your own voice.  

4             Open up to receiving what you need.   If you say “No other ever supports me” lean into this and become present with what support you need.    Are there areas of your life where you are not supporting yourself?   Have you build a wall of mistrust of people around you where no one can get in?  

Support comes when you have open lines of communication, when you are assertive as to what your needs are and what you will not tolerate.   

If you feel misunderstood go under this belief to reveal the efforts you have made to make yourself heard.  Break down invisible walls of silence that may have built up bringing stalemate into your relationships.   

If you have stated your needs and the situation has not changed, then you may need to surrender to what this is telling you.    

If you come across a pattern that is so old that you don’t know when it started, then it’s time to question the validity of what the inner critic is stating.   Perhaps you need to communicate the unspoken, those words that have been quashed down for too long. 

Most importantly, stay present to the inner critic, so you know what patterns need to be shifted in order to take back the pieces of yourself that have been imprisoned for too long.

Until next time,

Dolores Andrew