Are you hard on yourself?

One of the things I succeeded at, early on in my healing journey was slowing my inner critic right down.

As part of an exercise I called ‘making my head a nice place to be’, one day I chose not to say anything mean to myself. I chose to be my own friend.

In my opinion, losing the self critique is a massively under-rated change to make, and a fairly easy win.

The self aware will often spend a long time thinking about those that gave them the harsh inner voice, and all the reasons why, and all the ways that influence still plays out in their lives; trying to unpack it and heal the pain with therapies and techniques.

The unaware don’t even realise it is a voice someone else gave to them. They just think everyone is mean to themselves and that’s a normal part of people’s lives. They don’t change it because they don’t see it as the horrible hindrance it actually is.

Either way the voice gets a vast amount of airtime from a lot of people. And it really shouldn’t.

Examples of the inner critic

Bridget Jones became a cultural icon in the 90s because she represented working women struggling with the need to be all the things women are supposed to be.

She was relatable because she was hard on herself. Her diary contained entries such as:

“Alcohol units: 5. Drowning sorrows. Cigarettes: 23. Fumigating sorrows. Calories: 3,856. Smothering sorrows in fat duvet.”

Claudine (yours truly) from the 90s when the book came out, and from 2001 when the first film came out, definitely related to her way of thinking.

I wasn’t a single woman in her 30s like Jones, but I was full of angst about getting a degree and a career and earning money and making the best of life in London, and at the same time finding reprieve from all that pressure by abandoning it all and having a few (or a boatload) of drinks. Which gave me a super angry inner critic the next morning.

Then I used to get rage at myself for wasting the day feeling awful and not having done any of my jobs. It wasn’t pleasant. Or necessary. And this was just the extreme version of the miserable voice that I constantly travelled around with, telling me I wasn’t up to scratch every goddamn day.

The internal drone some of us have, saying ‘idiot’, critiquing our body, face, finances, relationships and ability to do things correctly has served us at some point in our lives; helping us stay on the right side of unpredictable parents or teachers, and keeping us within the confines of other people’s expectations.

And then we think that we should use that critical voice throughout life to try to push ourselves forward.

All the way through Bridget Jones’ Diary (the movie), the loveable heroine is mentally self flagellating over her weight, romantic issues, career disasters and social humiliations. Her diary is more like a list of failings than a treasured keepsake.

And a whole generation of women recognised themselves in that sniping background commentary: Must do better. Must get organised. Must become more acceptable somehow.

It was funny cause it was true.

You don’t need the inner critic

The sad thing is, people think their lives might become even more out of control without the inner critic. Because they see the times they have let themselves down. They see they don’t follow through on their plans. They know they have great ideas and then forget to do anything about them.

They know they are unreliable and without cracking the whip on their lazy butt they would get nowhere.

But actually these thoughts are exactly what the inner critic (outdated voice of someone else from the past) wants.

Because when you have a critical and scary boss, you do what they say for fear of consequences.

However, the boss you would go the extra mile for is the kind, humane, reasonable boss.

So it stands to reason that a humane and kind inner voice is actually much more helpful. And motivating.

In fact, what happens when you don’t make someone feel like a piece of crap, and you see them as capable and acceptable and talented, is they rise to greater heights.

They find confidence and pride in themselves.

And that’s when they really start getting things done.

Awareness is the first step

The first thing to do is remember - your thoughts are not you.

You can watch that mean thought come in and say ‘Hi - not today thanks’.

You can consider whether the mean thought actually holds any truth.

You can wonder if your best friend would ever think such a thing of you.

You can take a step back, observe it from afar or hold it up to the light until it starts to feel a bit embarrassed it used such strong language.

You can ask it if it is actually helping you with your greater goal of making your head a nice place to be.

And when you realise (after all these years) it’s not helping you at all and you don’t actually need it, it tends to vanish.

Changing the energy

Once it has vanished, you can spend some time thinking about what the opposite of the mean thought might be.

Try to construct a kind and approving thought to fill up the space.

Sometimes these feel weird or unnatural at first. Because you aren’t used to nice words.

But the more you practice this two-step process, the easier it becomes to start believing them.

Sometimes you then remember things you forgot to give yourself credit for. Or you remember there was a perfectly good reason you ended up doing the thing you are now criticising yourself for.

It’s giving yourself grace.

And cleaning up your mental space.

The thoughts may be coming from deeper wounding, but that doesn’t mean that moment to moment you can’t start flicking the off switch.

Or saying ‘delete’.

It takes practice and consistency, but is more than worthwhile.

And the sense of relief that comes after a few days of this - when you aren’t being whip cracked every moment of your day, and the thoughts are getting slowly more weary trying to get in - is profound.

Take that easy win for yourself and start making your own head a nicer place to be.