Silencing Your Inner Critic

I’ve spent way too much time in my life listening to The Voice. No, not the TV show–I’ve spent almost no time listening to that. I’m talking about The Voice in my head. The one that tells me I can’t do the things I want to do, that I’m not capable or talented enough to pull it off. The one that tells me what I shouldn’t do, because people won’t like me. Or I’ll just embarrass myself. Or I’ll be showing the world how shallow I am.

You know. The Voice.

Psychologists call this voice the “inner critic.” No one seems to know exactly where it comes from or even when it develops. It’s probably safe to assume this voice starts taking shape around the time that we’re being taught right from wrong. As we become self-critical of our behavior, learning to do the “right” thing rather that the “wrong” thing, we learn to listen to that internalized voice and no longer need someone looking over our shoulder to keep us safe from harm.

The problem is that The Voice keeps growing in strength with every No or Shouldn’t we internalize. And there are lots of those, for each of us.

It might be easy for you to identify the voice of your inner critic. Perhaps that voice is tied directly to a specific person: your mother or father, your Aunt Lucinda, a teacher you encountered on your way through school. The Voice is more muddled for me. It uses some of the phrases I heard while growing up, some bits and pieces I heard from friends and teachers, and a few of the “rules” I most likely came across in women’s magazines.

But I don’t think it really matters where The Voice comes from. The important thing is that each of us learns how to quiet it down and make room for a more self-protective voice to be heard.

Before you can silence the inner critic, though, you have to know how it works. A few of its favorite tricks:

Personalization 

The Voice really loves to make you feel responsible for things that are in no way your fault. It does this by saying stuff like “If you’d been a better daughter, she probably wouldn’t have become an alcoholic.” The inner critic is a huge fan of making you responsible for others’ behavior.

Emotional Reasoning

The Voice really wants you to believe that “I feel X” means “X is fundamentally true and cannot be changed.” Therefore, “I feel like a terrible mother” obviously means that you are a terrible mother. Your children are destined to a lifetime of struggle. It’s completely your fault, and there’s not one thing you can do about it. Never mind that feelings pass; The Voice wants you to believe that feeling something makes it true, even when those feelings are gone.

Making Mountains

The inner critic is adept at turning your small mistakes into huge problems. “You forgot to claim that $100 cash windfall on your taxes? Well, now you’ll probably get audited and have to pay penalties and back taxes and lose your house and end up being homeless. Good job!” Even if you try to rationalize your way out of these mountains, The Voice will likely just resort to emotional reasoning.

Filtering

“What’s that? You received high marks on your annual evaluation at work? I hate to mention this, but I think there was still that one area where your boss said you could improve. Obviously, you suck.” The inner critic does a stellar job of filtering out positive feedback so the negative can shine through.

The Voice has a whole repertoire of strategies like these. Each one is specifically designed to make you feel terrible about yourself. It works differently for each person because it’s been with you for your whole life and knows exactly how to push your buttons.

So how do you fight back?

First of all, acknowledge The Voice when you hear it. Conventional wisdom tells us “Just don’t listen,” but guess what? That conventional wisdom is (at least in part) the origin of The Voice. Of course it’s not going to tell you how to shut it down.

Instead of ignoring the inner critic, talk back. Yes, I do need to improve in one area, but I’m doing well with everything else. I’m going to call that a success. The Voice probably won’t take that lightly. It’ll come back with something like “Fine, if a mediocre performance is your definition of ‘success’.” Just keep talking. Insist on your version of the story until that inner critic gives up.

Because here’s the good news: our brains are capable of incredible change, and you can shut down your inner critic altogether, if you’re consistent in talking back.  That capacity for change–also known as neural plasticity–is shaped by our attention. If you consciously focus on the positive feedback you receive and shut down The Voice every time it tries to highlight the negative, you can actually train your brain to do that automatically. Just as we learn not to think about touching a hot pan, we can train our brains to ignore The Voice.

Silencing the inner critic takes a lot of conscious effort. I’m better at doing this now than I was in my 20’s or 30’s, and in part that’s because I have more ammunition to fight back with–but I still fall prey to its tricks now and then. The best that any of us can do is take charge of the conversation The Voice is so eager to begin.