When your inner critic is throwing a party

This might help you to move through it with a little more ease and grace

Your inner critic is throwing a party and all your insecurities are invited.

This is an awful place to be. So, here are a few perspective shifts & (thought) exercises to empower you, and help you move through this moment with a little more ease and grace.

You are NOT your inner critic

First of all, your inner critic is a mechanism that is born out of the accumulation of your past experiences; the things you had to do or be (or specifically not do or be) in order to keep yourself safe, or to receive love, appreciation and/or acknowledgement – or at least fragments of it.

It wants to help you, protect you. It wants you to belong.

Also, the words this voice uses did not originate within you. You’ve picked them up from your environment, from the verbal and non-verbal messages of your parents, your caretakers, and society as a whole.

So, you are not your inner critic, in ANY way.

Time to unlabel

This also means that what’s right or wrong, according to this voice, is completely subjective. Those rights and wrongs, those ‘‘rules’’, are just opinions - and not even yours.

The invitation here is to move away from the concepts of right or wrong, because they aren’t facts - although they certainly feel like it. They were the truth once for someone else, but that doesn’t make them THE truth.

Peeling off the labels of good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, helps us see our patterns and behaviors for what they really are: ways in which we try to get ourselves to the life we want – just, most of the time, in very unhelpful ways.

You are the sky

Talking about good and bad; mistakes do not make you a mistake. I repeat: Mistakes do not make you a mistake.

Just like you are not your thoughts, you are not your actions, or your feelings for that matter. You are that greater consciousness, the seat of your soul, the person you are at your core.

As Pema Chödrön said: ‘‘You are the sky - everything else, it’s just the weather’’. And that ‘‘everything else’’ includes, well, everything else.

A tip from the Buddha

It is said that the Buddha tried to explain how we hurt ourselves unnecessarily by judging and criticizing our feelings, thoughts, or behaviors, with the example of an arrow.

When you get struck by an arrow, it hurts, right? And when you get struck by a second one, it hurts even more. Well, the first one is out of our control – it is life happening to us.

The second arrow is in our control. This is how we react to what's happening. We can choose to not shoot that second arrow, whenever we notice holding the bow in our hands.

That’s it. You have the power to decide to stop criticizing yourself, whenever you notice what’s happening. And you don’t have to love (or even like) yourself in order to make this decision. You just need to want to stop making it worse.

You might also think about what Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Jose Ruiz wrote in their book ‘The Fifth Agreement’: ‘‘True justice is to pay one time for every mistake we make.”

Any moment is the right moment

Blaming or criticizing yourself, imprisons you in the experience of suffering - like a judge making you go to jail for the same crime, over and over again. Only you can decide to listen to that judge, or not.

You are able to stop abandoning yourself and start abandoning the stories you’ve been taught that led you to believe there’s something wrong with what you’re feeling, thinking or experiencing right now.

Every time you decide to not pierce yourself with that second (or 84th) arrow, every time you decide to turn the spotlight of your attention away from your inner critic, you act as a welcoming companion to whatever you’re feeling and strengthen the connection with your (favorite) self.

It doesn’t matter if you were painfully judging yourself for the past two minutes, three hours, four days, or five years; any moment is the right moment to decide to stop.

And whenever you’ve consciously made the decision to redirect your attention, it might be helpful to do something; something gentle and easy, to take your mind off of the words of the inner critic.

A few suggestions from me

• Ask yourself: ‘‘What if there is nothing wrong with me?’’ And try to let this question just roam around your mind or body. Don’t go looking for an answer. Just this question alone, shifts your attention toward something more helpful and plants a very self-compassionate seed.

• Or, you might place a hand on your heart, or another part of your body, to let yourself know and feel that you are still here. If this doesn’t feel feasible right now, you might just gently touch or caress a finger with your thumb. I did that for a LONG time before I was ready to give myself a hug in these difficult moments.

• Maybe you need something more light-hearted and you just do the wave. That’s great too. It’s about the message this action sends. Reminding yourself that you are separate from your inner critic, that you can decline its invitations and shift your focus. And a wave is pretty awesome if you ask me, because these small moments are definitely worthy of some serious celebrations.

The inner critic is like a phone that’s ringing. It might go on for quite a while, it might call back many times. But at some point, even if it is just for a moment, this phone WILL stop ringing.

PS. If the weather in your mind is stormy often, here are some more tips and perspective shifts that might help you soothe that beautiful brain of yours.