The Inner Critic

[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host, Corinne Powell.

I help people pleasers find happiness, embrace courage, and experience peace of mind through inner child healing. If you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen, I'm here to guide you along the way. In this space, you'll find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience.

We will talk all things inner wellness with spirituality interwoven at times. Being a mom to three, parenting will be a topic of conversation for sure. So happy to have you. Enjoy today's episode. 

…

Hi friends. I hope today's conversation around the critic will be helpful to you.

I've dealt with the inner critic and the outer critic all of my life long. It's a part of my process still now to quiet the voices of the critic. And I want to share with you what I've learned, and I hope it's helpful. Enjoy today's episode. 

I don't know for you, but I can say that for me, the critic has been a close companion all of my life. I wish that wasn't the case, but unfortunately, I grew up around very judgmental, negative, and extremely critical people.

They were in my family and circle of friends. I was a part of a religious community, and they were a very judgmental group of people. It was a learned behavior for me.

I became someone who was very judgmental, negative, and critical of other people. I had a harsh eye. And even though who I authentically am is not that, I actually didn't allow the authentic person that I was to really be given much of a voice.

There was a part of me that was really positive and optimistic. But then a lot of me just learned how to be the judgmental, critical person. So it was my choice, as I became an adult, to choose a different way for myself.

And in the process of unlearning and relearning things, I have become so aware that the critic was deeply ingrained in me. I have an inner critic that rages and tells me the most horrible things, but it's a voice that I learned to listen to. It's not a voice that's constantly speaking truth.

Actually, the critic normally wants to send me messages that would say the people around me dislike me, or the people around me don't have my best intention. Often, the critic is the voice of a bully, and when someone criticizes me or I hear what they're saying as criticism, it's really rough. That triggers me.

So why am I sharing all of this with you? Because I know I'm not the only one who is experiencing this. There are many of us who deal with a critic. Sometimes it's on the outside of us and their voices of people around us, and other times it's on the inside of us.

And it's that inner critic that wants to constantly tell us who we are isn't good enough, people don't like us, the world's out to get us, whatever the narrative might be, you fill in the blanks for yourself. But I've gone on this journey to learn how to quiet the critic. I've had to use thought substitution for some of the means of getting further away from that voice.

Basically, when the critic wants to say, you know, people don't like who you are, I remind myself, I take that thought, and I say some people might not like who I am, but there's a lot of people that really like who I am. Or if I hear the critic say, there you go, you did it again, you messed up, I remind that voice that I get to make mistakes, it's okay that I messed up, I'm learning, and I'm in process. So I'm actually confronting what the critic's saying, and I'm choosing to be compassionate towards myself, I'm choosing to be loving, and I'm changing some of that inner dialogue to positive self-talk.

Now this is not the only thing that I do. This is one piece of what I do. I have actually had to learn how to nurture and heal my inner child. Because I learned how to be critical, as I mentioned earlier, because other people around me were very critical. That means they were critical of me. 

So I've had to help the little girl inside of me, that echo of my past, know that who she is is good. She's allowed to make mistakes. She can learn as she goes. Even if she makes mistakes, she's still safe with me.

So my adult self has had to go back in my mind's eye and re-parent my younger self. Seeing her in memories, giving her what she needed, letting her hear the words she needed to hear, it's really healing. It helps so very much to walk through exercises like that.

And I want to share this with you so you have hope that you also can minimize the voice of the critic. Now if it is people on the outside who are critical of you, you can distance yourself. You don't need to have close connection with those critical people.

And if they're people right in your household, you can set boundaries and let them know that you will not tolerate them talking about you or talking to you that way. You're allowed to do what you need to do to protect yourself. You get to stand up for yourself and you don't have to take their bullying.

Remember the critic is a bully, whether it's that inner voice of criticism or an outside voice. So as you go through your day, if you'd like to focus on this and minimize the critic, one way to help yourself out is by becoming aware of what your thoughts actually are. What are you thinking about yourself or about life? What's your perspective? As you become aware of those thoughts, then you're given opportunity to change that narrative.

Like I said before, if a critic is going to come and say that who I am isn't good enough or what I said I shouldn't have said, then I can have a comeback. Hey, I get to use my voice. You don't have to agree with what I say.

This is my voice and my voice needs to be heard. I mean, really, when we look at it, is it just the other person that should get to speak because they think what they have to say is more important? Well, logically, we can say no, that's not true. But on the emotional level, the heart level, again, if there's an echo of our past that's showing up in our present day, it can be very easy for someone like myself, someone who's been a people pleaser, to think, oh, I just need to back down.

What the other person has to say must trump what I have to say. And I'm learning that that's not true. So I just want to mention that we are not perfect people and we will make mistakes, say things we shouldn't.

And, you know, it doesn't mean that that's okay. What it means is it's going to happen. We're going to learn from these things.

But I think becoming aware of what we're thinking throughout the day is really important. So what is it that's rumbling through your head all day long on a conscious or a subconscious level? What are you inadvertently broadcasting to yourself and to those around you most of the time? Even if it's that someone gives you a compliment and you have a comeback, almost to negate what they've said. That can be a way of sabotaging yourself.

You might be actually hearing the critic in that moment say, like, what they just said wasn't true. Like, you're not good enough. Instead, you get to absorb their compliment and receive it for yourself.

There's an opportunity to minimize the voice of the critic by actually taking what that person has said, that good thing that they've said about you, that compliment. They gave you and taking that to heart. It's through the practice of doing those things that you actually help minimize the voice of the critic.

Like I said, there's many ways to do this. One way is not going to be your only answer. And I'm sharing with you some of the ways that I walk this out and I can tell you it's had a very positive effect.

The critic used to rage all day long, all the time, and I wasn't even aware of it. I battled the critic still, but not at the same degree. Not at all.

…

[Advertisement] I want to pause from today's episode to invite you into a couple different events that are coming up. I am offering group coaching starting January 5th. There will be three meetings all held biweekly on Tuesday evenings over Zoom.

I keep my group small purposely so that you get my direct attention. In this next run of group coaching, we are going to be focusing on inner child healing, how to love yourself, and what to do with feelings of shame that may show up. But that's not it.

There will be even more conversation than that. If you're interested, but the price is too steep, please reach out and message me. I want to offer you a discount code.

Also, I want to invite you into a challenge that I am running in a private Facebook group from January 2nd through the 9th. If you want to start off your new year of 2021 with a bang, you should join my challenge group. It's a great place to just find encouragement and community.

I will be cheering you on every single day, offering you great suggestions. And if you do the things that I'm suggesting, I can guarantee you're going to find yourself changing even just within seven days. I hope that you'll check out in the show notes for more information and reach out to me if you're interested. For now, back to today's episode. 

…

Some of this, the thoughts you think about yourself, the way you perceive yourself, originated way back in childhood. As you're comfortable, you can look at what's showing up in the present day that's originated from your childhood, and then you can take care of the root system, the beliefs that were formed when you were just a kid.

I want you to know you're such a valuable person. There is so much good in you and not in what you do, but in who you are. There are abilities, talents that you have that nobody else can mimic in the same way.

And so I hope that you will start letting your authentic self, because the world needs to experience the beautiful person that you are. Go ahead and be free to be yourself. 

[Ending] I want to close out today's episode by thanking you for being here with me.

We've made it to the end, and I hope what I shared has been helpful. If there is anything I've mentioned that you want to talk about in more depth, I would be so glad to connect with you. You can always find me on Instagram ⁠@corinne_changeradically⁠, or go directly to my website, changeradically.com. Of course, within the show notes, there's other ways that you can connect with me.

And if there is someone that you think would benefit from this podcast, please share it with them. To help my podcast get more growth and reach more people, please subscribe, review, and rate it. And until next week, I'm wishing you the very best.