Do You Bully Yourself? How to Know if You Have a Toxic Inner Self Critic.
How to identify if you have a negative inner critic.
Do you find yourself staying up at night thinking about all the ways your could have or should have done things differently throughout your day? You might constantly look for the all the things wrong about yourself, instead of celebrating your uniqueness. Keep reading to see if you have an inner self critic.
Inner self critic definition
There are many ways to understand and define our inner self critic, here are just a few ways to identify them. It can be that annoying voice(s) inside your head that constant tell you that you're not enough. It can also be identified as that "devil on your shoulder" feeding you negative thoughts about yourself. Our inner self critic is often negative, judgmental, critical, and your worst enemy.
Where does are inner self critic come from?
To make a long story short, it develops during childhood and is shaped by the people we are surrounded by including, friends, family, sports, teachers, social media and religion.
Why do we have inner self critics? What’s their purpose?
It might sound really strange, but our inner self critic is a defense mechanism we learned as children. Oddly enough, it actually protects us from vulnerability by getting us to strive for perfection and make adjustments, so we don't have to worry about disappointment or not meeting societal standards. For example, if your parents get upset because you got a B in one class, your inner self critic pushes you to strive for a better grade the next time. It motivates us to try harder or do better the next time we try something. It fuels the myth that criticism creates "stronger" people. Our inner self critic also allows us to have a false sense of control over things. What human being doesn’t want to have complete control over everything? For example, you decide to go on a first date, you feel it went really well but then they ghost you. Your inner self critic is going to tell you that you talked too much about yourself and that’s why they ghosted you; therefore, you’re in control of how the next date goes. It appears like you have control, but the reality is, they thought they did something embarrassing and that’s why they ghosted you. However, the latter situation would mean the situation was out of your control and we don’t like not having control over things.
Things your inner self critic might be saying to you:
You’re not smart enough to get that job
You can’t go out, people are going to stare at you acne
You’re going to embarrass yourself or
You’re going to say something stupid
You’re too fat to wear that outfit
You’re too old to start a new career
I suck at this…
I can’t do this…
Do I have an inner self critic?
If you felt called out or identified with any of the above, you have an inner critic. Let me help you silence your inner critic, schedule an appointment now.
