The Inner Life of the Inner Critic
All of us are familiar with the inner critic: the voice inside your head that delights in belittling, criticizing, and judging you. It’s hard to exaggerate the impact the inner critic can have on your creativity and productivity. Your inner critic can destroy your self-confidence and your career. Many skilled, successful creatives have walked away from their careers because they couldn’t overcome the unrelenting negative thoughts voiced by their inner critic.
For some, the inner critic is singular—an all-powerful presence. Others envision their inner critic as a version of Hydra, the multi-headed, serpent-like beast from Greek mythology. There are also those who hear voices from a chorus of inner critics they envision as a jury of their peers, or a bench filled with white-wigged judges.
It’s not just creatives who have to deal with their inner critic(s)—all of us, and especially those who’ve suffered early trauma or abuse, must find a way past the toxic judgements, shame, and negativity that’s the stock and trade of the inner critic.
The Seven Incarnations of the Inner Critic
Dr. Jay Earley and fellow therapist Bonnie Weiss have identified seven incarnations of the inner critic:
The Perfectionist - This critic sets high standards for the work you produce and makes it difficult for you to say something is complete and let go of it. The Perfectionist wants you to fit in and avoid being judged or rejected.
The Inner Controller - This critic wants to control your impulses (such as eating, drinking, sexual activity, and more). It lives in fear that things will get out of control. It’s harsh and shaming as it acts to protect you from yourself.
The Taskmaster - The Taskmaster wants you to work hard and be successful. It fears mediocrity and laziness. The Taskmaster doesn’t want you to be judged as a failure, but its pushing often activates inclinations to procrastinate or rebel.
The Underminer - This critic tries to undermine your self-confidence and self-esteem, so you won’t take risks. It wants you to stay small and not take chances that may lead to you being judged, hurt, or rejected.
The Destroyer - The Destroyer attacks your fundamental self-worth. It shames you, makes you feel inherently flawed, and not entitled to basic respect. This is one of the most debilitating critics, often born from early deprivation or trauma. The Destroyer is motivated by a belief that it’s safer not to exist at all.
The Guilt-Tripper - This critic is stuck in the past. It’s unable to forgive you for mistakes you’ve made or people you’ve hurt. The Guilt-Tripper holds you to your cultural, community, and familial standards of behavior. It makes sure you never forgive yourself to keep you from repeating past mistakes.
The Conformist - The Conformist tries to get you to fit into molds set by society at large or your family. It wants you to be liked and admired so you won’t be abandoned, shamed, or rejected. The Conformist fears that rebel or free spirit in you will act in unpredictable ways, so it keeps you from being in touch with and expressing your true nature.
As you read through this list did you notice how strongly the inner critics are motivated by a desire to protect us from shame, judgement, rejection, abandonment, and pain? It’s as if they are ossified versions of protective impulses that have been distorted by unrelenting fear of the unknown future.
Dealing with Your Inner Critic
It’s easy to find articles, books, videos, courses, and counselling on dealing with the inner critic—and appropriately so… An overactive inner critic can be life-threatening, especially for teenagers and young adults. Some approaches focus on diminishing the power of the inner critic, others focus on countering the inner critic with an inner champion or team of guides. These are just two examples of the wide variety of approaches you’ll find.
The idea that I want to explore here is focused on reconnecting with the original, undistorted impulse behind the fear, and using that impulse as a catalyst for further developing our creativity. To begin, I used Self-Therapy Journey’s “Inner Critic Quiz” (link below) to learn which of the seven inner critics dominate the conversation in my head (as if I didn’t already know…). The Perfectionist scored the highest.
The Perfectionist’s soundtrack includes these greatest hits:
You’re good, but good isn’t good enough for me
Try, try, try a little, no make that a lot harder
I’ve got X-Ray eyes on you and what I see isn’t good
Everything little thing you do is a mess, a mess, a mess
Many of us are all too familiar with The Perfectionist—the voice that tells us our work is never good enough, never finished, not worth sharing, and that we just aren’t working hard enough. But what is the motivation behind The Perfectionist’s criticisms? The Perfectionist wants you to avoid being judged or rejected—both of which are possible if your work doesn’t measure up.
My inner perfectionist regularly tells me that my work is sh*t, but the criticism wouldn’t matter if I didn’t love writing and hold skilled writers and well-written work in high regard. The judgements of our inner critics are always subjective. They are the byproducts of various soundtracks of self-criticism that are on auto-repeat in our head. Say them out loud and they start to sound stupid. Better yet, measure them against an externalized set of objective criteria and their power drains away. Our inner critics love the dark and the long shadows even small flaws can cast in the right light. They hate anything that enables us to test their assertions against reality.
My inner critic is happy to tell me that my work isn’t “good enough,” that it doesn’t measure up to the work of the writers I admire. I can agree and give up or ask “Why?”—a question that initiates a dialog and externalizes the criticism.
In her classic book on the creative process Becoming a Writer, Dorthea Brande devotes a chapter to helping writers learn how to be the best critics of their own work. She encourages writers to develop a healthy dialog with their inner critics, but she also advises limiting these “discussion” sessions to an hour a week—and ignoring the criticism the rest of the time. She suggests the sessions be used to formulate a set of clearly stated action items (for example, “rewrite the opening of the first chapter”) so that the dialog is focused on actionable follow-ups, not vague critiques that linger and sap your self-confidence day after day.
Chip away at the hardened shell of perfectionism and you’ll find both passion and a respect for craft. It’s not easy (or always possible) to enter into a productive dialog with your inner critic. But if you’re successful, you may connect with a new source of energy that’s nurturing, appropriately protective, and wise in the ways of the world.
Take Self-Therapy Journey’s Inner Critic Quiz to learn about your inner critic.