I have a bully, living inside my head.
She has been part of my life as long as I can remember. In my late teens, she adopted the exasperated voice of my sixth-form English teacher, only sharper and meaner. I haven’t seen that teacher in 40 years. But this exaggerated version of her is still with me, giving a running commentary on my life.
“You silly cow!” she’ll scold. “Why would anyone be interested in your ideas? Who do you think you are? Why do you think that would work for you? That’s been done, already. Can’t you think of anything original?
“You’re too fat/ugly/old to try that. People will laugh. They’ll make fun of you. You’re too clever by half. And not as clever as you think you are. You’ll mess that up. Don’t speak up – you’ll stammer. Stay safe. Stay small.”
I think I was well into my twenties before I even noticed this voice, intruding on my thoughts, hectoring me, nagging me – and restricting me. Even then, it was a good while before I realised I didn’t always have to listen to it.
Where does it come from, this voice?
When we are young, it’s our parents’ job to keep us safe. They’re forever warning us not to run into the road, put our hands into the fire or go off with strangers. Or offering dire warnings about what will happen if we don’t eat our greens, do well in exams, or behave appropriately in certain settings.
Then there are the wider social rules we learn from our teachers, our first bosses and mentors. As well as our community, and from the culture around us. We absorb these, they become part of us – even when they’re no longer useful.
For most of human evolution, this was about survival. For thousands of years, humans relied on their tribe to keep them safe, which meant playing by the group’s rules. Break the social code, and you risked being left alone, to starve.
That risk has long since gone but it’s been replaced by advertising, social media, and a pressure to live up to impossible standards in all areas of our lives. No wonder we’ve all internalised a hectoring voice.
It takes inspiration from our outer critics
You’ll often hear echoes of family members, an old teacher or boss in your inner critic’s voice. I have friends with Ian Paisley and Billy Graham living on inside their heads, long after they’d given up their family’s religious and cultural beliefs.
So how do you deal with it? You start by separating your critic off from the other voices playing in your mind. And then by questioning its advice. Is it really true? Do you know anyone for whom it’s not true? Has it ever been wrong when telling you to hold back?
A lot of its advice is pretty useless and dated, once we analyse it. And even the act of consciously thinking about what it says – and the unkind tone it uses when saying it – helps you get some distance on it.
Sometimes I take notice of my critic, now. But most of the time, I tune her out. And with a lot of love, attention and concentrated meditation, I’ve made her change her tone a little.
We should always listen to our inner voices.
Sometimes, they’re telling us to be careful for a reason. Our intuition is telling us there’s something not quite right about a person, a job or a situation.
Or we have a nagging feeling that something we’re making isn’t quite there, that we really do need to put in some more work before we put it out there.
How do we tell the difference?
For me, that instinctive feeling that something is off tends to be a physical one: a quiver in the belly, a flutter in the throat, an urge to lean away from someone when they lean towards me to speak.
The feeling that I could do better is a niggling one, with any thoughts about it usually in my own inner voice or the voice of my grandmother, who always believed in me.
It rarely makes me feel hopeless or helpless. Instead it tends to get me going back to my desk late at night or out of bed an hour early on deadline day, to give something I’ve written just one more edit. “Come on, just have one more go at it,” this voice cajoles. “See if you can get that middle section a bit sharper..”
Your inner critic tends to be cruel.
If it’s rude, harsh or mean, and it’s talking to you more sharply and nastily than you’d ever dream of talking to anyone else – it’s your inner critic.
It tends not to see nuance.
Your inner critic is black or white, yes or no. There are no shades of grey in its world. You’re a genius, or an idiot. Stunning or hideous. A brilliant friend, or a terrible one. Your dreams are perfectly achievable, or just ridiculous.
It often comes disguised as the voice of reason
It can appear to have your best interests at heart. “You’re not ready yet,” it whispers. “You need to study/research/practice more. Just wait.”
It tries to persuade you that you’re just not good at this stuff. That you’re not musical/technical/good with money.
Or that you have to wait until conditions are perfect. Until you’ve lost some weight, had a makeover, or developed a six-pack. Until you have a bigger house, your kids are grown, or you’ve done that extra qualification. Anything to stop you trying something – and opening yourself up to the possibility of failing.
It repeats itself, endlessly
If it sounds like a broken record, it’s probably your inner critic.
It will come up with some new lines of attack every now and then. At some point it will probably stop telling you that you’re too young to know what you’re doing, for instance, and start claiming that you’re too old to try anything new.
But mainly it repeats its greatest hits, rehashing the same tired stories and objections, for years on end. It is doggedly persistent. And even though we know the fears it raises are irrational, it still has power over us. If we let it.
It can be devious
In her excellent book Playing Big, Tara Mohr calls this the one-two punch. First, it attacks you with critical thoughts. Then it shames you for having those thoughts. So it by starts telling you that everyone else in the room is smarter, more talented, better dressed, wittier and more together than you. Then it pivots to, “What is wrong with you? No one else is comparing! Just relax and get a grip..”
Ways of working with your inner critic
Name your inner critic
It can really help to give your inner critic a name, and a character so you start to see it as separate from your own thoughts, and learn to question it more. Some people like to draw or paint it, to give it a shape and face.
When I first did this, I gave her the name of the English teacher whose voice she had appropriated. But then I realised this wasn’t true: that teacher had actually been very kind, and pushed me only because she knew I could do better. Without her, I probably wouldn’t have been one of the first students from my school to go to university.
So my inner critic is an older lady called Gertrude. She wears a ridiculous floral hat and a long string of pearls that she’s forever clutching in horror and twisting in anxiety.
She means well and wants to keep me safe, but she’s of a generation of women who were taught that you do that playing small: by making yourself quiet and invisible, by going nowhere, by showing no curiosity and never taking risks.
Whenever her voice pops up in my head, I thank her for showing concern but then say, “Calm down Gertie, I’ve got this.”
Write a letter to your inner critic
Thank it for being a friend all of these years, and trying to protect you. Acknowledge its fears. Write them all down.
Then deal with the fears, one by one. Explain that it’s OK. That you are good with not being perfect. You know you’ll fail sometimes (and learn from the experience). If people laugh at you, that says more about them than it does you. You’d rather risk that than take the risk of never being fully, authentically yourself.
Tell it that you’re no longer a child, that you’re more resilient than it thinks. And gently but firmly point out that it’s no longer OK for it to talk to you in that cruel, hectoring tone.
Then put the letter in an envelope somewhere, and date it a year or two into the future. When you open it later, see if your inner dialogue has changed.
Change its voice
Over the years, I’ve given Gertrude the voice of Marge Simpson, Kenneth Williams and Alan Carr. Lately I’ve been experimenting with the voice of Frankie Boyle (which tends to get mixed up in my head with Sean Connery).
The stream of anxiety and malice just doesn’t work so well when it’s in the voice of a cartoon, a Carry On film, or an acerbic comedian mixed with James Bond.
Sit on it
Meditation has helped me with my critic, enormously. It helps you step back and recognise that thoughts are just thoughts, passing through your mind. They’re not true, necessarily. Or real. And they change, constantly.
A few years back, I dropped a glass and it shattered into pieces on the kitchen floor. Normally, my critic would have shouted, “You stupid, clumsy ****! What is wrong with you?”
Instead, I heard something much closer to my own voice: “Ah well. Sweep it up and take a break, lovely. You’re tired.”
After 30 years of squatting in my mind, it seemed Gertrude was finally taking a rest.
Sheryl Garratt is a writer and a coach helping creatives to get the success they want, making work they love. Want my free 10-day course, Freelance Foundations: the secrets of successful creatives? Click here.
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