We all know that hearing those negative thoughts about ourselves is very hard. And they can get louder when life is stressful and busy. But it turns out that a lot of us are very familiar with our critics to the point that we have a hard time distinguishing them from our true selves.
According to an interesting article in psychalive.org, Dr. Robert Firestone says that we all have a “real self” and an “anti self”. The real self is the part of us that is self accepting, and life affirming, and the anti self is self hating and suspicious.
The “anti self” is expressed as our inner critic, constantly finding mistakes in everything we do, limiting our potential, and affecting our motivation. Making progress with the goals we set for ourselves can become challenging when we give the inner critic too much credit.
First we have to understand why this inner critic voice arises in the first place. One possibility is that reoccurring stressors or repetitive outside critiques can influence our internal dialogue. The article mentioned above refers to the four steps of differentiation that we can take to conquer the inner critic.
The first step is to break the negative thoughts we internalized about ourselves. This can be done in many different ways, such as voice therapy. Listening to those thoughts, acknowledging them as they are, and then responding to them with a more compassionate, encouraging and positive idea of the self is how voice therapy works. It is recommended when doing voice therapy to write things down. For example drawing a table of the inner critic’s thoughts and your positive response to them.
The second step of differentiation is to challenge the behaviors the inner critic may be contributing to. For example, if you are trying to focus on studying for a major exam but find yourself giving up easily, that could be a pattern the inner critic excites by saying something like “oh, you are never going to do this anyway….”. This requires a lot of change and actively challenging this thought.
The third step is to give up the defenses that the inner critic made us build. Those defenses may involve something like being too closed off or too private, or using procrastination to justify negative behaviours.
The fourth step is figuring out our own beliefs and values. So after we have shed all the negativity that the critic built, we can begin to decide what our real worth and value is.
The above four steps are definitely easier said than done. Sometimes we only realize the distinction between the true self and the critic when life challenges us greatly. But it is worthwhile to consider starting the battle with this negative energy and gaining more insight into its dynamics early on.
With final exams coming up, I just wanted to wish everyone good luck, and I hope we all are able to push through by believing in ourselves and in how great we can be.
Written by Maryam Alsadiq
Sources:
Psychalive Authors. “Why do I hate myself.” Psychology for Everyday Life. Web. 30 Nov 2015.