We are all too familiar with how much influence that inner critic can have over our lives. It is one of the most powerful influences we have to deal with on a daily basis. The energy we have to exert daily can take its toll too on our mental and physical health.

Inner Critic As A Positive Support.

But just like other things that inner critic can have some positives attached to it. During our evolution it was thought to help us survive danger and it can still do so today, helping us to stay safe.

It’s when we get caught up in a negative thinking cycle things start to go wrong. We can become stuck in negative thinking patterns such as procrastination, perfectionism, or other distorted ways of thinking. This further enhances negative feelings, physical sensations and behaviours keeping us trapped.

So what can help soften that inner critic into submission?

1 Meditation Can Help.

Meditation can really help us to slow down that inner critic and start to notice what it is telling us. It allows us to take a step back for a moment. Just enough time to realize what is really going on. This of course does take practice but even a few minutes a day will help. You can try a 3 minute breather I’ve recorded a free session here for you to try. The best bit about this meditation is that you can use it anywhere.

By starting to observe how we talk to ourselves it allows us to see the patterns, the voice’s origins and also permit us to challenge that inner critic in our head. Let’s look at one CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) method that might help us move things forward a bit more and defang our inner critic.

2 Get To Know Your ANTs

ANTs or Automatic Negative Thoughts are driven by our core beliefs. I’ve spoken about how important it is we start to discover our core beliefs before. Especially if they are negative we need to start recognizing how they affect our lives so deeply.

A core belief is an idea that you hold as being true and may be based upon certainties, probabilities or matters of faith. Beliefs can come from a variety of sources such as:

1. Your own experiences or experiments (e.g. childhood, school, family, friends, neighbourhood, etc.)
2. Your cultural and societal norms you accept (e.g. religion, country’s laws or accepted norms, etc.)
3. What other people say (g. education or mentoring, peers, etc.)

When we first receive a potential belief it will remain in our minds until we accept it, or reject it. If we accept it then it is added to our individual belief system. Most of our core beliefs come from our childhood experiences unless we have taken time to question them.

Once accepted we will defend this belief, even to the point of sabotaging ourselves on a subconscious level. We will do this until we start to question the core belief again. But these beliefs are not set in stone and they can be changed.

ANTs can help us to identify not only our inner critic’s thought patterns but also the core beliefs associated with those ANTs.

3 Steps To Help Recognize Your ANTs.

Sometimes it can be easier to record your thoughts after the fact particularly in the beginning. A journal is a must for this exercise, it doesn’t matter if this is online or paper. Sometimes paper is easier as you can see everything at a glance but it’s really a personal preference.

The 3 step process:

1. Record your thoughts as soon as you can. The closer to when you are triggered the better.
2. Please be patient with yourself and observe your Automatic Negative Thoughts with as much acceptance and self-compassion as possible. This is the main goal here, being judgmental will only hinder you.
3. Reflect: Now is the time we need to reread what we have recorded and start to question and challenge the inner critic. We want to see can we find any patterns, core beliefs, memories, physical responses, emotions and behaviours we might experience. Particularly with similar thoughts and core beliefs.

We can see how something might trigger the inner critic so that when it happens in the future we get quicker at not responding in the same unhealthy manner.

Questions you can ask include:

1. What type of ANT is it? Catastrophising, all or nothing, procrastination, perfectionist, mislabeling, mind reading, etc.
2. Is it true or not? You want to put the thought on trail, challenge your thinking here but go easy on the judgment.
3. Is it helping me in some way? So is it protecting me in some way? Or does it keep a particular script going that I believe about myself or my life?
4. What is the effect of this kind of thinking? Negative thinking has unhelpful and helpful effects on us. So is it upsetting me or destructive in some way?
5. Can you identify what the core belief may be?
6. Whose tape, is it really? Who do you hear when that voice starts to go off on a tangent? It could be just one person or it could belong to many voices. When we hear that tape does it remind us of one particular incident in our lives so far or was it recorded over years?

When we recognize our ANTs and any associated core belief we can start to change them. We start by challenging them using the questioning process above but we can also add in affirmation to record a new tape. One that is less critical and healthier for us.

Just like the inner critic’s voice is a negative thought affirmations are a new positive thought.  Try to find at least one positive thought that will challenge your negative one e.g. “I will not succeed at this.” could be changed to “I could succeed if I tried”.

You need to remember that you have to practice this as it will not change overnight. It took time to build up your ANTs. So practice, patience with yourself and some time will see a big change in your automatic negative thought habits.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.