Is the negative voice inside your head holding you back in life by filling you with self-doubt? If so, making friends with it might just be the most useful thing you ever do, writes Kellie Gillespie-Wright
The most important conversations we have each day are the ones we have with ourself. Each one of us has an inner voice that runs through our head during every waking hour; it’s part of ‘the verbal working memory system’, and it’s a crucial element of cognitive tasks such as language processing and reasoning.Most of the time, it’s useful, supportive, and concerned for your safety. Sometimes it behaves like a personal assistant, organising your thoughts, solving problems, or reminding you to do things. Other times, it can act as your own personal cheerleader, providing you with the support and confidence to make bold and dramatic moves. It can even be an ever-present nurturing parent, protecting you from danger.
But, sometimes, it becomes critical, fixating on painful emotions and reliving moments of embarrassment. And, unfortunately, that’s when you hear it the loudest; it can be hard to turn off, filling you with self-doubt, eating away at your confidence, and preventing you from reaching your full potential. When it gets out of control, it can cause havoc with your performance, decisionmaking, relationships, happiness, and health.
Jess Baker, psychologist and author of The Super-Helper Syndrome: A Survival Guide For Compassionate People (The History Press, £18.99), explains further: ‘Everyone has an inner critic, but some are more sensitive to theirs than others,’ she says. ‘And when there is more risk of failure, such as starting a new job or a new relationship,the volume of the inner critic increases and similar themes emerge: not trusting ourself to make the best decision (which can lead to procrastination); negative appraisal of our appearance (“I wish my nose was smaller”); harshly judging our personal qualities (“I should be a better friend”); and belittling our lifestyle (“I should be earning more”).’
Sound familiar? When you stop to think about it, you may recognise your inner critic as a perfectionist (‘Try harder’), or a taskmaster (‘You’re so lazy’). Perhaps it’s an underminer (‘Don’t even try, because you’ll fail anyway’), a guilt-tripper (‘How could you have done that?’), or a conformist (‘What will other people think?’). Or maybe it’s a controller (‘You have no willpower’), or a destroyer (‘You’re worthless’).
Your inner critic can be pretty harsh, so it’s no wonder we wish it would shut up at times – but it’s tenacious, and taps into our most damaging thought processes, such as black-and-white thinking, over-generalisation, disqualifying the positive, self-blame, and catastrophising. Although there’s nothing we can do to stop those t
