Banish Your Inner Critic

by Denise Jacobs

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Imposter Syndrome And Creative People

Imposter Syndrome is that inner voice telling you that your work is not good enough or, even worse, that you’re useless as a person.

Self-criticism can really put (and keep) us down.
Suffering from ‘imposter syndrome’ is common among most of us.
Even with those people where you least expect it, they often suffer from some form of self-criticism.
Creativity comes from relaxing self-evaluation and self-judgment – and the self-criticism and self-doubt that result from them.
Feeling like an imposter can impact one’s ability to be creative or try things.

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Replace Self-Criticism With Self-Compassion

Instead of applying self-criticism, we need to actively practice the opposite: self-compassion.

Self-compassion is realising that self-criticism is the enemy and then acting to reverse its negative effects. Self-compassion also helps to unlock creativity.

The two components of self-compassion:

Making a conscious effort to stop self-judgment.
Actively comforting ourselves, the same as we would do with a friend in need.

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Recognizing The Inner Critical Voice

Awareness of your inner critical voice is crucial. This then enables you to see your critical thoughts for what they are: thoughts.

Being more aware of what your brain and mind do when sensing a potential threat in the form of being judged and receiving criticism will encourage the development of a calmer part of the mind.

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Cognitive Distortions

There are a number of so-called cognitive distortions that are relevant to the Inner Critic:

Mental filters, or selective abstraction.
Tunnel vision.
Magnification and Minimisation or binocular trick.
Overgeneralizations
Jumping to conclusions
Mind reading or hunches.
Pessimism and catastrophizing a given situation by imagining the worst.
Emotional reasoning.
Thinking in All or Nothing terms(Black or White)
Ignoring positive aspects of a situation
Thinking everything is our own fault
Mislabeling of characterizations

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Seeking Positive Confirmation

The good thing about negative confirmation bias is that it can be flipped to create a positive full-filling prophecy too.

Rather than walking around in a perpetual state of feeling that no one believes in you, you can be on the hunt for support. Take confirmation and use it as a force for good to seek out positivity rather than negativity.

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Awfulizing

Something happens and we imagine the absolute worst. Our mind plays tricks and we start ‘awfulizing’.

To stop this:

First, on a piece of paper or in a journal, write down and answer the question: What I am afraid will happen?
Next, write down a response to this question: What could happen?

If we actively apply realistic optimism, looking at the facts of the situation at hand without embellishing or minimising them, we can avoid a ‘spiralling’ effect.

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Living With Criticism

There are a number of valuable tips to help you learn to take criticism well and use it to get better at whatever you are doing:

Breathe.
Detach from the situation or event mentally.
Listen actively.
Get specific demands and relevant, constructive criticism.
Discover new perspectives.
Be curious.
Grow.
Learn in real time.

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From Stagnation To Action

Letting go of our preoccupation with the trajectory of other people’s lives, we can transform our envy from a stagnant, blocking force into a powerful motivator for growth.

The tools and ideas above help us reframe our self-criticism; seeing critical thoughts for what they are and combating them with compassionate thoughts.

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