“I don’t like myself very much today.”

I was in the supermarket the other day and spotted a cute toddler running at top speed through the aisles, trailing her jacket, shoelaces dangling. And behind her panted her mother, trying to catch the little escapee, and calling out anxiously, “You’re going to fall!”

I thought: That’s interesting. The mother doesn’t want her daughter to fall. That’s the last thing she wants. Yet she seems to be predicting exactly what she doesn’t want. I started noticing that a lot of the time we say what we don’t want as if it is certain to be true, as when the traffic slows to a halt and you say to your partner, “We’re going to miss the show.”

This odd way of speaking is especially characteristic of the voice inside us that gives us a hard time, sometimes known as “the inner critic.”

It says things like, “You’re going to fail,” and “No one will want what you have to offer.” Could it be possible that this inner criticizing voice is saying what it doesn’t want, what it hopes is not true?

I’ve been interested in this inner criticizing process for a long time. I used to have a vicious inner critic that kept me constantly in doubt about my own self-worth and value. My journals from my early 20s are full of sentences such as, “I don’t like myself very much today.”

One memory is of the time my new friends Danny and Jane invited me to share a home-cooked meal in Danny’s communal apartment. I really wanted them to like me, wanted to belong, wanted to fit in. Not being a shy person, I had a great time chatting and joking with them while they chopped vegetables and cooked rice. When the food was served onto the narrow kitchen table, I happily dug in and began to eat. But instead of eating, my two friends reached out for each other’s hands and mine, in order to say a New Age blessing. I felt a hot wave of shame wash over me. How could I be so stupid and insensitive as to start eating before the blessing? I burst into tears. Kindly, they took time to listen to my feelings, and to assure me what I had done was OK. It was a while before I calmed down enough that we could eat our dinner.

It’s clear to me that my friends weren’t critical of me. They were accepting and kind. It was a process inside of me that brought the shame and the tears. Over the years, working with Barbara McGavin, I’ve come to understand that an inner criticizing part is often operating around situations that connect with unhealed trauma. I didn’t just want my friends to like me, that day. I wanted them to treat me differently from how I was treated by the cruel kids at school in my childhood.

The result: a part of me so anxious that I would be rejected that it attacked me with “shame bombs” when I did something “wrong” – something that it thought put me in danger of rejection.

I’ve come to see that the inner critic is trying to save me, trying to help me get what I need, telling me almost literally what it is afraid of and doesn’t want (“You’re going to make people hate you!”) and that it actually wants the best for me.

This is the most tragic love story on earth: That there is something inside you that wants only for you to have what you need, and it is doomed to talk to you in a voice that makes you sure it hates you.

I have developed a way of working with this inner critic (which may be a body constriction instead of a voice) so that it transforms into a form that is kinder, more compassionate, calmer, gentler. I call it “Radical Gentleness.” Life without an inner critic is indeed radically different from how it used to be! A mistake is simply a mistake. Perfection is not required – either in myself or others. It’s been a really long time since I had the thought that I didn’t like myself. I am comfortable with who I am.

On this Audio Course is an edited version of a course I taught that gives the full method of transforming the inner critic. Do join me! I’d love to be able to show you how to suffer less and enjoy life more.

Warmly,
Ann Weiser Cornell