Inner Relationship Focusing & Inner Critics

Have you ever felt like you just can’t do anything right? Do you say things to yourself that you’d never say to another person? It might help to know you’re not alone. We hear a lot from people who struggle with critical inner voices and we have many resources to help.

Facing the Inner Critic is a bit like doing battle with a fire-breathing dragon. It can appear fierce and destructive. It can feel like there’s a part of you that hates you. Or it can seem like a stern authoritarian that’s telling you how you should behave and feel.

But there’s a secret to the Inner Critic: No matter how fierce and stern it appears, it’s actually an anxious young part of you, and it does what it does to try to save you. It causes all that suffering not because it wants to, but because of how desperately anxious it is.

For many years we’ve been teaching this secret that Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin discovered. It’s truly life-changing.

When you can understand and treat an Inner Critic as a scared part of you, it relaxes. It lightens. It becomes an ally. It can even disappear completely.

On this page, you’ll find a collection of courses and resources to help you work with your Inner Critic.

An inner criticizing part is any part of you that believes that you or another part of you has to change in order for you to be OK.

— Ann Weiser Cornell, Radical Gentleness

Courses to Help With Inner Critics

Transform Your Relationship to Your Inner Critic

Get our free, short video course and discover a revolutionary process for shifting how you show up when your inner critic comes calling.

Sign up for our free e-course and get helpful ways to start feeling better about yourself.

Radical Gentleness

5-Module Downloadable Audio Course

When your mind is a battleground and you’ve become your own worst bully, it can be hard to find peace… Are you ready to take it easier on yourself? Make your move from self-blame to inner acceptance with the Radical Gentleness audio course!

$49.00
Loving the unlovable

Loving the Unlovable:
Transforming Shame and Self-Blame

3-Module Interactive Video Course + Community

If you suffer from shame or lack of self-love, even occasionally, this course can help you shift how you view (and how much you appreciate) the most “unlovable” parts of yourself.

$95.00
Inner Critic

Finding Freedom From Inner Critics

21 Days of Online Video Trainings + Community

Life is much harder when you have an inner critic telling you to feel bad about who you are. Learn a loving, life-enhancing way to change how you experience self-criticism so you can move forward with more confidence, self-compassion, and inner peace.

$97.00
Ann Weiser Cornell

SHIFT

Interactive Video-based Training + Online Community

This program will teach you the Inner Relationship Focusing process and how to apply it to your daily life. Learn how to pause and get a larger sense of what’s happening in the moment, bring acceptance to the things you experience throughout your day (feelings, thoughts, etc), and apply the process of Focusing to inner critics, decisions, releasing blocks, and more.

Available at your convenience as soon as you register, from anywhere you can connect to the internet.

$97.00$237.00

Articles, Tips, and Videos About Inner Critics

Tips to help with Inner Critics and Increasing Self-Compassion and Self-Confidence

How can I use Focusing to increase my sense of confidence?

Focusing Tip #771 – Inner Relationship Focusing to increase confidence

If your doubts about your abilities are in the way of moving forward, read on…

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

“In an exercise on contacting the inner critic, I felt my inner critic as a physical sensation...”

Focusing Tip #747 – “Is the tightness in my chest a felt sense?”

Is the tightness in your chest giving you wise inner guidance? Or something else?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

If you feel that old negative beliefs about yourself are coming up more strongly now... Read on...

Focusing Tip #703 – “I struggle with feelings of failure, shame, inadequacy…”

If you feel that old negative beliefs about yourself are coming up more strongly now…

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

When You Think You're No Good

When You Think You’re No Good

Get a way to work with an inner critic when it challenges your inner peace.

Click here to read Ann’s Tip and watch a helpful video.

Do your guts twist up with shame when you make a mistake, even a very innocent one? Read on...

Focusing Tip #683 – “I made a mistake and now I feel my guts turning around”

Do your guts twist up with shame when you make a mistake, even a very innocent one?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

“It never seems to want to go past the point of letting me know that it doesn't like or respect me. ...”

Focusing Tip #663 – “Something in me doesn’t like or respect me”

Do you have a harsh inner voice or part that doesn’t like you and puts you down?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

Do you struggle with an inner critic that makes you feel like you are taken hostage?

Focusing Tip #652 – “When it’s really bad I resort to binging on sweets.”

Do you struggle with an inner critic that makes you feel like you are taken hostage?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

How can you change negative beliefs about yourself?

Focusing Tip #598 – If you have a negative core belief about yourself, how can you change it?

If you struggle with feelings like “something in me believes I don’t know anything” or “something in me believes I have nothing to say,” how do you go about changing them?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

imposter syndrome

How to be a Perfect Imposter

Are you longing to be loved for who you are instead of who you think you need to pretend to be?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

When you feel your parts have destroyed you

Focusing Tip #589 – Are you angry at the parts of you that have held you back from living your potential?

What can you do if you feel like critical parts have really been in charge of your life and you’d like some relief?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

Why ask if the answer is obvious

Focusing Tip #565 – “Do you have a hard time listening to your inner critic because you can’t hear it?”

Is it worth engaging with your inner critics when you believe you already know what they’re worried about?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.

starting over

Focusing Tip #586 – “It’s such a challenge to remake a life.”

What do you when thoughts of your dreams are crushed by critical, doubting parts?

Click here to read Ann’s Tip.