3 Simple Steps to Silencing Your Inner Critic

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From Medium:

During a recent creative strategy session, I witnessed what psychologist Carl Jung referred to over a century ago as “an inner critic or judge who immediately comments on everything.”

I had given a team of young executives a thought challenge as a right-brain warmup exercise. Although they were unsuccessful in landing on the elegant solution within the time allotted, one individual pulled me aside during the session break to tell me, rather sheepishly, that the solution had immediately popped into her head, but she hadn’t raised it with the group.

I was keen to know why she had remained silent.

“It just seemed easy and obvious,” she began, “but I’m not very good at these kinds of things, so I figured my idea was too simple, and couldn’t possibly be right. I almost said something, but the stress got me.”

She had rather tragically surrendered to her inner critic, and in so doing squelched her creative instincts to the detriment not only of herself, but also her team.

Nearly everyone has experienced this inner critic, and there is a good reason for it: scientists now know the neurochemical reaction that triggers it is integral to the adrenalin-fueled threat-protection system in our brain which not only governs our fight-flight-surrender response but also enables us to learn from our mistakes.

Think about the first time you experienced the emotional sensation of stress from being socially rejected or ridiculed: you quickly learn to fear and thus automatically avoid similar and potentially stressful situations of all kinds.

But while the threat-response allows us to learn from mistakes and keeps us feeling safe, secure, and certain, it can go too far. In fact, fMRI studies have shown that our threat-protection system is triggered even when there is no actual external threat, but just us being self-critical. Researchers at Kingsway Hospital in the UK concluded that if we are overly self-critical, we may attack ourselves, put others down, or seek some form of escape to, as they put it, “flee from the knowledge of our own faults.”

. . . .

But while neuroscience may have the explanation for our inner critic, and for what I experienced in my creative strategy session, it does not seem to have a fix. One does exist, however.

. . . .

Step one is for her to first realize that she had already made an unwarranted assumption when the solution popped into her head: that something bad will happen if she shares it with the team. In this case, that bad thing is rejection.

Step two would be for her to then come up with a few reasons why her idea might not be rejected: her team may have misunderstood or misinterpreted the problem, her team was suffering from groupthink, the idea simply hadn’t dawned on anyone else yet, or they just plained loved her solution immediately.

Link to the rest at Medium

13 thoughts on “3 Simple Steps to Silencing Your Inner Critic”

  1. What a load of crapola.

    You might be able to silence your inner critic, but you can’t silence the critical impulse in others; just wait and see what they’ll be saying about your book in their Amazon and Goodreads reviews.

    • I think it just means you don’t want to be worrying about the critics while you’re writing the rough draft. Put those fears aside. Finish the draft. Edit it. Publish it.

      Once it’s on Amazon and Goodreads, you really don’t want to be looking at reviews (except to check for patterns). The truth is: it will never appeal to everyone.

      You will have someone hating the story for the exact reason that another person loved it. The goal is to find the readers who love it and give them more of it. 😀

      Whatever you can do to silence the critic and get to The End, is well worth it.

      I’m just not sure these tips were as specific or as helpful as I’d hoped.

      • These tips brush the basics of the mindfulness training I’ve received as a mental health patient. The essentials of mindfulness as described by the mental health care community are:

        1) Taking note of when your thoughts turn negative, and what those thoughts are. Hey, I’m assuming they won’t accept my suggestion because it’s too simple a solution.

        2) Analyzing the negative thought in order to identify the negative emotion prompting it. I’m thinking this because I’m AFRAID that my suggestion will be rejected out of hand.

        3) Redirecting the negative thought/emotion with a positive thought or affirmation. While my suggestion may not be THE solution to this problem, it also may LEAD TO the proper solution.

        This is of course a very simplistic view of the process. There are a number of books that teach mindfulness, which the layperson can purchase or possibly check out from the library. It takes practice and dedication to learn, but it is possible, and it does help someone break free of the negative emotion/thought cycle.

  2. Now, military training of any kind isn’t for everybody, but the US Navy’s basic training taught me a lot about myself. In particular, it taught me to respect myself. I still get the critical voice nagging at me on occasion, but it got a lot quieter over the duration of my basic training.

    I’ve since realized that, for some people, as with me, silencing the critical voices, especially in interpersonal relations, takes a good lesson in self-respect. When I learned to see myself as worthy of others’ respect and as a worthwhile person, my inner critical voice got a lot quieter. How that self-respect is gained doesn’t matter, only that it is gained.

    Oh, my mom thinks I’m still too reluctant to speak my mind, but she doesn’t seem to realize how much more outspoken (compared to pre-Navy AEP) I am these days. I just prefer to pick my battles, mostly so I won’t trigger my mild anxiety or a public bipolar temper tantrum.

    But, for me, self-respect was the key, and I don’t think I’m the only person for whom that’s true.

  3. The advice in this article is much better than the usual “ignore the negative thinking and push on” advice many writers suggest. Maybe that negative thought is irrational, but it’s really a good idea to check and make sure rather than attempting to operate without any critical thought whatsoever. It might be that engaging in this manner will lead to a cycle of self-delusion, but at least it should cause deeper, rational thought, which may lead to more thoughtful work.

Comments are closed.