Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!

Like many of us I have an active inner critic. It's that little voice in my head which tells me that what I’m doing isn’t good enough. Sometimes it wants me to work harder to make things better. Sometimes it tells me I may as well give up because I’m useless at this and I always will be.  

It's not uncommon for people to come to therapy for help with an inner critic. On the one hand they want to move past the times when this little nag on the shoulder leads to becoming frozen, endlessly procrastinating and generally not getting stuff done. On the other hand, clients are often fed up with their own tendencies to get stuck in the things they are trying to do and to some extent agree with the inner critic’s haranguing.  

In therapy it can be helpful to get these polarised positions out in the open and generate a dialogue. This might be giving voice to a critical part which thinks that the client is not working fast enough and being lazy. Laziness was a source of shame and to be avoided at all costs.  A procrastinating part hears this and lets us know that it puts things off because it’s scared of getting things wrong. Getting things wrong was also a source of early shame.  

In this scenario I asked the client to mediate between the two parts like a kind parent might with two agitated children. The parts were able to see that they were both worried about the same thing. This helped them to agree to co-operate more with the critical part dialling down its criticism to allow the procrastinating part more space to get on with the task without fear.   

Instead of following the urge to silence or get rid of an inner critic – it can be helpful to get to know it, understand what drives it and bring it into the team in a helpful way. Critical parts can offer the motivation and attention to detail we need. This only works if we can move towards improvement without shaming ourselves. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!