Hello lovely people!
Have you ever had thoughts like “I am not good enough”, “My work is bad, it is better to give up”, “people will realise I am not talented”?
The critical inner voice reveals itself in those everyday thoughts. They flow through our mind and are gone before we are even conscious of their effect (Taylor, 2020). These thoughts are quite elusive and are difficult to identify (I for once would only want to sleep or eat chocolate…). It would be very easy if we could hear Cher in our head saying “Snap out of it!”. But as we know when you are feeling down, YOU ARE FEELING DOWN. And (you might be shocked) there is nothing wrong on feeling that way J
So how can we identify when the inner critic is coming to do its mischievous nuisances?
The first indicator will be your closed ones, if people close to you keep telling you that that self-talk is not productive or that it does not sound like you then it might be that your inner critic (let’s call him Oscar) is doing all that talk.
If you have the strength, a good exercise (Firestone, L., 2013) to identify your Oscar would be to take a piece of paper and divide it in two. On the left side write any negative thoughts that have had towards yourself (e.g. My work is bad). Then on the right hand side take each of those statements and put them in the second person (e.g. Your work is bad). Read out loud the negative statements on the right. Do you get the feeling that someone is talking to you? Do you detect a sarcastic or hostile tone on them? Do they trigger more attacks?
You might have identified your Oscar (or Winifred, Leopoldo, Jean-Baptiste… you name it/her/him/they).
Let’s do a second step, let’s separate that voice and humanise it further (no need at this stage to give it a backstory, for your fun mine is an old miner from Asturias who cross-dresses on Sundays at the local pub).
Take another piece of paper and place it next to the previous one. In the next page try to think what a compassionate friend or family member (or your trusted coach, also known as me) would say that is true towards that statement (e.g. Your work has been praised by your supervisors and has been improving ever since you started). Then take all those statements and change them to “I” (e.g. My work has been praised by my supervisors and has been improving since I started).
This type of exercise is a tool you can use if you feel it can be useful. Studies find that these types of acceptance and commitment exercises can be effective by themselves or in conjunction with other active treatments (Hayes, 2006). So take this as more ammo for your personal arsenal.
And remember: accepting that you are not feeling ok and giving yourself time to process it, it is a way to protect yourself and your mental health. Just decide how much time you need more or less and get back on the horse, pony or purple sparkling unicorn to slay another day!
