Why Your Inner Critic Doesn’t Want You To Change

The primary function of the Inner Critic (which if you’ve ever been stuck in its grip you know it takes quite seriously!) is this:

To keep you from changing

This explains why it can show up strongly in moments or seasons of transition and growth, when you are on your way to something that is really for you. The main reason our Inner Critics don’t want us to change is because for the Inner Critic what is known is always safer than what is unknown.  

A Little Background on Inner Critics:

They develop when we are  young, when often we needed them to make it in life, to gain the approval of our caregivers and learn how to operate within society. They were and are well intentioned — they want to keep us safe, they want us to “be appropriate”.  Yet, they operate and abide by the rules of the past quite strictly.

Inner Critics are absolutely terrible about tuning into the present moment and what might be good and true for you now.

While rooted in the past, they tend to throw out big concerns about the future as well, usually sternly noting that the safest way to proceed is to “maintain the status quo”, “do what you were told/taught”, “what is expected of you” or perhaps even, “you’ll never be good enough for that so don’t even think about it.” Inner Critics want you to maintain contact with history, security, culture and the past because those were the conditions where it was most safe (or perhaps where its outdated warnings were most relevant and at the time probably did keep you safe, help you gain approval and fit in).

Perhaps you’re starting to see Inner Critics aren’t the most rational creatures. Rational or not, they are very convincing and very good at making you believe that what they are telling you is absolutely the truth.

I can empathize with the Inner Critic as I want to be safe, secure and accepted as well, but we MUST remember that the Inner Critic's strategy and voice is seldom the one we want guiding us. It will act as a giant stop sign and booby trap and keep us stuck.

Also remember:  The security the Inner Critic fights for at all costs is often, if not always, an illusion. Perhaps most importantly to note is this:

In the face of the Inner Critic’s harshest warnings, we lose our creativity and ability to be and become what we’re meant to.

Inner Critics are masters at suppressing our energy so we can’t access our creativity and aliveness. Sometimes they are so constant, either quietly in the background or loudly in the forefront, that we identify with them completely. I.e. Their voice is our voice.

If I could urge you to start to practice one thing it would be this: Notice when your Inner Critic is “speaking” or “thinking” and note “Oh, that’s my Inner Critic talking”.  When you are able to observe your Inner Critic you are separating yourself from it. This is crucial because as you become aware of and separate yourself from the Inner Critic, you are creating the awareness that it is NOT you. 

The part of you that is able to observe, separate and notice the Inner Critic, THAT is you. Listen to that version of yourself —

What does it want to create? What is it hoping for?

Embracing Breakdown As Part Of The Process

Amidst change, transition, creativity and finding a new way forward it is common, natural in fact, for something to break down or fall apart.  That something that breaks down could be an idea, a goal, a relationship, a way of relating to yourself or any number of ways of being or thinking. 

It’s a very useful concept for me to remember personally and in my coaching work that:

On the way to the breakthrough, something will break down. Expect it, its normal and part of the process.

Now, take a breath, those of you who like me may have learned to avoid breakdown at all costs, for whom it may have been ingrained to avoid those kinds of feelings and in doing so developed habits of “plowing through” and “staying strong” while pushing down deeply any sense that something might need to fall apart a little (or a lot).

When I first learned the “breakdown to breakthrough” concept, it made sense and was freeing to know that breakdown wasn’t “bad” or an indicator that “something is wrong with me” but rather and simply part of the process. It certainly made sense in the context of helping other people through their processes of transition. But I confess, deep inside my internal dialogue was something like, “Okay, breakdown isn’t really necessary for me, maybe a little breakdown is okay, but let’s steer clear of the full thing.”

With time, I’ve uncovered that my resistance to breakdown was underpinned by fear, and a hidden, strongly held belief that, “Breaking down isn’t natural or normal. Breaking down is what happens when something is really wrong and I should never let it get to that point or more pointedly breaking down means something is inherently flawed in me.” 

As you might imagine avoiding and resisting breakdown is not the key to growth, nor to living fully and wholeheartedly and as I like to say, from that oh so powerful place of exactly who you are. 

Here are a few things that have helped me be more welcoming and less fearful of breakdown:

• Replacing my fear with this belief: It is totally, completely normal, natural even and part of the cycle of life to experience breakdown.

• Breakdown does not always equal crisis and total meltdown. It can be as simple as an off day reminding me to rest so the cells in my body can rejuvenate.

• Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall. My biggest teachers! They appear every year in a dependable cycle of what one could consider breakdown and breakthrough, trees shedding leaves in Fall, hibernating and resting in Winter, coming back to life and blooms in Spring and maturing in Summer. It’s also been a very helpful reminder that metaphorically one may experience all four seasons in a given week or month — this too is natural and normal, allow it.

• Compost. Sometimes things have to breakdown entirely. Like compost, they have to fully disintegrate and as they do they create nutritious, fertile ground ready to grow something new.

• Retraining myself to remember this: Life isn’t only about productivity and one breakthrough after another.

Not chasing one constant breakthrough after another has been quite freeing. It allows for sinking into and remembering that perhaps breakthroughs aren’t any better or worse than breakdowns, just two sides of the same coin. Partners, siblings, friends - each rooting for the other.

Each knowing that its turn will come and that no matter which side of the coin we happen to be on in any given moment - we are okay, we are alive.

Here’s to no longer associating breakdown with “bad” or “something must be wrong with me”, but rather with growth, with the natural and necessary rhythm of life, with rest, with acceptance and with letting go. When it shows up, I’m committed to being in it and moving through it because it doesn’t last forever and sometimes its not even as hard or painful as I’ve made it out to be. Sometimes it’s easy. And always, it’s part of the process.