There is an Australian pyschotherapist called Russ Harris. My T had recommended I try some of his mindfulness cds. I did some research on his and this is his website:
http://www.actmindfully.com.au/
From his website, I joinged his mailing list and the following article was in his most recent email. I thought some of you may relate to this article and find it useful.
The 'Inner Critic'
The 'inner critic' is a popular term for that voice in our head that just loves to criticize us. (I once asked a client, ‘Have you ever heard of “the inner critic”?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve got an inner committee!’)
You’re undoubtedly familiar with this voice. What does your mind say to you when you catch sight of yourself naked in the mirror, or you yell at your kids, or you say something embarrassing at a dinner party, or you screw up at work in front of all your colleagues, or you relapse into that old habit you thought you’d broken, or you get rejected or ignored? Does it judge you as fat/ stupid/ incompetent/ lazy/ old/ boring/ unlikable, or something similar? Does it compare you harshly to others? Does it start telling you the ‘I’m not good enough’ story, or the ‘I can’t do it’ story or the ‘I don’t try hard enough’ story?
If we’re repeatedly screwing up or making mistakes or indulging 'bad habits' or living inconsistently with our values, then harsh self-criticism is unlikely to help us improve or change. Usually, it just makes us feel bad about ourselves. For effective change, what we need is compassionate, non-judgmental reflection on what it is that we're doing, what the consequences are, and how we might do it better (if that is possible). Unfortunately our inner critic doesn’t realize this. Its strategy is always the same: pull out the whip and give us a good lashing. But if beating yourself up was a good way to change behaviour, wouldn’t you be perfect by now?
While I frequently come across articles claiming to teach us how we can ‘silence the inner critic’, I have never heard of a human being that has actually managed to do this. Such articles usually rehash the conventional wisdom: think positively, tell yourself positive self-affirmations, and challenge, dispute or push away negative thoughts. Unfortunately, these popular strategies do not work; no matter how much you try them, they will not silence the inner critic. (At least, not for long).
Let’s face it: one of the favourite past-times of a normal human mind is to judge and compare. And our mind never runs out of material to work with. There is a near-infinite number of jobs, houses, incomes, bodies, faces, relationships, or lifestyles that our mind can compare to and judge as better than our own -- and then go on to beat us up for not being better or achieving more.
Trying to silence the critic usually just pulls us out of our life and into our mind; we get so caught up in challenging our thoughts, or reciting positive affirmations, we lose touch with the world around us. And even if for a while the critic goes quiet, it’s not very long before it starts up again.
So if we don’t try to silence the critic, what’s the alternative? We learn to live with it; and take away its power through the use of defusion. There are three basic steps to defusing the inner critic:
1. Notice it
2. Name it
3. Neutralise it
Let’s look at these one by one.
1. Notice it: The critic churns out its judgments, and if we are operating on automatic-pilot, we swallow them, hook, line and sinker. However in mindfulness mode, we are able to step back and notice our thoughts; to see that they are words or sounds in our heads. This immediately gives us a little bit of separation from those thoughts.
2. Name it: We can increase defusion from the critic by naming it. We might say to ourselves: ‘Aha! The inner critic is at it again’, or ‘Aha! There’s the Not Good Enough story’. Or we might silently label these thought processes with a single word, such as ‘Judging’, ‘Criticising’, or ‘Comparing’. We can even give it a nickname: ‘There goes Black Bob again’, or ‘Aha! Here’s Captain Critical’.
3. Neutralise it: We can increase the degree of defusion still further by taking those critical thoughts and putting them into a new context where they are ‘neutral’—nothing more or less than words and sounds, rather than messages loaded with personal relevance. For example, we might sing them to a popular tune, say them in a silly voice, draw them in a cartoon thought bubble, imagine them written in icing on a cake, paint them on a canvas, ‘hear’ them as a broadcast from a radio, or imagine them as words on a computer screen while playing around with the font, format and colour of the text.
The more we practice noticing, naming and neutralizing the inner critic, the more we will remove the power from its words. We can’t silence it, but we can learn to live with it more effectively; to reduce its influence; to take away its power. We can transform it into background noise, like the ever-present sounds of traffic or weather outside our house. It will always be with us, but mindfulness enables us to live alongside it peacefully, so we can invest our time and energy in activities somewhat more life-enhancing than fighting with our thoughts.
Cheers!
I'm OK
