Once you see the critic isn’t you, the next recognition is that it isn’t an enemy either. Underneath the harshness there’s care — badly delivered, but care. If it says “be careful of that,” it’s because it doesn’t want you to get hurt. If it says “you could have done that better,” it wants you to improve. Joe calls it “really really dirty fuel,” but fuel made of a kind of love, the same imperfect love a parent or teacher had.
“It’s very dysfunctionally caring for you… it’s got love in there somewhere. Just like your parents had, there was some love.”
This lets you hold the whole thing lightly, even comically. Joe notes the critic has told you that you made 2,000 mistakes this year and yet here you are, doing fine — proof it’s not actually effective. One of his favorite responses is to tell it: “that’s a really horrible way to manage me, and I can prove it doesn’t work — you’ve been telling me the same thing for a decade and I haven’t done it.” Seeing the care behind the dysfunction, plus the comedy of obeying a tyrant you never actually obey, is what lets you out of the cage — the Wizard of Oz turning out to be a small thing behind a curtain.
“I don’t have to live in this cage that I’ve made for myself with this little tyrant in my head that I don’t actually have to listen to anymore.”
Related Concepts
- The inner critic is a survival program installed in childhood
- Welcoming the inner critic dissolves its power
- Change your relationship to the critic, not the critic itself
- Everything the inner critic says is an act of care
- You don’t need the inner critic to be productive — it drains you