The inner critic is that harsh inner voice that constantly judges, shames, and undermines you. It’s responsible for many forms of suffering — from low self-esteem and anxiety to relationship issues and self-sabotage. If you’ve tried to silence, suppress, or get rid of your inner critic, you’ve probably found that it only returns — often louder and more powerful. That’s because, like any disowned self, the inner critic grows stronger when pushed away.
But when you understand how the inner critic works, you realise it holds a surprising and valuable gift. Learn what this gift is and you have the key to your continued growth and healing — and to your inner critic becoming an ally rather than an adversary.
Most of us are familiar with an inner critical voice — one that judges us harshly, undermines our confidence, or leaves us feeling as though we’re not good enough.
This inner critic might show up in specific situations, or it may feel like an ongoing internal commentary — whispering or shouting judgments about who we are and how we’re doing.
Self-criticism often feels like it’s just us, and that the thoughts and feelings we have about ourselves are self-evident truths. But in reality, this voice comes from a distinct part of the psyche — a protective inner self that developed to help us survive.
Psychologists Drs Hal and Sidra Stone, founders of the Voice Dialogue method, identified this self as the Inner Critic back in the 1970s, when they discovered that our personality is made up of many distinct selves.
Most of us battle with our inner critic throughout our lives — but we don’t have to. When we understand why the inner critic exists, how it operates, and how to develop a conscious relationship with it, we can not only reduce its negative impact, but also access the hidden gift it holds.
Why Does Your Inner Critic Criticise?
Your inner critic is motivated by one thing: your safety and acceptability.
It criticises you because it believes that if you’re perfect, pleasing, or ‘correct’ enough, you’ll avoid rejection, judgment, and harm.
This drive to keep you safe is shared by all your primary selves — the parts of your personality that developed in response to your family, culture, and environment. Your inner critic supports these primary selves by keeping you within the lines of what’s acceptable.
(For more on how your personality is made up of different selves, see this page or watch this short Instagram video for a quick intro:
The inner critic absorbs messages from your environment, especially from your parents or caregivers during childhood. These messages may be spoken directly — or conveyed subtly through tone, facial expression, or silence. Over time, your critic internalises these judgments and uses them as rules for how to behave, look, speak, or even feel.
Even as an adult, when you can intellectually dispute its claims, the inner critic often feels like an all-knowing authority. It knows your vulnerabilities and triggers — and often convinces you that its criticisms reflect your ‘true’ self, making you feel self-doubt and as if you’re unworthy.
How Does the Inner Critic Develop? (With Examples)
Your Inner Critic and ‘Good’ Behaviour
If in your childhood generous and unselfish behaviour was rewarded and valued, and your caregivers expected generous behaviour from you, then every time you took the largest piece of cake for yourself or wouldn’t let your sibling or friend play with your toys, your inner critic would have noticed. It would have told you that you were not behaving the ‘correct’ way and would have admonished you about it.
It probably heard one of your parents chastising you for being selfish when not sharing or not offering to help with something. It realised that for you to be protected from their disapproval – something that would have been painful to you – it would have to get to you first so that you would behave ‘properly’.
That may have led you to feel uncomfortable each time you took or did something for yourself without considering others. And so you developed a primary self who values putting the needs of others first – the pleaser.
Later in life, this type of conditioning can make you feel self-critical even when you rightly take care of yourself and your own needs. You might get a feeling that you are not considering other people while caring for yourself.
Your Inner Critic and Rules About Appearance
Another example that’s almost universal is parents making you brush your hair before leaving for school. Your inner critic would have taken note of the required standard for personal appearance. If it heard your mother tell you that your hair is messy or that you’re embarrassing the family, your inner critic would take note.
Over time, you would have developed a rule about your hair needing to be tidy, and if you ever forgot to brush it, if a parent wasn’t around, then your inner critic would mimic them and tell you your hair was messy. Its concern would have been for you to follow the rule so that you would be acceptable.
This kind of motivation – the alleviation of anxiety about being unacceptable – is behind most of the inner critic’s original behaviour. It’s just that over time, most inner critics become so good at what they do that they just keep doing it all the time, even when we’ve left home and no longer need approval from our caregivers.
When Your Critic Becomes Abusive
Then there are situations where there’s nothing your inner critic can do to help you fit in.
When parents and caregivers constantly judge a child, even unknowingly, or project their own anxieties onto a child, then the inner critic can end up joining them.
If a parent has disowned aspects of themselves due to their own upbringing, then they’ll judge those characteristics when they emerge in their child.
The nature of what has been disowned, the depth of disowning, and the severity of consequences for expression of those energies, will effect the power of such an inner critic.
The inner critic can then become a serious inner abuser.
Change Your Relationship to Your Inner Critic
Once you understand that your inner critic is essentially trying to help you, and feels responsible for you, you can take that responsibility yourself.
When you take responsibility for your critic’s anxieties, and start to make conscious decisions about the kinds of things it’s concerned about, your inner critic will automatically become less severe.
And when it realises you’re serious about taking responsibility for its concerns, it will willingly work with you.
And that’s an opportunity to discover how you have unconsciously imbibed rules, values and behaviour patterns from your family (and society and culture) that may not be allowing you to be yourself and/or live your life the way you would like to.
Your Inner Critic’s Secret Gift
The gift your inner critic holds for you is that the content of its criticisms reveals the values and rules of your primary self system – including the ones you’re not conscious of, but that are influencing your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
Your inner critic can help you identify and see clearly the expectations you may be unwittingly trying to live up to.
So your inner critic can help you on your personal growth journey. It can help you become more conscious and grow into who you want to be.
How to Start Using Your Inner Critic’s Gift – Exercise
- Think of something you criticise yourself for.
- Consider if that thing was important when you were growing up. Did a parent have a rule about that thing? Were you ever teased, nagged, humiliated, punished, labelled about it?
- Is there a part of you now who feels it’s important for you to do/wear/become the thing your critic feels you haven’t lived up to? That would be the self who imbibed the rules and values of whoever in your childhood also held those same rules and values about the issue.
- Then when you’re aware of this part of you, consider if you agree with it.
- Try to access an opposite viewpoint within yourself to experience another perspective.
- Maybe there’s a more mature part of you who thinks this issue isn’t even important. Maybe there’s a teenage self who thinks it really is important? Maybe there’s a rebellious self with another viewpoint? Maybe there’s a younger child who feels hurt about this or who can’t see why it would even be an issue?
- Sit with however many perspectives you can muster, considering the truth of each one.
- Now you have a choice. You can go with the side that feels right to you, if that’s apparent. Or you can choose to give the issue more time and consider it further, keeping a number of perspectives in mind.
- Notice how your inner critic changes in relationship to this thing/issue as you stay with this process.
To summarise:
- Consider what you criticise yourself for
- Identify the self within you that holds the rules about this thing
- Separate/unhook from that self and find other perspectives
Related selves:
Also learn how your inner perfectionist and pusher work together with your inner critic. These three ‘heavyweight’ selves have enormous consequences in our lives.
A great way to connect with the wonderful array of selves within you, and to harness their perspectives, gifts and energy, is to read my ebook Which Self Are You?
3 Steps to Stop a ‘Critic Attack’
If you are starting to become aware of how your inner critic works but you are still having ‘critic attacks’, the following three steps will help:
- First acknowledge the criticism and say to your inner critic, ‘thank you for that information, I’ll consider it’. And then consider the criticism objectively. See if you can identify from where your inner critic got its judgement – a parent? teacher? sibling? magazine? friend? Think about why that person held that judgement. Why was it important to them. What did they fear might happen if the rule the judgement was based on wasn’t followed? Why has this become important to your inner critic? This examination will give you some distance from whatever your inner critic said.
- Now think of a time when you felt good about something about yourself – something you’ve done, made, achieved, helped others with, excelled at, or simply showed up for. Invite the feeling of how you felt at that time. Turn up its intensity with an imaginary dial and enjoy how good it makes you feel. Let it linger. Breathe in deeply and feel as though you are thoroughly immersed in the good feeling. Stay with it for as long as you can. This will help to counteract the criticism on an energetic and emotional level.
- Then decide to learn from the critic attack. Whenever a critic attack occurs, it’s a signal that you have been unconsciously following a rule system you have picked up in the past – either from your family or from the broader culture. So stop and pay attention. Question if you are living your life in the way you really want to live it. Consider if you have slipped back into habitual responses and are identifying with someone else’s rules. Set an intention to be more fully yourself and take responsibility for yourself.
If you take the above steps, your inner critic will soon become a valuable ally for your personal growth and development.
The Original Inner Critic Book
Hal and Sidra Stone’s Embracing Your Inner Critic – Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset introduced us to the Inner Critic and has helped countless people to manage this universal inner self.
Get it from Amazon here or by clicking the book cover. (I get a small commission if you purchase this book via the link here – it’s very much appreciated if you do, as every bit helps to fund this website.)
Which Self Are You?
Gain a stronger handle on your Inner Critic by expanding your awareness and understanding with this overview of 44 different selves.
This entertaining guide takes you on a journey through your selves, starting with the ‘heavyweights’ (the Protector/Controller, Pusher, Critic, Pleaser) and continuing on to the Joker, Romantic, Instinctual energies, Magical, Playful and Vulnerable Children, the Spiritual Self, Psychological Knower, and many others.
You’ll get a sense of which selves are primary in you, which are disowned, and how they all influence your life experience.
More about Which Self Are You?
Available from Gumroad, Scribd, Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords
Inner Critic Video From PsychAlive
Remember to check out my ebook Which Self Are You? to begin to connect with your different selves and their perspectives so you can more easily befriend your Inner Critic.
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