The Inner Critic and the Inner Child

Most of us are pretty well acquainted with the inner critic, the one who says (to me), “Your writing stinks. You’re not good enough. You’re not a loving person. You don’t have enough friends.” That inner critic voice is usually installed early in life and can sound remarkably like our parents.

It's the inner child who hears these voices, of course, because she is small and vulnerable. The inner child cringes and cowers when the critical voices come out. Lately, as I work on the ending of my memoir or recovery from incest, the critics are out in force, telling me I can’t put this out in the world—“It’s too personal. Too biased. Nobody wants to read it.”

When my critics come out, I write for my sanity. I spill out what they are saying, keeping writing without stopping, elaborating and filling it out until I get to the core, the meanest part. This is hard work. I ask where the voice came from—is it my mother’s familiar criticism, or my father’s, or perhaps a teacher’s voice?

Then I sit with my inner child and tell her, “Nope. It’s not that way. They used to get the final say, they criticized you like that. But now I believe you and I care for you. They don’t get to talk to you like that now.” I remind the child that these adults had their own hurts and limitations that made them small and sometimes cruel.

The inner child is engaged in an intimate and difficult wrestling match with the inner critic and needs all the help we can give. We need to push back against the old parental voices and install new supportive ones.