The Inner Critic - Flipbook - Page 6
And so on, an in-exhaustive list. And note, it can use rst person or second person forms.
The critical voice can also predict the future - often telling us what other people are going to think.
• If you/I go out wearing that people are going to think you/I look really stupid
• If you/I stand up and say that, they are going to think you/I haven’t got a clue
• If you don’t do that today, they will think your are/I am unreliable.
Despite the obvious ‘problem’ that the Inner Critic cannot know what other people are going to think or
how they will respond, we don’t take a moment to challenge that voice of ‘future knowing’. We simply
accept it as a given and get paralysed by it.
The voice is often accompanied by a bodily reaction.
criticised.
Think about how it feels in your body to be
Most likely you’ll notice changes in your breathing. There might be some sort of contraction; you might
notice a tightness in your chest or something in your throat. Your eyes may narrow and your jaw
clench. These are just examples – your reactions will be unique to you.
Sometimes people don’t hear a voice but instead ‘just’ feel the eects in the body.
It might also be that there is a bodily reaction preceding the Inner Critic. This can be really useful – like
an early warning signal to yourself that some harsh voice is about to show up.
These are just examples. All of this is very personal and it takes time and introspection for each of us
to learn our own unique patterns and reactions.
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