How To Manage Your Criticisms

The inner critic can be a very debilitating part of your personality. When a person feels incompetent, inadequate, depressed or stressed about things that should not be an issue, the inner critic often becomes a problem. It can cause a person to shut down or procrastinate, resulting in poor personal development and poor productivity. It also causes a person to over analyze and over think even the simplest things in life. In extreme cases, it can lead to depression and even suicide.


The inner critic or self-critical voice is a common concept used in many popular psychology and cognitive therapy to refer to an entirely separate sub-personality that judgments and critique a person's behavior. While these personalities are sometimes referred to as the "undisclosed inner critics" or the "dissociative inhibitors", they really fall into two main categories - a good enough personality type, or a self-critical or self-limiting type. A good enough personality type has little self-discipline and may have few redeemable qualities. In contrast, a self- critic or self-limiting personality has a lot of but often makes big mistakes. These personality types usually need some form of motivation to help them overcome their self-doubt.

Self-critical and self-negligent people tend to lack self-love, are always concerned about what others think of them, and blame themselves for failures and mishaps. They are generally more self-critical than self-loving. A self-critical or self-negligent inner critic can cause a person to shut down, procrastinate, become depressed or have difficulty enjoying life. If a person has this personality type, there are a number of skills that can be used to turn it around. One is to set up a caring committee for self, which will consist of family members and close friends.

The caring committee will provide encouragement, friendship, and support for the inner critic. Often, the inner critic can be the reason a project is not completed. The committee will get the person in the habit of noticing how he or she makes criticisms of himself or herself and then working through them. Eventually, the inner critic will fade into a non-issue. By engaging the inner critic with the caring committee, the person becomes more comfortable with accepting responsibility for his or her own actions.

Turning the inner critic off is not as simple as just ignoring it. To eliminate inner critics from your life, you must learn to listen to the voices inside your head and acknowledge what is true and valid. Doing this helps you release the critical parts of your thinking and reminds you that they aren't the key to everything. It also helps you get more accomplished because you are not interrupted by the nagging voice in your head.

Self-awareness does not mean blindness to your inner critics. You are in charge of how you see yourself, so you must learn how to manage them. Instead of focusing on how bad you feel about something, decide on whether it is good or bad and move on. A good person sees the glass as half full instead of half empty. In order to eliminate inner critics, you have to learn to let go of the ones that reflect negatively on you.

The inner critic can also be a signal that you are lacking in self-confidence. You may perceive yourself in a negative light and be preoccupied with your flaws. If you want to become a more confident person, learn to be self-confident. Remember to take things with a grain of salt and give yourself some credit where it is due. Another way to develop self-confidence is to adopt the "I'm good enough" philosophy and be your own best friend.


Developing and maintaining a healthy critical inner voice is important for anyone who wants to feel good about him or herself. Remember that an inner critic can sabotage your efforts to succeed, so eliminating it requires skill, patience, and effort. However, over time you will become more comfortable with the thought process associated with self-reflection and the critical inner voice you will have to develop in order to get rid of the negative self-talk you hear all the time.