Should You Embrace Or Reject Your Inner Critic?

This is an excerpt of a blog comment I just wrote on a beautiful blog post. I thought it may be helpful for you. See original comment.  And please leave me a comment or send me a private message on the SelfLoveU Facebook Page telling me how this work is affecting you (I am the only one who sees it and your message will be confidential, unless you give me permission to share). I love hearing from you. It keeps me going.

Embrace the negative or eject it? I know it’s important that we embrace our whole selves, however, I feel that parts of us that are divided against the well being of the whole (even if they’re trying to protect us), should be kicked out, separated, banished, shoved against the wall, kicked to the moon.

That Imago Interject is the voice of the abuse. It’s insidious. When you are hurting inside and in pain because of something your subconscious is telling you… things you were taught about yourself as a child, under all the layers, keep repeating themselves over and over and repeating the trauma. We’re programmed to do it to ourselves. The pain our wounded child feels is the result of these false messages. It’s despair.

There is no power in despair. But, there is power in anger. Even the body response is different, more alert, upright and ready for action. Tapping into our anger inside against the false messages that are inside. Getting mad at the injustice our own hearts spew without conscious awareness. Standing up to the Inner Critic has helped me to access my own power and given me the ability to set boundaries within and without against criticism and conditional love.

My Inner Critic is never sad, confused or angry. It is just cognitively and constantly saying that I’m not good enough. It doesn’t go that deep, however, it wounds deep. My Inner Critic is not in my limbic, it’s in my Cerebral Cortex. It’s the judgment piece, which takes critical thinking, which is higher level, more cerebral than the wounds of my inner child (the emotional part).

I love the way Peter Walker, MA Psychotherapist explains how to deal with the inner critic. I’ve read it many, many times.

http://www.pete-walker.com/shrinkingInnerCritic.htm

Once I started rebelling against the negative inner voices, I stopped hurting. There was no hurt in that area for the inner child to be hurt. It feels like I embraced the hurt not by holding onto it, but by kicking butt internally. Stopping the bleeding. Standing up to the Inner Critic has made all the difference. 1000s of little hurts, but one at a time.