Transformational Tales: I overcame my inner critic (and you can too)

Detaching ourselves from the critical voice inside our head and reframing negative thoughts is crucial for our wellbeing and success. Life and behavioural change coach Angela Cox, author of You're Better Than you Think You Are, tells us how to do it.

If there’s one person who knows us inside and out, it’s the ever-present and often way-too-vocal inner critic; the nagging voice inside our head that lies in wait for the opportunity to comment on every aspect of our being.

The inner critic is particularly prevalent when we're just about to step out of our comfort zone. We've plucked up the courage to share an idea in a meeting, and as we prepare to speak, the inner critic will kick in to convince us that it’s a crazy idea and everyone will think we’re stupid. We stay silent, and as we hear a colleague present a similar concept, we feel our self-esteem take a knock.

Get to know your inner critic

Everybody has an inner critic, even those flying high at the top of their game. Its role is to keep us safe and while its intention is positive, its execution keeps us small and renders us feeling flat, fearful, and floundering. 

Training our inner critic to be there when we are in danger and to ‘butt out’ when we’re taking a risk to help us grow, is crucial. This involves detaching ourselves from the voice inside our head. Giving the inner critic a persona is useful as it means you can separate its opinion from yours. 

I call my inner critic 'Miss Meddler' and she's just like the Eastenders character Dot Cotton. I treat Miss Meddler with respect – like an elderly aunt who likes to provide well-meaning advice. I thank her for her opinion and file it in the ‘not required’ tray.

It has not always been this way for me, in fact for most of my adult life it was far from it. Miss Meddler held me stuck in a perpetual cycle of self-loathing that led to disordered eating, obesity and many unhelpful behaviours which on the one hand brought career success and on the other delivered a constant feeling of inadequacy.

Reframing success

While flying high in a career sense could be deemed positive, I now recognise with hindsight and a whole heap of self-reflection, that the version of me who created the career success wore a mask.

In removing the mask and learning to manage Miss Meddler, I have found much deeper level of fulfilment, a greater sense of wellbeing and ultimately a much higher level of success which is now defined through my own lens, rather than that of others. 

The tangibles around this include writing a best-selling book, pivoting my career, retraining, and building a business and losing weight which I have sustained for four years. 

If we take a moment to tune into our own inner dialogue, we may hear anything from “you look fat today” to “your colleagues think you're useless”. The critique is usually fiercely cutting and with zero intervention, we accept it as our truth; after all the words are coming from us, aren't they? 

Well, we wouldn’t speak to a friend in this way so, perhaps this voice is not ours after all. And herein lies the opportunity. We can decide to ignore what we hear. Yes, it is that simple. The inner critic resides in the conscious mind; an ‘anti-self ‘that aims to stop us from acting in our best interests. Knowing this gives us the power to decide what to do with the critique.

Reframing it, is in my experience, even more prevailing than ignoring it.  Saying the positive opposite, counters the inner-critic and builds our self-value. We hear “You’re so useless” and by reframing and saying, “I am confident and credible”, we change our state. 

Identifying our self-talk patterns

Honing our ability to do this ‘in the moment’ takes practice and it starts with getting to grips with our self-talk patterns. 

To do this initially, set an alarm in your phone to sound every couple of hours during the day. When you hear the alarm, think back over the previous period, and note down any negative jibes you have heard from the inner critic. 

This exercise will give you a good idea what your inner critic likes to focus on and this will raise your awareness such that you will be more likely to hear the critique in the moment. 

Steps to reframe our thoughts

Next, you can practice my STARS technique which I designed specifically to reframe thoughts. STARS is an acrostic which helps us to remember five steps to work through when countering our inner ‘Meddler’: 

• Step back

• Take a breath 

• Acknowledge how you feel

• Reframe the thought 

• Say it out loud 

The first step when we hear a negative is to change our physiology. This is the part of the process I call the step back. One negative can easily spiral into a series of negatives and by moving your body, you switch on a different part of the brain which interrupts the spiral. 

It is then important to calm down our internal system by taking a deep breath, stopping any fight or flight response which may have been triggered by the negative self-talk. The breath will bring calm and allow us to acknowledge how we feel about what we have heard. This is a key step in the process as it sends a signal to the subconscious that we are not accepting what we’ve heard and we are leaning in to how it makes us feel.

We are then primed to reframe the thought with the positive opposite of what we heard. So, for example, if Miss. Meddler says, “your opinions don’t matter” this can be reframed to “what I have to say is valid and people will want to hear it”.

To complete the process, we say the affirmational thought out loud and where this isn’t realistic (such as on a packed train) we can imagine shouting it out loud without the words actually leaving our mouth. 

Once we make reframing a habit, and counter the ramblings of our inner critic, it is remarkable how much quieter it becomes. 

Give it a go, what do you have to lose?