3 Tips To Dealing With An Overactive Inner Critic

Do you have an overactive inner critic that is tearing you down, stopping you from doing things that you want, sucking the joy out of your life? This is an extremely common experience. If you have any sort of social anxiety or challenge with confidence or excessive niceness, that critic is just a tyrant in there. And you're going to learn in this video three tips to shift that to be free of that. Are you ready? Okay, the first, before you even get into the tips, the first thing you must understand, which I just shared in a previous video, is what's going on with the critic? Where is it coming from? And to sum it up in 10 seconds, your critic is a protection strategy to stop you from taking any risk in your life. If you avoid all risk, then you won't get rejected, you won't make a fool of yourself. You won't be embarrassed, you won't hear. No, you won't get hurt in a relationship, for example, or in work or putting yourself out there. Now, this doesn't really work as a life strategy because if you avoid all risk, you're going to have a very limited, restrictive, terribly painful life. That's where I lived for many years. Right. So what do we do to interrupt that, to change that? First things first. When your critic is acting up, you want to notice that it's happening, because this can be so familiar that it's just like part of your daily thought process. Brushing my teeth. I got that meeting at 9am I'm a terrible, unlovable loser. No one's ever want to be with me. Okay, I got to go pick up the kids there. And it's just mixed in there. And so you got to identify it, Right? So that's. The first part, is to identify it, know what's going on. Right? And if you don't know what's going on, it's gonna be hard to apply these three tips. Okay? So you know where your critic's coming from. You notice it when it's at being active. And then the first tip is to interrupt that sucker because all it is is a bad habit. It's just pathways in your brain that have fired off probably 700 million times and said the same thing, you know, again and again and again and again. And so you need to be able to interrupt that and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wow, that's pretty terrible. It's a terrible thing to say to somebody. And I'm. I'd actually say that out loud. If I notice that my critic is getting more and more active, I will say it out loud. Now, caveat. I don't like yell this out loud on a crowded bus, like the voices, right? I mean, you can, it could be embarrassment, inoculation. I'm talking about by yourself. And I'll be like, whoa, whoa, hold on a second here. No, no, no, no. This is especially important if your critic tends to gain steam and get more and more intense. I can't tell you how many times I've been working with people in my group programs or stuff, and they're trying to talk to their critic and their critic is saying like, you are an effing loser. You're terrible, you're fat, you're ugly. No one's gonna want to be with you. And they're like, now listen, I know you're upset right now, but. And I'm like, that ain't gonna work. That critic is coming at you like a, you know, whatever 800 pound bull. How much does a bull weigh? A ton? I don't know, a lot. A huge beast. It's attacking you and you're like, now hold on a minute. Now it's just going to bowl you over. And so you need to access your own power. Stand up tall in your own body. One of the visualizations I have for my book called On My Own side, which is all about the subject, is visualizing yourself as big and that critic is very small. And then visualizing the critic as a little kid, like a 4 year old having a temper tantrum. Instead of being some scary adult who's going to, you know, kick down the door and beat you up. So you envision yourself big and then you say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a second, hold on a second. No, no, no, no, no, no. You're not going to talk to me that way, right? So, and where this is very important, this leads into step two is you're going to start going into self soothing. That's tip number two. Now if you're really intense with your critic and you're like, no, mother, I'm going to get you back. That's not, that's not what I'm going for here. It's intensity, it's firmness. But there's a love and an authority there, right? So think of, it's like a four year old who's having a temper tantrum who wants to chase his brother with scissors. I've never seen that in real life. That's just hypothetical. That never happened in our house. Anyway, he wants to chase his brother with scissors. Look, you're not gonna be like, excuse me, can you put the scissors down, sweetie? Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no, no. Hold on. Give me the scissors. Give me the scissors. Right? There's a firmness there, but there's a love there, too. So you're not at war with your critic. You don't need to murder your critic. You need to intervene, though, because if it comes down, you know, kicks in the door and starts trying to beat you up, you need to have a level of power to stop that. Then you need to go into step tip 2, which is self soothing. So underneath the criticisms, right? The criticisms are trying to protect you from rejection, failure, pain. So that means there's fear underneath of rejection, failure, and pain. So you need to learn how to soothe yourself as you go into situations where you might feel rejection or failure or pain, right? So it's like, all right, we're scared of. Sometimes I use the term we, the royal we, right? I'm like, talking to the different parts of me, like, all right, you're scared, or we're scared of, you know, that thing not going well, the sail falling apart or losing that thing, or the presentation not going well, or you're scared of getting hurt or whatever it is. I hear you. Yeah, yeah, that could happen. You know, it doesn't seem super likely that it would happen, but it could. So let's face that. How would we handle that? Right? Look, what you say is less relevant to you're attempting to soothe and you have this ability. You know how I know you have this ability? Because you would use it with, like, a sick animal, like a puppy or a cat or your nephew or your niece, or let's say, you know, your friends are like, hey, you know, we got to take care of our 9 year old for an afternoon. We gotta go. It's an emergency. And, you know, experience with kids, and the kid's like, I don't know you. I'm nervous. You know, and you'd probably be like, hey, it's all right, buddy. You'd be a little awkward, maybe, but your intent would be to soothe, right? And you would know how to do stuff. The issue is not knowing how. The issue is that what often happens is the critic goes crazy at you and you just jump on the bandwagon. Yeah, yeah, he is terrible. Yeah, yeah, get him, boss. Right? You become like a henchman to your critic, so you got to interrupt that sucker. That's tip number one. Number two is to soothe and calm. And number three, which is my favorite number three is defiance. Defiance. Because look, at the end of the day, the critic is telling you, don't do that because you know you're too ugly, you're a loser, you can't. Blah, blah, blah. You know the best words in response to that? Watch me. And you go do it. So what do you tap into here? You tap into your courage here. You tap into that little five year old inside of you and your parents are like, you can't do that. And you're like, you know, we see this all the time with my son. One of my kids is five right now and he'll want to climb something that's like crazy dangerous. And he'll be like, you can't climb that. He'll be like, watch me. And then he'll run over and start climbing it and like, oh God, I guess I'm following up there and making sure he doesn't fall, right? So watch me. And then you go do the thing that your critic says you can't do. And then you do it again. And you do it again. So I remember when I struggled with dating and relationships, I had horrible social anxiety around especially women that I wanted to talk to for dating. And so the critics like, you're ugly. It had this long laundry list of why I couldn't date and why I would be undesirable. And it's like, don't go talk to her because she's gonna reject you and blah blah, blah. And I lived under that tyranny for man, at least 12, 13 years of completely not putting myself out there in any way and dating. And then at one point I started to defy that critic and I said, oh yeah, watch me. And I'd go over and talk to him and then I do it again, and then I would do it again and I would do it again. And lo and behold, sometimes I would get rejected, sometimes I wouldn't. Sometimes I get a date, sometimes it would lead to having a girlfriend. All these things that I wanted in my life. So what you want to create is going to require you to defy your critic again and again and again. So those are the three tips to deal with an overactive critic. Alright? You want to go through them right now, just so you're with me, if you made it this far in the video, you are obviously motivated to learn this, right? But you, which by the way, definitely check out my book on my own side because if you have not read that yet, it'll supercharge what you're learning here. And if you want to take it even one step further, check out Confidence University. You can go to my website@drizes.com and under programs or products we have Confidence University there. That'll take you in all areas of your life to the next level, including how to treat yourself and how to optimal self talk. Okay, but to quickly review, number one is you got to interrupt that sucker when it's happening. Don't just let it bowl you over. Number two, you got to self soothe. And number three, defiance, baby. All right, so share down below in the comments, what are you finding most valuable? Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.