This video is a follow up on my video
on signs that your inner voice is too critical.
Today I'm going to talk about how to turn your inner critic
into an inner coach.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and I make mental health education videos.
Your inner critic holds you back by over focusing
on faults and failures and making you dislike yourself
and doubt your judgment.
The process for getting past this
involves recognizing your overly critical thoughts,
challenging the reality of those thoughts,
and reframing the thoughts into ones that are supportive
and help you expand and grow.
There are lots of overlapping psychological concepts
to this idea,
but a similar concept
is called the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset.
With a fixed mindset,
you're focused on the problems and the failures.
It's like you hit a dead end.
If something didn't work out in your favor,
that's the end of the story.
With a growth mindset, you take the failures
and try to find a way to adjust the situation
in a way that may work better for you
or use the failure or obstacle as a jumping off point
to help you do something similar but different.
It's called growth because the process usually involves
learning something new, accepting a different perspective,
or allowing your mind to be changed
about how you approach something.
You allow for things to be in a gray area
and not insist on them being black or white.
It's okay to be gray.
Now, everything can't be positive.
There is a normal amount of criticism that's realistic.
Recognizing and purging unhelpful thoughts
or correcting mistakes is a normal part of growth,
but what makes someone's inner critical voice
overly harsh and rejecting?
As with a lot of things,
our early childhood experiences shape how we think,
what we value, how we interpret and react to things.
If you had a harsh and overly critical caregiver
and the criticism wasn't balanced
by praise and encouragement,
you can internalize their rejecting comments
and make them your own.
So when you do something
where you feel you don't measure up,
it's like you hear what your caregiver would've said to you.
Things like,
- [Speaker 1] "You're not finished with that, are you?
You're not going to leave it like that."
- [Tracey] You may hear that when you think
that you've finished with something,
but you question if it's good enough.
Or you could hear,
- [Speaker 1] "You'll never amount to anything
if you don't pull it together and work harder."
- If you internalize that script,
you can underperform by not trying very hard with things,
because why bother, you don't have what it takes anyway,
or you might as well save yourself the trouble.
The way to work through this
is to reflect on your early life experiences.
And this will be a great thing to write in a journal,
so you can workshop it.
Some of these questions require some deep thought
and you may need to come back to it later.
Or something may pop into your head
when you're doing something else,
and if so, just jot it down maybe in the notes app
of your phone and then transfer it later to your journal.
So start by thinking about the people
who you were close to and looked up to.
It may be more than just your parents.
It could be older siblings and relatives.
It could be teachers in fact.
Then think about situations where they said things
that made you feel bad about yourself.
What did they say?
Did you hear some of those things over and over again?
Which statements hurt more?
Write down these statements.
Do any of these sound like things
that you say to yourself now?
You may think, well, I don't say this.
I hear my mom's voice telling me this.
Well, that may be how it's coming across,
but really now it's your thought disguised
as your mother saying it.
You've owned it as something you believe about yourself.
Another way to recognize some of these thoughts
is to pay attention to when you downplay things
or minimize things.
Let's say you get recognized for something that you did,
and instead of glowing in the praise and enjoying it,
you say to yourself or aloud,
- [Speaker 2] "It's only because I had a lot of help
from other people."
- [Tracey] Or-
- [Speaker 2] "I only accomplished this
because I didn't have much competition."
- Write down these discouraging statements.
Do they sound like something that was said to you
or that you heard from others?
I said that you can internalize caregivers criticism,
but you can also mimic the behavior of your caregivers,
even if they didn't direct
their own self-criticism toward you.
It's contagious.
You can learn to respond this way
by watching them respond this way.
Next, you want to look at your statements.
And this is a list that you can add to at any time
that you recognize other discouraging thinking patterns.
Recognize that you are not your thoughts.
You want to observe the thoughts as merely an observation
about a situation and not a declaration of fact.
And this is called metacognition,
when you objectively think about your thoughts.
Ask yourself, is the thought helpful or hurtful?
Sometimes criticism promotes progress
because you get a chance to prune away behaviors
that don't serve you,
but things like-
- [Speaker 3] "I'll never be able to get what I want."
- Is not helpful.
It's too absolute and involves fortune telling.
You may not be able to get a specific thing
that you want at the moment,
but you can work toward getting something else
that brings you joy in the end.
Next, you want to show yourself kindness and compassion.
And one way to do this is to talk to yourself
as if you were a friend.
If your friend said the same thing to you,
what would you say to them?
Another way to support yourself
is to say what you would say to your younger self.
If you as an adult were speaking to yourself
as a child saying this aloud,
what would you say to that child to encourage them?
You have it in yourself to support
and encourage a friend or an innocent child,
so why can't you be that kind to yourself?
- [Speaker 3] Because I don't deserve
that kind of understanding.
I'm a screw up.
- Says who?
Someone long ago may have said that,
but now you're the one who's saying it.
You're keeping the party going
long after the guests have left.
The last thing that you can do to reframe
your negative assumptions and beliefs is to add the word yet
to the end of your statement when applicable.
Examples are-
- [Speaker 3] I'm not good at this yet.
Things aren't working out for me yet.
I'm not smart enough for this yet.
- What I'm illustrating to you
is based on cognitive behavior therapy.
You can do this on your own,
but it can work even better with the help of a therapist,
and it's not easy to find a therapist or even afford one.
A really good resource if you're in the United States
is the Better Help platform.
For a low monthly fee,
you get a therapist who's licensed in your state
and you can have virtual sessions and the ability
to send them messages in between appointments.
I've had patients who've had split treatment with me
and a therapist they found through Better Help.
That's actually how I first heard about the service.
They also have webinars on various topics
that you can attend to supplement your therapy.
If you're interested in this,
you can sign up using my sponsored link
for 10% off your first month.
You can also go to betterhelp.com/drmarks.
Watch this video for more
on negative stories you tell yourself
and that's followed by a video
on challenging those negative beliefs
and it comes with a free download that you can use.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.