We all have a voice in our head
that makes judgments about any given situation.
Sometimes a judgment is helpful,
because it helps us escape harm or avoid mistakes
but sometimes the voice is harmful
when it's overly critical by putting you down
and making you doubt yourself.
That's what I'm talking about today.
Seven signs that your inner critic is too harsh
and making you feel hostile towards yourself.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks a Psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
Number one, you're never satisfied with your work.
You have a perfectionistic tendency
and you set unrealistic goals.
When you're working on something,
you may find yourself saying, is that it?
Are you really done with this?
No matter how hard you try,
you can't seem to be content with your work.
You're always finding faults and ways to improve
which can lead to feeling like you're never good enough.
Number two, you dwell on your mistakes.
Everyone makes mistakes, but when you're too self-critical,
you dwell on them long after they've happened.
You might even beat yourself up over small slipups
that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Number three, you spend a lot of time comparing yourself
to others.
When you're too self-critical,
you often find yourself comparing your own work
or abilities to others.
Even if the person to whom you're comparing yourself to
hasn't even achieved as much as you have,
you still find a reason why
they're at an advantage over you.
For example, suppose people praise you
for doing really good work,
by seeing the big picture of things
and helping people organize
and you think, well, that's nice
but seeing the big picture hasn't earned me more money.
Nancy, who's not good at planning and seeing the big picture
got promoted over me.
So for you, being good at planning
still leaves you feeling unfulfilled.
Number four, you blame yourself
for all the negative things that happen around you.
You spend a lot of time deconstructing events
and see your actions
as the reason that something bad happened,
even if there's five degrees of separation
between you and the negative outcome.
Even if you acknowledge to yourself
that you really are on the fringe of the blame
and not directly responsible,
you still over focus on your shortcomings
and the role that they played
and what you're doing here is magnifying
your contribution well beyond what it actually was.
Number five, you don't try hard for things, give up easily
or don't try at all because you believe what's the point?
You're going to mess it up anyway or why bother?
Things never work out in your favor anyway.
Even if you don't see your ineptitude
as the reason for failure,
you believe life and circumstances are just against you,
like being jinxed to always get the bad deal
because you attract bad outcomes.
So it may be bad luck,
but there's something about you that just attracts bad luck.
Number six, you're never satisfied with your appearance.
You may have a hard time seeing yourself as desirable.
You wished you looked differently or spoke differently
and these feelings affect your confidence around others.
It could also affect your relationships,
if you project these thoughts and feelings
onto other people.
Projection is an unconscious process
where you attribute your own thoughts to someone else.
I say that you don't like me and think I'm unattractive.
Now, you may think that, but you never told me that
or ever said anything critical to indicate that,
but I think that about myself,
but I say that it's what you think about me.
So that's how your inner critic can affect
what you think about other people.
If you assume that they think the same about you,
that you think about yourself
and then there's number seven, you feel guilty
about a lot of things, even if they're in the remote past
and this is similar to blaming yourself for things,
but it takes it a step further.
With basic self blame,
you may keep pushing yourself to do better
and better and may never feel satisfied
that you've finally done your best.
So that's more of an aiming for perfection thing
but with guilt, you can't forgive yourself
for decisions that you made or things that you said
that may or may not have resulted in a negative outcome.
Here's an example.
This is not real.
John proposes to me after graduation.
John wants to get married and immediately have children.
I turn down John's proposal because I want to travel the world
before I settle down with a family.
I take a job in Europe,
and that's the end of the relationship with John.
I become very successful in my career
and don't get too serious with relationships,
because I want to get back to the United States eventually,
and I don't want another John's situation
where I'm ready to go home but my Italian stallion
doesn't want to follow me back to the States.
I make it back to the US as a single woman
in my late thirties and can't find a life partner.
I spend a decade blaming and eventually hating myself
for all the decisions I made along the way
to put my career first over relationships.
Now, that's a long example and anyone can be disappointed
by those same set of circumstances,
but the difference is in my level of acceptance
and self-compassion, it's one thing to be disappointed
at the life milestones that I missed out on
and have regrets, but it's another thing
to internalize the blame to the extent
that I'm overloaded with guilt, shame, and self-loathing.
Stay tuned for part two of this topic
of "Confronting your inner critic."
It will publish next week, and when it's out,
I'll have it linked in this video
and it'll appear right here.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.