How to Deal With Inner Critic: Quick Soothing Technique

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Wondering where the inner critic comes from and how to deal with inner critic? You are in the right place! In this post, I’m sharing all the basics about inner critics, and one effective exercise that makes your inner critic fade away in seconds!

It’s funny that I initially started this post with “If I had tamed my inner critics by now — I would have been in a better place”.

I wrote it without realizing that it was not me who was speaking.

It’s my inner critic saying “You should have figured this out by now”.

After reading this post, you will learn what the inner critic is and how to control it by using a simple mindfulness technique.

Don’t forget to check out the second post of this series about How to deal with inner critic — there I am talking about a powerful tool called personification:

How To Tame Your Inner Critic: Meet Them First

Alright, let’s get into it!

This post is all about what an inner critic is and how to deal with inner critic.

Table of Contents

👺 What is an inner critic?
🤔 So what do we do?
🧘🏼‍♂️ 5x5x5 Technique

👺 What is an inner critic?

And where does the inner critic come from?

Let’s talk about the origins of this phenomenon first.

The most common opinion is that the roots of our inner critics are hiding in our childhood. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, explained the formation of our superegos as a process of internalizing external views of ourselves — mainly our parents’ ones.

Those superegos are also feeding on comments from other people in the society we are in and can be pretty cruel and pitiless (I bet you know that firsthand).

According to Wikipedia, an inner critic or “critical inner voice” is a subpersonality that judges and demeans a person.

🎯 What is the purpose of the inner critic?

There is a scientific explanation too.

According to scientists, we have a primitive “survivor brain” which is highly attuned to danger. It constantly compares and looks out for threats. Initially, it had a positive function of protecting us from the dangers of our environment and keeping us sane (through inner work).

You’ll ask me — how did it happen that it’s not only not helping but also harming now?

Because if as kids we felt unloved or were constantly criticized — we used to blame ourselves rather than our parents.

As the child’s survival depends completely on the parents, the acknowledgment of their unfairness, cruelty, or incompetency is simply too devastating.

It is much safer for the child to turn the criticism inward and to blame themselves for everything.

So, despite all the good intentions, nowadays inner critics make us unhappy and unproductive. And our lives — miserable.

🙊 Things your inner critic says

Inner critics are those negative voices in our heads who force us to think:

“I am not good enough”

“I don’t fit in”

“I am behind”

“If I can’t make it perfect, might as well not start”

“Everyone judges me”

“I should give up”

“I must not make a mistake”

And so many more.

🤜🏼 What triggers the inner critic

Unfortunately, there are so many different things that are involved…

Depending on your background and past experiences, it might be anything from the tiniest thing to a bigger mistake.

Some examples of the triggers are:

jealousy, comparison (ex. someone’s success)
”failing” (ex. obstacles appearing on the way to your goal, feeling stuck)
personal insecurities (ex. judgment from other people)
negative self-talk — very common (ex. beating yourself up for mistakes)
perfectionism (ex. “writer’s block”)

If you want to know what successful creatives think of all these unpleasant things above, check out a truly magical book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (life-changing).

🤔 So what do we do?

So how to deal with inner critic?

Taming your inner critics is a journey — long but rewarding. It might be a lifelong one, too.

It involves months and even years of deep inner work: developing new habits, journaling, therapy or coaching, self-help books, meditation, spiritual experiences… But the sooner we learn about it and step on the right path, the sooner we become our own best friends.

There is a quick technique that helps you silence your inner critic for some time which should be enough for you to get back to your pursuits.

This technique also works great for panic attacks and anxiety.

However, this shouldn’t be considered the only way to tame your inner critic. This is just a quick exercise that helps you get back on track. Some more profound work should be accomplished to get long-term results.

Overall, our goal is to identify, tame, and embrace the inner critics and make them our friends instead of enemies. Try and turn them into inner guidance.

🧘🏼‍♂️ 5x5x5 Technique

I learned about it some time ago when I started meditating. It’s called 5x5x5.

It’s focused on our senses and takes no more than ten minutes.

Here are the steps:

Close your eyes and focus on different sounds you can hear. Distinguish five different sounds.
Then shift to the sense of feel. Notice five different areas where you feel sensation, pressure, or warmth against your skin.
Now shift your attention to the sense of sight. Open your eyes a little bit and notice different colors and textures. Find five different things that you can see.
Now try and pay attention to as many of these fifteen things as you can at once. Do it for the next 60 seconds. Your attention will cycle between different things and that’s normal.

Check with yourself how it feels afterward. Did your inner voices calm down while you were doing the exercise? How do you feel now?

This exercise works because you can’t really think about anything at all while you are trying to pay attention to all these things, yet you are absolutely present in the current moment.

If you would like to be guided while doing this — try the Simple Habit app (not sponsored — this is my own recommendation). It’s my go-to app for meditation, and that’s where I learned about this technique.

Here is the link: Thought Detox Meditation. Scroll down to number 4 — 5x5x5.

There is another variation of this technique that works the same way — The 5-4-3-2-1 Method. Try it out at the link below, it is a guided experience:

On top of that, I highly recommend checking out the second post of this series, in which I am talking about one of the most powerful methods of silencing the inner critics — personification:

How To Tame Your Inner Critic: Meet Them First