How To Tame Your Inner Critic: Meet Them First

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Want to know how to silence your inner critic? This post is about a powerful exercise that will allow you to tame your inner critic and instantly feel better.

Rumpelstiltskin was one of my favorite fairy tales when I was a kid. Remember how the miller’s daughter defeated him? She learned his name!
Below I’m sharing this method that really works for silencing the inner critic —personification.

Once you provide the negative voices in your head with personalities, you will see that they are actually not as scary as you thought. Promise 🙂

But before we get into this post, I highly recommend checking my first, introductory post on the topic of inner critics:

How to Deal With Inner Critic: Quick Soothing Technique

This post is all about how to tame your inner critic as a creative.

Take your journal and a pen, and let’s begin!

Table of Contents

🕵🏻‍♂️ Recognize And Identify Your Inner Critics
🗣 Name Your Inner Critic
🎭 Describe or Visualize Your Inner Critic — Examples of inner critic

🕵🏻‍♂️ Recognize And Identify Your Inner Critics

Start with writing down all the thoughts that stand between you and your goals.

Then separate them into groups according to their nature and topic. Each group would be a representation of one of your inner critics.

You can use mine as a reference:

Disappointment	Perfectionism	Judgment	Doubt
You should give up because you are not good enough. And you will never be. There are people better than you.	You and your work must always be perfect. You must not make a mistake. If it’s not perfect — don’t do it.	You never fit in. You are too weird, too dreamy, and too childish. People will never understand.	Why would you even start this? Someone already did this before, and we all are going to die anyway. The world doesn’t need your work.
You are way behind. You should have had this figured out by now. You will never make it.	Whatever you make is not good enough to be considered work. You are wasting your time making stuff. It’s all for nothing.	Everyone judges you. You have to make sure everyone likes you and what you do.	This is your last job. You will never make this much money again.
Whatever you make is crap — and so are you. You are not a real artist.

🗣 Name Your Inner Critic

Essentially, naming something gives it less power.

Giving names also makes it real, as well as something that can be communicated about.

So let’s go ahead and give names to our inner critics. Don’t choose nasty names — your inner critics are causing you enough bother already. Try to make them amusing and even meaningful.

You can use:

Names of real people if the negative voices in your head are based on them
Names with descriptive words like nasty, grumpy, little, etc
Names of the characters from books, movies, etc
Names with specific dark origins like Gedeon (destroyer in Hebrew), etc

These are the names I chose:

Inner Critic #1 — Disappointment — Dolores

The Spanish word dolores is the plural form of dolor, meaning either sorrow or pain. I chose this name because it is very close to what I feel when the Disappointment inner critic is talking to me.

Inner Critic #2 — Perfection — Jett The First

Jett sounds like something that wants to move as fast as possible. The First — because there is no other way for the Perfection, right?

Inner Critic #3 — Judgement — Blockie

Whenever I am being judged, and I let it get to me, it simply blocks my natural energy flow and drive. I feel like my own self is not appreciated, and I put my guards up, losing my confidence.

Inner Critic #4 — Doubt — Fearbia

This one is just fully based on my fears and doubts.

🎭 Describe or Visualize Your Inner Critic — Examples of inner critic

You can either turn this into a simple (but not so easy) journaling exercise or use your very craft to defeat the enemy.

If you are an artist — draw your inner voices. Imagine what they would look like if they were human beings (or not human, freedom is yours) and create their detailed portraits.

If you are a writer — describe their personalities and appearance, talk about their past, and how they became who they are. Write down what they like and don’t like. Provide your character with a profile, and even a life story screenplay.

In the meantime, we are going to journal about it.

🔻 Critic #1 — Disappointment — Dolores

She is a short fat woman with a very expressionless face, about fifty years old. Very slow in her movements. Everything about her is kind of dull and lenten. She has thin wavy hair and her posture is bad. She is always wearing old clothes. The air around her seems stuffy.

As you can see from the table above, this one on my list is particularly nasty. Dolores wants me to think I am never good enough.

🔻 Critic #2 — Perfectionism — Jett The First

It’s a tall man about forty years old, in a perfect-looking suit and shiny boots, his hair is so slick back that it looks unreal. Very stiff face, almost angry. At the same time, he looks very nervous. I can see his eye twitching from time to time.

He looks constantly unsatisfied. This man is allergic to my mistakes.

🔻 Critic #3 — Judgement — Blockie

This is a skinny young woman in her thirties with very unpleasant facial features — as if her face was constantly contorted with hatred. Her dyed hair looks very dry. She is wearing the trendiest pieces that are sold out everywhere and always has her make-up on.

She looks at me from top to toe every time. She is judging me non-stop for being not like others. Any demonstration of my personality is being criticized.

🔻 Critic #4 — Doubt — Fearbia

This is a tall skinny old woman with a handkerchief in her hand. She has long grey hair and a very long face with enormous eyes. She is always covered in multiple layers of clothes even if it’s hot. She never goes anywhere because she is scared.

She always terrorizes me with thoughts about meaninglessness and hopelessness.

Phew.

This WILL get hard and uncomfortable but it’s rewarding.

Now that we have given our inner critics names and personalities, we can recognize when they speak up.

If you are trying to tame your inner critic at the moment, this exercise is extremely worth doing.

Don’t forget to read my first post on inner critics:

How to Deal With Inner Critic: Quick Soothing Technique