As children we start out full of confidence in our abilities and strengths, with unlimited creative imaginations. Free from self-doubt, we are eager to try out new things and explore new worlds. It’s only as we grow older that we start to evaluate our behavior, second-guess ourselves, and judge ourselves against others. And, as a result of hard knocks and disappointments, our self-confidence takes a beating. Self-doubt comes first and foremost from our inner critic. Let’s consider how the inner critic sabotages our confidence.

The Influence of Our Families

When we’re young, our parents or caregivers are ideally trying to keep us safe and warm, encouraging us to look both ways before we cross the street and to stay away from hot burners. Yet, their actions, reactions, and disapproval when we’ve misbehaved become distorted and lodged in our memories, our bodies, and our emotions. Over time, what was at first an external voice of caution becomes an internalized distortion of the truth. Hal and Sidra Stone (1993) describe the inner critic as whispering, whining, and needling us into place. It checks our thoughts, controls our behavior, and inhibits our actions. While the inner critic thinks it’s keeping us safe and warm and protecting us from being disliked, hurt, or abandoned, it really acts as a negative inner voice that causes shame, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. The inner critic can be a powerful saboteur of our relationships and self-confidence.

The Influence of Traumatic Events

The inner critic not only comes from parents and caregivers in our early lives, but also from life situations and circumstances that leave us traumatized in some way. Were you ever ridiculed in grade school? Over the years these kinds of internalized traumas, memories, and mental images hold us back and stop us cold. The inner critic can pop up spontaneously. We become like Pavlov’s dogs: the minute something happens that challenges our self-confidence, a little bell goes off in our mind and we automatically respond with old patterns of thinking and behaving. These distorted patterns are embedded in our consciousness, dictating our behavior without enabling us to decide whether this response is still appropriate. Self-doubt and the inner critic go hand in hand. But, while we can never totally get rid of it, we can learn to identify the inner critic’s defeating voice. And, in doing so, we can transform the inner critic into an ally. The inner critic not only shows up in the unwanted inner voice but also in imagery, where it can take any form. For example, the image of the inner critic could be a dark rain cloud hanging over our head, following us everywhere we go. The inner critic might appear to us as a hobgoblin, a pecking bird, a deceased relative, or a crazy witch. My own inner critic shows up as the Wicked Witch of the West, with her ominous “I’ll get you, and your little dog too!”

What Does Your Inner Critic Look Like?

Awareness Exercise #2

1. Allow yourself to sit in a comfortable chair, and let yourself relax.
2. Close your eyes and know that you are perfectly safe and focus on your breathing.
3. Begin to let the inner critic’s voice communicate to you.
4. What is the critic saying? What does it want you to pay attention to?
5. In your mind’s eye, ask the inner critic its name.
6. Make sure you get a good sense of what the inner critic looks like before you say good-bye. Open your eyes.
7. Now, take up a pencil and pad, and sketch out a picture of your inner critic. Or, if you’re not comfortable drawing, start browsing through magazines. As you flip through the pages of the magazines, be on the lookout for a photograph, an image, or partial image that resembles your inner critic. Cut out the picture. You might find that the picture you’ve drawn or cut out is the Wicked Witch of the West, a dark rain cloud, a wily fox, Godzilla, or an ogre— it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it makes sense to you. Perhaps you’ve come up with several images, photographs, or drawings. That’s okay too. But if you haven’t come across a photograph or image that represents your inner critic, I’d encourage you to keep looking and sketching. You may one day find yourself shouting “That’s my inner critic!” while thumbing through magazines in a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room.

excerpt from Visualize Confidence: How to Use Guided Imagery to Overcome Self-Doubt by Kirwan Rockefeller Ph.D.