At any given moment, you are either in Self or you blended with a part—a protector or exile. When you are judging yourself, you are blended with an Inner Critic part. When you are feeling bad about yourself, you are blended with a Criticized Child part. In fact, you are often blended with both the Critic and the Criticized Child at the same time.

You can only work successfully with an Inner Critic if you aren’t blended with it or the Criticized Child. When you unblend from a Critic, it doesn’t mean that the self-judgment disappears or you stop feeling bad about yourself. It means that you aren’t completely taken over by these feelings. You have some space inside that is separate from them. You don’t fully buy into the idea that you are inadequate. You can see that this is just a part of you that is attacking you rather than believing it is the truth about you. For example, if your Inner Critic says that you are a loser and will never find love in your life, you recognize that this is simply an attack from this part of you. It isn’t the truth.

Though you may still feel sad or ashamed, when you are unblended with the Criticized Child, you aren’t dominate by these feelings. You have a place in you (Self) that is feeling solid and OK. From this place you can view these feelings and understand these attacks and work with them. You may feel hurt to hear this message that you are a loser, and you may feel some hopelessness about your love life, but that isn’t all you feel. You reside in a place that is deeper than those emotions, a place of calmness and curiosity.  This is not the final solution to your Inner Critic problem. It is just a preliminary step that gives you enough space to deal with the problem.

I encourage you to try out this simple exercise to get more in touch with your Inner Critic. Please respond and let me know how it works for you.

Exercise: Identifying the Critic and Criticized Child
Remember a recent time when you felt bad about yourself—when you felt ashamed, depressed, hopeless, or discouraged.
What situation were you in at the time?

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What did you feel emotionally?

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Take a moment to sense what that felt like in your body. Did you feel heavy in your heart? Collapsed in your chest? Weighted down? Crunched down or small? Teary?

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Those are the feelings of the Criticized Child as that part of you receives the attack from your Inner Critic.

Think back to any thoughts or inner messages that happened just before those feelings came up or while you were feeling them. Which of them were judgmental or attacking messages from your Inner Critic, which may have caused those painful feelings? Write down those messages.

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Mindy writes:
When you begin the inner critic work…because it’s so complex, are you able to begin through exploration and then filter out the parts, or should you just start with being curious about one specific part, like the criticized child! It seems very complicated and a little overwhelming! Just wondering how to even begin this work?!?!?

My response:
Usually the best place to start is with the Inner Critic part. For example, you might hear verbal judgments from your Critic or see an image of it as a harsh schoolmarm. Then you need to unblend from it and get to know it. Sometimes you might be  feeling the Criticized Child strongly, for example, feeling depressed, hopeless, or ashamed. Then you can start there. In either case, the first step is to unblend from both the Critic and the Criticized Child, so you are in Self and therefore can get to know the Critic in a helpful way.

It is useful to know about the rest of the Inner Critic cluster because these parts often come up when you are trying to work with the Critic. You might hear a part that starts arguing with the Critic. That is the Inner Defender. Or you might realize that you want to get rid of the Critic. In this case, you are blended with an angry concerned part. You need to ask these parts to step aside so you are in Self. For more details on unblending, see chapters 5 and 6 in my book Self-Therapy. Even though this book doesn’t focus on the Inner Critic, it shows how to work with any protector using IFS. (Our upcoming book on the Inner Critic will spell this out for Critic protectors.)

Then you get to know the Critic and find out its positive intent for you. This is covered in chapter 7.
Good luck.
Jay

I welcome further responses from Mindy or anyone else to this post.