Silence Your Inner Critic

Hi everyone!

Welcome back to the Mostly Unbusy Mom blog, where we explore how to be mostly unbusy, mostly healthy, and mostly happy.

So let’s get to it.

Last month we talked about how to declutter your day so that you can achieve your goals. I hope you all had a chance to decide on your core values and play around with using them to unbusy one area of your life. 

February is the month of love. Yes, Valentine's Day is a Hallmark holiday, but I love the idea of a month dedicated to love and relationships. This month, we will look at ways to unbusy your relationships. 

We will start our month of relationships by discussing our relationship with ourselves and self-love. Now, before you gag and click away, this is not going to be one of those hokey you just need to love yourself posts (even though we do need to love ourselves). Today we will talk about the inner mean girl we all have and how to shut her up for good. 

Specifically, we will go over the following:

• Who is your inner mean girl?
• What does she say?
• Why is she so mean?
• How to get her to shut up already.

Who is your inner mean girl?

Do you have an inner mean girl? I am willing to make a bet you do. Our inner mean girl is the voice inside our heads telling us all the ways we are doing it wrong. She is there at the beginning when we try something new. And she is there at the end to say I told you so when we fail. She is the reason we don’t try new things, stand up for ourselves, and ask for what we want. She is a real B. The question is, why do we listen to her?

What does she say?

Before we talk about how to silence her, it is essential to listen to the words that she says. My inner mean girl says things like:

You are not smart enough.

No one wants to hear what you have to say.

You will never succeed at this.

Why did you say that? That was so stupid.

You are the worst mom. (ok, maybe my kids say this one to me when they are mad, but my inner mean girl is standing there agreeing with them and egging them on.)

If you are like me, there is a constant push and pull with your inner mean girl. Sometimes she says her piece, and I believe it all. I’m like, OMG (you have to use the mean high school girl voice here) IMG, you are totally right. Like, how could I have been so dumb? Other times I try to ignore her. Like a mean girl in high school, I look the other way when she walks into my brain and give her the cold shoulder. The only problem with this tactic is that she just gets louder and meaner. Think of a toddler when they don’t get their way. On rare occasions, I try to argue with her. But she has way more stamina than me, and I often give up feeling exhausted and depleted. There is hope. There is another way to deal with her.

Why is she so mean?

Before we dive into how to deal with our inner mean girl, it is worth spending some time thinking about why she is so mean. The thing about our inner mean girl is she is actually not mean. She loves us, and she believes she is protecting us. She is constantly scanning the world, looking for danger. In fact, she is very good at finding danger. After all, she has been doing this our whole life. She has memorized the patterns of things that have hurt us in the past. The problem is she sometimes sees danger where it doesn’t exist. When she sees a problem, she tries to protect us. It may start as a bit of worry or anxiety. When we don’t listen to her, she ups her game and starts with the tried and true sentences that she knows will get our attention. Once we realize that our inner mean girl is only trying to protect us, we can use her as a tool to help us rather than the obstacle holding us back.

How can we get our inner mean girl to shut up already?

The truth is, we can never get our inner mean girl to shut up altogether. And we wouldn’t want to.  Now that we know she is only trying to help and she is good at identifying danger, we can use her in select circumstances. The trick is to learn when to listen to your inner mean girl and when to tell her no thank you. The steps I use are, you guessed it, the notice, need, and now what method I teach adapted to deal with her specifically.

1. Name your inner mean girl.
2. Notice the sentences she is saying to you.
3. Identify what you need.
4. Now, what do you want to do?

Name your inner mean girl

My inner mean girl is Bianca. I like to give her a name because I can see her as separate from me. When I view her this way, the sentences she says seem more like someone else's opinion and less like absolute truths in the world. It also helps me to have compassion for her (which is really me). When I can approach her (and by default me) with compassion, it is easier to figure out what I need.

Notice the sentences she is saying to you

We always have to start with awareness. Some of us might not even be aware of this inner mean girl. She might be saying these sentences to us, and we are taking them at face value and assuming they are true. Start looking for when your inner mean girl shows up and write down the sentences she says to you.

Identify what you need

Why is she saying this to you? What is she afraid of? What is she telling you that you need? My inner mean girl tells me no one wants to listen to my words. She says this when I want to express a new idea at work, when I speak up at a meeting, and while I am writing this post. She does this because she wants to protect me. She knows that when I put myself out in the world, there is the potential for someone to criticize me. She wants to protect me from that pain. So does this mean I need protection from pain? No. It means I need to know and accept that criticism is part of this. What I need is a plan on how I want to deal with criticism and whose criticism is worth listening to. Thanks, Bianca! That was really helpful. 

Now, what do you want to do?

As the example above illustrates, I sometimes want to be prepared or aware of the potential danger. Bianca told me that people will criticize me. Great, now I can have a plan for how I want to deal with that. Our inner mean girl will not be entirely happy with this approach. She might become even louder as we get better at redirecting our thoughts and actions. This is another time when viewing her as an external persona is helpful. We can just thank our inner mean girl and move on with our life. This can look like, “Thank you, Bianca. You already warned me that people might criticize me. It’s been noted. We don’t have to keep talking about this.” or you can really high school it up with “OMG Bianca, that is so last week. We like have totally moved onto something else.”  The point is to acknowledge the warning, process it, and move on. 

Now, I want to note that sometimes we want to listen to our inner mean girls. When she says things like, are you sure you want to take that shortcut down that dark alley at 1 am?  That might be a time that you want to listen to her. But when she is holding you back from creating the life you really want, it is worth questioning whether or not her advice is helpful. 

This week, I would love for you all to do the following:

• Name your inner mean girl.
• Notice the sentences she is saying to you.
• Identify what you really need.
• Decide what you want to do next.

Drop me an email or DM me on Instagram. I’d love to hear how you transformed your inner mean girl into an ally.

For more content, follow me on Instagram @allthethingscoach and subscribe to my weekly newsletters here.