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Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset

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I had just finshed Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism and was finally having some success dealing with my depression and anxiety when my wife gave me a copy of Embracing Your Inner Critic. She'd picked the book up a year or two earlier and lost track of it in the "to read" piles. This book really grabbed me. I've never really been comfortable with the various "inner child" labels I come across in therapy, but the term "inner critic" really resonated with me. I was all teed up and ready for this book by the optimism I was discovering within myself and starting to develop thanks to Seligman's book.

I think I wore out a couple of highlighters going through Embracing Your Inner Critic. My first thoughts were "How do these people know ME so well?" but I came to realize that I am not alone. That there are lots of us blaming ourselves in order to "protect" ourselves from outside criticism. I'm learning that beating my imagined critics to the punch by criticising myself sooner and harder than anyone else would is not really helping myself but rather pushing me deeper into the muck of depression.

I realized my inner critic was a pretty good ventroliquist. I had been blaming everyone else for saying all the negative stuff I was actually saying about myself. The book helped me to start moving away from adversarial relationships with my critics, both real and imagined. Now I'm learning to listen to my inner critic as kind of distant early warning system, a helpful "heads up" rather than a broadside of self-loathing. For the first time I'm seeing a world full of potential allies rather than adversaries. The Voice Dialogue technique is a lot like cognitve therapy and like cognitive therapy it requires regular practice for full benefit. But the rewards of the techniques I'm learning from these two books have provided me with strong motivation to stick with it.

If you are suffering from low self esteem, if your days are filled with destructive and incessant attacks from your Inner Critic, read this. It's an easy read that unfolds logically and intuitively - half way through you'll begin to anticipate where the authors are going because what they are saying makes so much sense. This book will open your eyes to the various "voices" we harbor and will help you understand the productive role the Critic was meant to play. It will show you how to get your Critic back on your side, helping you, instead of attacking you and making you feel like your life is a failure.

This is a good book loaded with many great ideas on how to overcome your inner critic. Read it and apply it today!

Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works

PS here is a great story that is in the begining of this book:

What Is Your Inner Critic and Where Did It Come From?

On the journey of self-discovery, let us stop looking for what is wrong with us. Let us discover, instead, who we are and how we work! Let us put our judgment aside as we explore the amazing system Of selves within us and learn to live with ever-increasing honesty, choice, and freedom.

There was once a dreadfully wicked hobgoblin. One day he had a simply marvelous idea. He was going to make a looking glass that would reflect everything that was good and beautiful in such a way that it would look dreadful or at least not very important. When you looked in it, you would not be able to see any of the good or the beautiful in yourself or in the world. Instead, this looking glass would reflect everything that was bad or ugly and make it look very important. The most beautiful landscapes would look like heaps of garbage, and the best people would look repulsive or would seem stupid. People's faces would be so changed that they could not be recognized, and if there was anything that a person was ashamed of or wanted to hide, you could be sure that this would be just the thing that the looking glass emphasized.

The hobgoblin set about making this looking glass, and when he was finished, he was delighted with what he had done. Anyone who looked into it could only see the bad and the ugly, and all that was good and beautiful in the world was distorted beyond recognition.

One day the hobgoblin's assistants decided to carry the looking glass up to the heavens so that even the angels would look into it and see themselves as ugly and stupid. They hoped that perhaps even God himself would look into it! But, as they reached the heavens, a great invisible force stopped them and they dropped the dreadful looking glass. And as it fell, it broke into millions of pieces.

And now came the greatest misfortune of all. Each of the pieces was hardly as large as a grain of sand, and they flew about all over the world. If anyone got a bit of glass in his eye there it stayed, and then he would see everything as ugly or distressing. Everything good would look stupid. For every tiny splinter of the glass possessed the same power that the whole glass had!

Some people got a splinter in their hearts, and that was dreadful, too, for then their hearts turned into lumps of ice and could no longer feel love.

The hobgoblin watched all this and he laughed until his sides ached. And still the tiny bits of glass flew about, And now we will hear all about it....

Adapted from "The Snow Queen,"by Hans Christian Andersen
The Inner Critic is like the bit of mirror that makes us see a distorted picture. It is that inner voice that criticizes us and speaks about us in a disparaging way. It makes everything look ugly. Most of us are not even aware that it is a voice or a self speaking inside of us because its constant judgments have been with us since early childhood and its running critical commentary feels like a natural part of ourselves. It develops early in our lives, absorbing the judgments of the people around us and the expectations of the society in which we live. When we talk about this critical voice, please keep in mind that this Inner Critic is the voice within us that criticizes us, whereas the Judge is the self within us that criticizes other people.

Hal and Sidra Stone are pioneers in this field of inner voice dialogue. Think evolution from Freud's id, ego, super ego...through Transactional Analysis (Parent, Child, Adult) through Bradshaw's Inner child work...to inner voice dialogue. They have video's books and workshops and have trained numerous professionals in this technique. The result is a genuinely effective technique that gives us a viable framework to understand why we often have opposing thoughts and feelings and the tools to move us in a direction of acting from a more "adult" place. My partner and I used these techniques from their book "Embracing Ourselves" to great effect in the mid 90's as she worked through abuse survivor issues. Not only did it provide a method of healing for her, I was able to use it effectively in my own journey and it was an exceptional tool for us as a couple.

Now we are using and recommending this book (Inner Critic) to friends as we see in ourselves and in others, the overriding power the inner critic has on our lives. The book explains where the critic and other sub-personalities come from, the concept of disowned selves and how instead of trying to "choke" our critic into silence, we can actually take a more lasting approach to understanding it and the related subpersonalities, hold the primary subs and the disowned selves together and work toward balance and the achievement of a strong aware ego. Don't be scared off by the lingo here, it is very understandable and usable information.

This book, in very easy lay language, describes what would happen if Freud grew branches. Instead of one superego there are many; instead of one id, there are many; only the ego remains in glorious isolation managing the whole crowd of inner beings. Don't get too confused trying to figure out which inner being is talking to you, just get steady with your "Aware Ego" and go forward. The book's spiritual base and presumed readership is New Age, so if you're not from that place, it can be very entertaining to listen to the authors chide various New Age failings.

It doesn't matter what you think of or how you relate to yourself: you WILL get a lot out of this book. No one has grown up human who doesn't engage in some self-judgment or self-criticism. It's just a matter of degree: some of us have powerful, robust inner critics, some have fair to middling ones. But each of us is hampered to a greater or lesser degree by our inner critics. Hal and Sidra Stone help us to recognize and identify our inner critic/s and then transform them from hamperers to allies. Each step of the way, each chapter illuminates how we relate to our inner critic and how it relates to us; we get to see exactly where each nagging voice is from and why it came into existence. And then Hal and Sidra show us how to enlist our inner critic to goals that arise out of self-awareness. They are brilliant, brilliant psychologists. No one who reads this book could not benefit from it!

great book! i loved this new information that helps me to change my approach, and take it easier on myself. feels much better to cooperate with your inner critic instead of abandoning it or becoming a victim of it. I'm excited about my new journey and can't wait to read other books by these authors.

I've read many books on personal development which has helped me build an awareness on how my thinking affects my mood and my life. This book however, has given me a new perspective on this awareness. If you're willing to do the work over a number of days or weeks, this book will help you. I simply got a notebook and pen and just started writing for days. after a while you get creative and find your own ways to get your point accross to your inner critic. After 6 months of writing in my notebook, I must say I feel a different person. I've put in a alot of work but believe me it's so worth it. I've still got a long way to go but I'm confident, by continuing what I'm doing, things can only get better. Your inner critic will keep nagging you trying to make you believe you're worthless and no good, but with time, by doing the exercises in this book, you will begin to believe otherwise...

This book is good about giving examples to get its point across, but can be a bit cumbersome at times. I'm a little confused by the different personalities, etc, but otherwise it is a good read.