Hi, welcome back to another episode of the universe is your therapist. Amy is actually flying from California back to Missouri today. So I am glad to be here to present this podcast to you. This podcast is how to put an end to self criticism. And I've been asked to speak at a community gathering tomorrow about how difficult it is, in this day and age to stay out of hyper self criticism. One reason that I believe that's true, is because the human brain is designed to compare. And what we tend to do is we compare our insides or our own sense of self, with what we see on everybody else's exterior. And so it know that social media plays a part in this and it can be really toxic to our sense of self. If we aren't aware of this, and maybe take some steps to mitigate some of the impact of comparison, when we are experiencing things that are difficult for us. One thing that can naturally occur is that our inner critic can start to get more loud and more mean really. Some people believe that this is internalizing the voice of an abuser from your earlier past, whether that's a partner or schoolmates or parents or siblings, there's also a belief that the inner critic is just one part of us. But that part is designed to keep us from ever making a mistake or making a misstep or putting a foot wrong. The problem is we're human. And so it is, it is natural to make mistakes. If there's any multigenerational alcoholism, or abuse issues in your family, then one of the things that trickles down through the generations is that there is no there are no mistakes, and there are no accidents. And so there's a reactivity to things that occur, because you are a human child or human adult. And those reactions become really internalized in us. And because they are scary, there's a part of our brain that's just determined to make sure that we're always in control. And we always have the ability to be perfect. And that is a lie. That part of us is lying to us about the danger of being human or making mistakes. And it's based on past experiences. And it's, it's real. So your subconscious mind is trying to protect you by being very, very harsh. And when your subconscious mind is harsh, actually what it does is it makes things worse, because we then start to operate more from our fight or flight brain. And we can't think as clearly and we're not as connected to our wise mind. But that part of us is determined to make sure that nothing bad ever happens again. And as I mentioned, it's a subconscious response, typically, one that we don't have conscious control over. And so the things that are really helpful with this are things that we talked about frequently. One is notice without judgment. As you notice, without judgment, what your thoughts are saying, you become the observer of your thoughts, and that puts you in a position to have some emotional distance from those. So that's one really helpful tip to use when you are addressing the harsh inner critic or hyper self criticism. Notice without judgment, involves the observing part of your brain and can bring you some relief. We also want to be able to let the past stay in the past. There's a great quote from the dialectic behavioral therapy workbook by Marsha Linehan out of the University of Seattle. And she talks about how once the past is over, no matter how upset or how angry, we get over something that we've done or that has happened or someone else has done. It doesn't change the fact that we are in the current place we're in and no matter are what we do, we can't go back in time and fix whatever it is that happened in the past. So being able to stay out of the past is very difficult for the human brain. And if you tend to have a brain that is more anxious, it becomes even more challenging for those of us who have more of an anxious brain. And again, that's where noticing without judgment comes in, we are going to notice that we are having a thought, not a feeling, we're having a thought that I'm stupid, I'm a loser. I never finish things, whatever our thought is, that is not a feeling. And so when I say I feel like you don't love me, I feel like a loser. I feel stupid. Those are all thinking assessments done by the brain, there's no emotion called feel stupid. There's no emotion called like a loser. And so when we can accurately label our thoughts as thoughts and stay away from labeling everything as an emotion, that also can help us mitigate the intensity of harsh inner critic, the other tool we want to be able to use, and this comes out of the addiction research the University of Stanford, another thing that can be really helpful is the concept of self compassion, when we're trying to dial down that severe inner critic. Self Compassion came out of addiction research, and has they were working with addicts with substances or gambling or process addictions like sex addiction, they noticed that these participants were also losing weight. And they were really struck by this phenomenon. And so they started looking into it more critically and more in more detail. And what they found through the research is that the less critical we are of ourselves, the more we stay in our wise mind, or our prefrontal cortex, we make better decisions, we are less reactive in our choices. And we are able to treat ourselves with the same kind of grace care or compassion that we are often able to do with our loved ones. You've heard the saying that I would never be as mean to, to one of my friends, or my loved ones as I am to myself, or you may have had people who love you say, You're so mean to yourself. Those are opportunities to exercise self compassion, one thing you can do to start making your brain pay more attention to this is a brief writing exercise. If you take a situation that you're in now that you're having a lot of distress about, and you're experiencing a lot of self blame, there's a lot of shooting going on, in your head about what you should have or could have done differently. You can write a letter to yourself as if you were a dear friend or loved one, and write to that person, what you would tell them if they came to you with those same critical thoughts about themselves, that you are having about yourself. Another way to think of this is if you have any children in your life, when a child wakes up from from a night, Mayor, we don't run into the room and start screaming at them about how stupid their nightmare was. We offer comfort and nurturing and compassion. And if you think about how you would respond to a child who's having a nightmare, we want to start activating that awareness in our brain and start talking to our inner self in that manner. Some people really worry that if they do that their life will go off the rails as if the harsh inner critic is the only thing that keeps them from being a total punk. It's not harsh inner critic that keeps us from being funky or doing things that are problematic. It is actually the part of us that encourages more of that behavior. So when we are able to say to ourselves, wow, I am so embarrassed about what I said last night at that dinner. And we can say to ourselves, Well, given the circumstances, whatever the circumstances are or it might make sense that I said something silly or critical or embarrassing.