Do you ever get hijacked by your inner critic?

Your phone buzzes in your pocket.  You take a look and realise from an incoming text you forgot to make an important call.  You have let someone down. This is a pattern you wish you could break as you hate letting people down.  You flush with embarrassment and anger at yourself and anxiety flares up at how others will judge you.  Before you know it, you’re beating yourself up using language you’d never use to others.  The voice is poisonous and spiteful, not just the expletives or criticism it deploys, but even the tone of voice can cut you dead.  And you know that voice is right.  It’s always right.  You supress the feelings as quickly as you can so you stop feeling bad, and you get on with the day. Still, the trace of the experience remains.  This is not just people who come to me for therapy. This is all of us.

There are so many important things in this story.  There is the bad feeling you suppress, and the pattern that needs to be changed, and sandwiched in the middle there is the pernicious voice.  Where to start?

Wherever you are, is the only answer.

We spend so much of our time trying to be something else, get somewhere else, achieve something else that we forget just to be here.  The process of change is subtle and starts when we can truly accept things the way they are now. As your perception of a situation becomes clearer, less cluttered with judgements or emotions, things start to emerge that we may not have noticed before and change begins.

When you next have one of those moments, try the following four easy steps

1. Find space:  somewhere where you can be alone, maybe outside in the fresh air, to a window where you can see the sky or the green, or just to the toilet so you can be private.
2. Breathe: inhale and exhale deeply a few times, noticing how it feels and which parts of your body you are aware of.  Allow yourself to tune back into that difficult experience you just had.  Keep breathing and notice what is happening in your body.
3. Pay attention with curiosity and kindness: Whatever comes up – whether it’s pain, rage, self-defence or something else, don’t get caught up in the story and don’t suppress it either. Just invite it to be there with kindness and curiosity.  Observe it as if it were an old friend.  If you can, smile at it and welcome it.
4. Drop it: Breathe deeply and let it go.