Inner critic or inner child therapy is an approach to recognizing and healing childhood trauma. It recognizes that our behaviors as an adult stem from our childhood experiences.
The inner critic may result from the negative statements we heard as children. Because humans react instinctively to fear, per our survival instincts, we take in the negatives more than the positives. The inner critic may help us improve at a specific task or push harder to attain an outcome. However, talking and thinking of ourselves develops our self-esteem and self-image. The inner critic thinks it’s helping us, protecting us from surprise hurts or disappointments, for instance – it’s part of our ‘ego defense mechanism’ set. But it’s not rational, and it is not constructive. It costs us too much. Every time it ‘attacks,’ it keeps our self-worth low and stops us from enjoying living a rich life.
If you have a pattern of unhealthy relationships, low self-esteem, addictions or other problems, you may well be experiencing the results of unresolved issues from your childhood.
Inner child work focuses on addressing our unmet needs by reparenting ourselves.
Past experiences such as deflection, comments made by your family or classmates, and feeling misunderstood as a child are topics you can discuss through inner child therapy that may not be traumatic but can still impact you. Here are some signs that your inner child needs healing:
The foundational benefit of inner child work is developing self-awareness. As you develop greater self-awareness, some of the other benefits of inner child work include:
Individuals with difficult childhoods, particularly those who experienced abuse or neglect, may develop a wounded inner child. This can manifest in adulthood as negative thought patterns, fear of abandonment, or various mental health challenges. Sometimes, the nagging sensation of an inner critic is the product of depression or anxiety. It is never too late to fix unhealthy thinking, and it’s entirely possible to SILENCE THE INNER CRITIC!
We apply the externalizing the inner critic CBT technique: The idea here is that we will assign our inner critic a ‘persona’ separate to ourselves – complete with a little body, a name, and a voice.
