Lego, the inner critic, and a line in a poem

How meditation and mindfulness can help us transform an inner critic into a friend.

It was my birthday. Possibly my seventh. I had been given some new Lego – an American style house to add to my growing Lego village. I was excited. I was building it on my own in my bedroom. A voice suddenly came out of nowhere, with a somewhat jeering tone: ‘you’re not going to able to do this’. I think I may have looked up in surprise. But the voice had come from inside. I carried on with what I was doing – trying to work out which piece to build onto the next piece – but felt a sense of something watching over me. I remember it coming back soon afterwards. I had come down with a cold, and had to miss school. I was on the swing in our garden. I remember ‘the voice’ feeling hostile, taunting me about missing out on being with friends at school; maybe they would forget about me. Then there are sketchy memories of beginning to feel its presence more regularly at times of being under pressure or performing; or when my defences were down, such as with illness. And then I think it must have gradually became more pervasive, gradually moved in and became a normal part of the background fabric of life, producing thoughts of judgment and comparing, finding fault and deficiency - and in the process I was developing a strong aversion to and fear around making mistakes. Cue the tyranny of perfectionism!

The inner critic is well researched and understood. We know we are subject to many influences and experiences from our formative early years onwards - family, schooling, community, culture – and that we can internalise these influences, which become our patterning or habits.

The inner critic can regularly have a field day in our fast-paced, competitive, disconnected and disembodied world, which we are trying to navigate, moment by moment, and in which we are told that our happiness is dependent on what we can buy and achieve outwardly. You’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’re not charismatic enough. You’ll never make it. The list of faults can feel relentless and endless! Fundamentally the bottom line can be a message of nobody loves you. Nobody sees you. This raises the alarm in our nervous system. From the perspective of our ancestry, our survival was dependent on being included in the tribe, for obtaining food, shelter and safety. If we were cast out, death would surely soon follow. In that light, being accepted as part of the group, is a matter of life and death.

Practices of meditation and yoga, and other psychotherapeutic interventions, can create a space and container for coming into a wise relationship with these thoughts. They are thoughts, not voices - though they can take on the tone of a voice of someone specific in our lives, or perhaps a composite of influences. It can be helpful to be curious about the tone and nature of the inner critic – is it male, female? A family member, a teacher? Amorphous and atmospheric, or in sharp relief?

With patient, dedicated effort we can build skill in undoing the patterning of the inner critic. We can cultivate our capacity to instead create a compassionate, friendly and kind inner atmosphere. We practice allowing it, welcoming it, opening to it, meeting it with friendliness and compassion; and then letting it be, cultivating a capacity to at first lessen – and then stop - believing in the thoughts. We learn the process of ‘feeling the feeling in the feeling’ triggered by the inner critic, such as fear. A simple noticing of what we are feeling, saying to ourselves, ‘this is what fear feels like’, helps to create some space around it, and applies some restraint to a storm of thinking. 

In Buddhist teachings, the inner critic is represented by Mara, a demonic figure who represents unskilful forces and energies in ourselves and in the world, and who famously attempted to sabotage the Buddha’s dedication to fully awaken. When Mara appears in the teachings, we hear the response, ‘I see you, Mara!’: I see you, I understand where you’ve come from; I know you to be unhelpful and unnecessary, and I let you pass through the stuff of the mind.

We are invited to be creative in the process, to develop a curious and playful relationship with our own version of Mara – from a polite ‘thank you for your opinion, but no thanks’; to blowing it a raspberry (a la Dharma teacher Martin Aylward) to telling it strongly and firmly to ‘back off’ (or your chosen words to that effect). A friend has another expression for it. She would say, ‘you’ve got to shake that shit off.’ I recommend trying this one!

Meditation, as I have understood it within the Buddhist tradition, is a caring, gentle process of learning how to see ourselves and the world differently. Initially, it can be confronting, to sit with ourselves, and our patterning.  We may have an expectation that meditation ‘should’ be sitting in a blissful silence, and our reality is that it is anything but blissful and silent. And the mind may feel threatened by silence, perhaps as mine did, on my own in the bedroom that day. The habitual mind will jump in with a thought train that reinforces a sense of self and solidity.  In meditation, we can become more comfortable with shades of silence. When we practise planting seeds of friendliness, compassion, joy and spaciousness, we are reducing the space for habitual thinking to take hold.  

A quote from the teachings of the Buddha states that we could walk the entire world and not find anyone more deserving of kindness than ourself. Dharma teacher Christina Feldman has described how she sees no greater transformation than the one from inner harshness to inner kindness. I am able to see this journey in myself. The inner critic which took up residence in my heart and mind has been seen and softened into over and over and over again. The inner climate of my heart and mind these days feels more deeply embodied in kindness and compassion. And, it can feel like you’re never able to let go of your vigilance, in the face of the energy of deeply ingrained habit patterns, which may have been reinforced for decades.  

There’s a line in ‘Self-observation Without Judgement’ by Danna Faulds which describes this process: “I make the choice one hundred times a day to release the voice” [of the conditioned, inner critic]. In meditation and mindfulness, we are creating space for making a conscious choice about which thoughts we are going to follow, and which we are not. There is a choice, and it’s not one wag of the tail. We need to be willing to make that choice over and over and over again. Maybe sometimes a thousand times a day. Maybe some days, it’s just once.  

I teach yoga and meditation in Stroud, Gloucestershire. I aspire to raise our seven-year-old with a friendly and loving inner voice. I am also exploring ways and means of cultivating community power and leaderfull-ness to meet climate and ecological breakdown. If any of these thoughts resonate, I’d love to hear from you.   

Danna Faulds: Self-Observation Without Judgment

Release the harsh and pointed inner

voice. It’s just a throwback to the past,

and holds no truth about this moment.

Let go of self-judgment, the old,

learned ways of beating yourself up

for each imagined inadequacy.

Allow the dialogue within the mind

to grow friendlier, and quiet. Shift

out of inner criticism and life

suddenly looks very different.

I can say this only because I make

the choice a hundred times a day to release the voice that refuses to

acknowledge the real me.

What’s needed here isn’t more prodding toward perfection, but

intimacy - seeing clearly, and

embracing what I see.

Love, not judgment, sows the

seeds of tranquillity and change.