You can’t bully yourself into wholeness. You cannot shame yourself into freedom or joy. You CAN learn to befriend your whole self – including your mean inner critic – by practicing self-compassion and deepening understanding of your stories and behavioural and emotional patterns and slowly transform your inner critic into your inner best friend.
Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.
Parker J. Palmer
My inner critic was vicious. She bullied me, held me back, told me I was never ever good enough. No matter how hard I worked I could never measure up or keep up – the bar just kept being raised. In my younger years she told me it would be better to die than to live this way. I had not yet learned to befriend my inner critic (and this would have seemed impossible!).
To keep her at bay I burned the candle at both ends, trying to order my life and home with perfection. For this is the way I had learned to feel safe in the world. But of course it didn’t work. People died, stuff happened, I lived in constant fear of the next bad thing that lay just around the bend. My inner critic never seemed to sleep: she pointed out all my flaws and keep me mired in anxiety. I wanted to write but kept silent. I longed for freedom but kept picking up another set of chains.
Fortunately, I had a tiny seed of hope in me, waiting to be watered, and it assured me there was another way to live though I couldn’t yet see a path through the thick cloud of fear that swirled everywhere I turned my gaze.
Until one day, about 20 years ago now, I came up to one of my life’s significant choice points. I was no longer willing to be bullied into submission and berated day and night. For my children’s sake especially, and also for mine, I planted my feet, pivoted to face fear head-on (because Inner Critic was only ever the spokesman for FEAR), and declared that I was going to walk in freedom! I was going to be the boss of my life from now on.
Slow and steady, one small deliberate choice after another, my life began to change. Over time and with hard work, my inner critic became my inner best friend.
HOW TO Befriend your inner critic and walk in greater freedom
My workshops are open to everyone in my community; they’re relaxed, take place via Zoom, and are a great way to dip your toe into working and connecting with me and to deepen self-awareness and self-compassion in a low-risk way.
buy the WORKSHOP IF…
- You need to get clear on how your inner critic is harming you (for instance, it leads to shame, low self-esteem, depression, self-doubt and undermines self-confidence).
- You’re soooo weary of hiding, comparing, masking, or bullying yourself and otherwise holding yourself back from the business, life, relationships, or other values-aligned work you want to be doing in the world.
- You’re curious about why we’d want to befriend our inner critic instead of eradicating it. And how to move toward and build a healthy relationship with our inner critic instead of turning to our habitual self-protective patterns (including learning why your critic is predictably louder in some seasons and what to do about this).
- You need tips around understanding the role of perfectionism and fear in your life and concrete strategies to face fear head-on and begin walking in greater freedom and (joyful) possibility.
- You’re a highly sensitive soul in a noisy world and need a gentler, intentional, sustainable way of being in the world or you’re a weary human who needs to be reminded that you are not bad, wrong, or broken. You do not need fixing. You have what it takes to show up fully to your messy and beautiful life.
befriend your inner critic workshop $147 Value — $27
Immediately after purchase you will receive an email that includes your login details. If you don’t see the email right away, please check your junk, spam, and promotions folders, move the email to your inbox, and mark alifeinprogress@outlook.com as a safe sender. For any problems, email alifeinprogress@outlook.com. This workshop is FREE for all Brave + Beautiful Community Members.
*There are no refunds offered on digital products.
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