Thoughts on… the inner critic
Although it might be a pessimistic way of looking at things (or perhaps realistic), humans have a great capacity for hurting others whether that’s through terror, war, abuse, violence etc. However, we also have a great capacity for self-harm, hurting ourselves either intentionally or otherwise. For the vast majority of my life, that self-harm has come in the form of my ‘inner critic’ in other words an internal ‘voice’ in my thoughts that tells me to give up, I’m worthless, why am I so awkward etc. It makes it easier to get a bit of distance from this kind of voice by personifying it somehow. At different points, when depression is at its peak, it can seem like it’s the only voice but again, this is part of how sneaky it is. I think I view it now as just being the loudest voice trying to get attention. Sometimes, I give it attention. Sometimes, I give it too much attention — always seems to be a balancing act.
The main problem with my inner critic is how sneaky it is. I can’t find the quote but there’s a good one about it being like an octopus or something, extending its tentacles into many different areas of life (hence the featured image for this post). This inner critic thing links in heavily with perfectionism. Perfectionism and the inner critic seem to work in tandem, as some kind of shitty double act to prevent feeling warm fuzzy feelings about things. I don’t want to sound like self-help because I’ve seen way too many social media posts recently pretending to know the secrets to making my life better but I promised to ‘get it all out there’ with this blog so here it comes… Life isn’t perfect. Humans aren’t perfect. You can try it but you’ll never get as far as perfect and you’ll burn yourself out in the process. I know. I’ve tried it before.
Let’s take an example, namely my most recent episode of depression (which I believe I’m still going through in some way). Before I knew it, I wasn’t able to cope with a lot going on in life. I stopped eating, I struggled to sleep, I couldn’t focus to do uni work, getting highly anxious doing a lot of stuff, the list goes on; virtually total bodily and mental shutdown. So then you stop doing the things you used to be able to do. Through some weird kind of distortion that too easily becomes “I’m not able to do this anymore” and eventually “I can’t do anything anymore”. The inner critic is a bully and tries to beat you into submission. Sometimes, it succeeds.
Another element of the inner critic’s sneakiness is that at times, it does a very good of keeping you on top form. The logic works — if nothing you do is ever good enough, you’ll aim for and achieve more challenging things without even thinking it’s anything special, constantly battling to get to that unachievable perfection. The criticism goes on and on and it always seems to focus not just on being good at things but being the best. However, the downside is that even though you might do something incredible, it’s never enough. It reminds me of that scene in The Matrix where the little bald boy says “there is no spoon”. In this case, there is no best.
That octopus image of the inner critic is an important one for me. Answers on a postcard: do you have an inner critic? If so, does it help or hinder? Is it an octopus? …and that last question is definitely on the top 10 list of ‘things I never thought I’d write’. Love it.
