How to understand and work with our inner critic
I am sure you know the feeling. You sit down to write and before you’ve even finished the first sentence, a little (or loud) critical voice pipes up:
‘This is terrible.’
‘Someone’s already written this.’
‘Who do you think you are?’
Most creatives know this voice. It can be loud and relentless, disguising itself as perfectionism, procrastination or telling us that we’re not ready.
Mine has turned up recently as procrastination. If I didn’t approach the work, I couldn’t wreck it.
For a long time, I thought I needed to stop listening to this critical voice because it got in the way. Then, some years back, I changed my mind. I worked out that perhaps the problem wasn’t the inner critic itself.
It was the timing.
When our inner critic gets the wrong job
Our inner critic actually plays an important role in the creative process. It notices inconsistencies, improves our sentences, tests our ideas and helps us produce our best work.
The trouble is that it rarely waits until we need it.
It turns up while we’re still trying to work out what the heck we’re trying to say. It’s got the red pen out before we’re sure we’ve landed on the right sentence and is questioning things we’re not ready to answer because we’re still exploring the idea.
No wonder so many of us end up tangled by our own thoughts.
There are a few reasons why this critical voice can become so loud. Our brains are trying to keep us safe. We compare what we’re making with work we love and admire. And over the years, we accumulate a whole collection of voices from teachers, parents, reviewers, mentors and other people who have made us question whether we’re good enough.
Eventually, those voices can become so familiar that they sound like our own.
But that doesn’t mean our brain is working against us. It’s doing what it has evolved to do. The trick is working out how to use that critical voice without letting it stop us creating.
Meet Tom
I’ve found it much easier to work with my inner critic since I gave him a name.
Meet Tom.
Tom is a brilliant editor. He notices repeated words, awkward phrasing and inconsistencies. He loves structure, grammar and tidy paragraphs. He’s a culmination of my mother, my grade 6 teacher, a uni lecturer and an award-winning author.
Tom is also a terrible first-draft companion.
When he sneaks into my room too early, he questions everything. Every sentence. Every idea. He imagines problems that don’t exist and wants to perfect paragraphs that I might delete anyway.
The problem with Tom is his timing.
Creating and refining are two different parts of the creative process. When we’re creating, we need to explore, experiment, follow our curiosity and allow ourselves to make a bit of a mess. When we’re refining, we need that critical eye to question what we’ve made and decide what stays and what goes.
Both are important. The trouble starts when we try to do them at the same time.
These days, I tell Tom that his shift starts when I’ve finished exploring the idea. When he does start, it’s like sending a ferret down a rabbit hole. He’s really good at it.
I send him in with questions like:
- Is this the best opening?
- Am I repeating myself?
- Is there a clearer way to explain this idea?
- Where might the reader become confused?
Those are very different questions to the much more loaded, ‘Is this any good?’
I’ve also noticed that the louder Tom becomes, the more likely it is that I’m working on something that matters to me. The projects I care about most are often the ones that make me feel vulnerable because they say something about who I am.
These days, I try to see that discomfort as information rather than instruction.
Instead of assuming it means I should stop, I ask myself whether it’s simply telling me that this piece of work is important.
Want to explore this further?
Inside the full Mindset Insight on Substack, I explore:
- why our brains can be so critical of our creative work
- why our inner critic is often trying to keep us safe
- what happens when our tastes exceed our ability
- how the voices we’ve collected over the years can become our own
- why creating and refining need different kinds of thinking
- five practical ways to give your inner critic the right job at the right time
Your inner critic isn’t necessarily something you need to silence. It might just need to know when it’s time to come in.
x Meg
PS: Want more support?
I’m here if you need help. You can explore the Start Here page to find the ways I provide support for creatives from free articles to monthly creative mindset masterclasses, paid memberships and retreats. My Momentum memberships are a great way to get regular support you.
