[Music]
[Applause]
several years ago a guy we can call John
walked into my psychology office it was
a nice sincere in friendly 30 year old
who felt his life was coming to get her
he had a nice job he had a couple of
friends around him and he just met the
woman of his dreams now at first glance
John seemed to be filled with that
exquisite juicy feeling you have you
know when you’ve just fallen in love
with someone so you’d think that he’d be
at the top of his world at this point
and so I asked John well what brings you
to my office and he said you know I’m
miserable
I love her but I keep thinking about
leaving her and you know what I’ve even
had thoughts about ending my life now
what was going on here well it turns out
John had struggled for years with
intense self-criticism that kept saying
things like you suck and you’re not good
enough over and over again in his mind
and while John had hoped that things
would get better once he found someone
to share his life with it was actually
getting a lot worse and now I didn’t
know what to do this talk is going to be
about self-criticism and more
importantly what we can do about it and
I’m not referring to the reflective self
corrective process of hmm I wonder what
I can learn from this which is adaptive
and helps us out rather I’m referring to
the attacking shaming and condemning
kind of self-criticism that John was
experiencing and I found a lot about
this topic over the years because it’s
something I see all the time in my work
as a psychologist in coach whether I’m
working with a teenage girl who’s
intensely depressed because she really
dislikes her looks or if I’m working
with an engineer or a creative artist
who keep running in their creative
blocks because the inner critical voice
calls every idea garbage
I’ve especially thought about this
because I noticed early on in my career
that while I was helping some of my
clients with their self-criticism
quite a few of them actually told me
something like this you know Ronnie I
get it on a logical level that I’m not
the most horrible person who’s ever
lived but he still feels like it you
know it still feels like it and these
were devastating moments both for my
clients who wanted to get better and for
me as well because well I do what I do
as a psychologist to help my clients
suffer less and live more fully so this
dilemma eventually led me out on a
research journey to try to find out as
much as I possibly could on how to help
my clients end the struggle with
self-criticism
it’s a journey I’m still on to to this
day however I’ve ran into some big ideas
along the way that have made a
tremendous difference for many of my
clients and when this talk is over you
guys will know three key ideas that can
help you tame your inner critic and as a
result enjoy the benefits of increased
confidence courage and peace of mind the
taming the inner critic tends to bring
about and the first idea I want to share
with you is this but there might be some
helpful intent linked to the self
criticism maybe the self criticism is
trying to push you to be better at
something or maybe is trying to keep you
away from something like failure or
maybe being rejected now I’ll be honest
with you here when I first heard that
idea I thought it sounded like so much
I mean how on earth could this
destructive self-criticism that’s
bogging people down carry anything
useful with it but I kept researching
and I kept stumbling upon the same idea
in several different schools from
psychotherapy and also in the research
literature where people like Paul
Gilbert is finding in the UK that we
actually associate helpful functions to
self-criticism and therefore we might
fear giving it up
but what did all of this mean then well
let’s return to John for a moment
because me and John we were getting
stuck on the I get it logically I’m not
horrible but it feels like it level so I
decided to give this idea but helpful
intent to go with John and essentially I
told him something like this you know
John at times we can have competing
commitments in our minds where it’s like
one part of the mind shows up and says
hey let’s get rid of the self-criticism
then I’ll feel so much better but then
another part of the mind scoops in and
says oh no don’t get rid of me you need
me and then these two parts can start a
sort of a rope pulling contest in our
minds and essentially it just gets us
stuck now do you notice anything like
this going on John John just looked
perplexed and then he said yeah I think
you’re onto something here and so we
decided to explore this idea of helpful
intent together with some simple
questions like what do you fear might
happen if you didn’t criticize yourself
or what kind of values might your
self-criticism be linked to thirty
minutes later we had a couple of answers
first John said you know I think my
self-criticism is trying to push me to
be a grow and be a better man by saying
I’m not good enough and I thought the
other kind of makes sense trying to push
him to be better kind of like a
motivational function there and then
John said my self-criticism says I’m
stupid for getting into this
relationship because now she’s gonna see
my defects then she’s gonna leave me
that’s gonna hurt like heck and again I
thought yeah that kind of make sense you
know protective function trying to keep
him away from being rejected yeah
and then John said and my self-criticism
says I shouldn’t get into any
relationships because I just end up
feeling sadness and shame and now this
one was a little harder to grasp so so I
asked John you know could you clarify
that a bit what’s this about and he said
I need to tell you something I’ve never
told anybody before I was severely
bullied in the army by both male and
female officers and even some fellow
troopers it was just 9 months of living
hell
and I decided at that point that I was
never going to trust anybody ever again
so we talked about this for a while and
then at some point I asked John will
what’s it like to look at yourself
criticism now and he said you know it’s
weird I’m I’ve never connected the dots
before but yeah I’m kinda I’m getting it
you know it’s trying to push me to be
better and it’s trying to keep me away
from ever again feeling that awful pain
of rejection I felt in a mirror theory
you know I get it I get it and I mean
been feeling some warmth towards it now
this caused a shift in John because up
to this point he’d seen his inner critic
as something that he needed to get rid
of and now it just looked a bit more
like well an unhelpful helper and this
is the rattle Universal tain when it
comes to harsh self-criticism if you
look behind the angry facade will often
find fierce and important values
it’s like the inner cricket critic it’s
kind of like an anguish sports coach
really that wants you to succeed and
then it does the only thing he knows how
to do it yells and it screams at you and
essentially it freaks you out and it
doesn’t help you grow or develop at all
so maybe this is an idea that can help
you with your inner critic try to look
behind the anger facade and see if the
inner critic maybe is trying to keep you
away from some pain maybe trying to help
you get something like love or approval
or maybe he’s trying to push you to be
the kind of person you want to be but
with a really poor execution style now
was this all it took for John to get
better well not quite he certainly felt
better in the session and he sensed
something get shifted inside and then it
came back a week later and he told me
that it’s a little less intense but it’s
still taking me over and that’s actually
a very common experience I think most of
us have had the experience of having
just beautiful insights about ourselves
or about how the world works
that’s still don’t translate into any
real change so what else could be done
well let’s take a look at the key number
two for taming the inner critic which is
taking a step back this is something I
first stumbled across in some modern
forms of psychotherapy and it has its
roots in our ancient wisdom traditions
to talk about things like mindfulness
and meditation so what would taking a
step back look like let’s return to John
for some clarification
now first John if you imagine that my
hands here represents John
self-criticism then we could say that
his self-criticism was right here in his
face a lot at a time criticizing shaming
and condemning him now naturally at this
point he’d feel really bad about himself
and he’d also have a hard time like
doing anything that really mattered to
him and I described this to John and he
said yeah that’s exactly what it feels
like and so I suggested to John it would
try to find a way for him to take a step
back
so essentially just getting some
distance from the critic even to the
point that the inner critic would move
into the role of a radio playing in the
background still playing it’s pretty
cool too but without all that much
impact and John really liked this idea
so we talked about it for a while and
and then he come up with this really
cool idea and he said I’m gonna give it
a name yeah I’m gonna call it sake
Johnny because that’s what it felt like
back in the military and and John really
started playing around with this idea
and whenever the self-criticism would
show up he just go oh it’s sake Johnny
paid me a visit again and he’d scoop it
to the side a bit and keep doing
whatever he was doing and it seemed to
help him out quite a bit and and I know
this idea might sound a bit silly so I
want to emphasize that the idea isn’t to
ridicule yourself or ridicule yourself
criticism just to get some distance and
the science behind this idea is solid
indicating the distancing ourselves from
psychological distress can be highly
useful so I suggest you give it a try
with your own self-criticism
you could try writing your critical
thoughts down on a piece of paper and
then distancing yourself from the paper
the artistically inclined among us could
try drawing the inner critic and maybe
add a funny half while you’re at it and
then distancing yourself from the
drawing or you could give it a name like
John did but try to find a way to take a
step back and see what happens there was
one more thing we needed to consider
with John Doe how we define the courage
to be trusting and vulnerable in
relationships again well let’s take a
look at the key number three for taming
the inner critic which is cultivating a
compassionate coach inside so
essentially we’re talking about swapping
out the angry sports coach and instead
bringing in a more kind and
compassionate point of view that will
allow us to access our inner guidance
are we
courage and our inner commitment to
things that matter to us and this is an
idea that’s being shown to significantly
lowere a sense of depression shame and
chronic self-criticism in multiple
research studies over the last 10 years
in some cases even after just two weeks
of practice so what does this idea look
like let’s see how John applied it he
liked this idea of an era coach so we
spent quite some time thinking about
what it would be like if he were a
compassionate coach to himself what kind
of words he would say to himself what
kind of voice tone he would use you know
would it be really Forrest or would it
be calmer and maybe a more reassuring
voice tone how he would hold his body
how he would breed would it be shallow
or deeper and so on and John started
practicing this idea just for a couple
of minutes out of every morning and he
told me that I get up in the morning and
then I just tried to step into the role
of a compassionate coach so I get into
the steady body language I breathe a bit
deeper and then I try to think about
some way that I could dare in my
relationship today and then I offer some
encouraging words to myself like I know
it’s a bit spooky but you can do it go
for it this is important to you and then
one day John came to my office he had a
huge grin on his face and he said you
know I I just told my girlfriend about
the military experience it just it just
don’t pour it out of me and and then we
had the most amazing talk ever and later
on the most amazing sex ever now John
was clearly learning that it might be
okay to be trusting and vulnerable in
this relationship so soon enough our
work together was complete and I hadn’t
heard from him in a couple of years
actually until I got an email from him
last year where he said I just got
married
and PS sake Johnny still shows up at
times but I try to treat him kindly I
think John’s story showcases how some
key ideas can help us grow out of old
patterns like self-criticism so if you
notice that your inner critic is giving
you a hard time why not give these ideas
a shot number one try to understand the
helpful intent number two take a step
back from the criticism and number three
cultivate a compassionate coach inside
and as you access compassion for
yourself I believe that you engage in
helping both yourself and everybody
around you as the great author and
professor Leo Buscaglia once wrote
forgive yourself and be good to yourself
for without you at your best the rest of
us are missing out on many wonderful
things and I hope this talk has given
you some ideas for how to be good to
yourself and others thank you
[Applause]
[Applause]
several years ago a guy we can call John
walked into my psychology office it was
a nice sincere in friendly 30 year old
who felt his life was coming to get her
he had a nice job he had a couple of
friends around him and he just met the
woman of his dreams now at first glance
John seemed to be filled with that
exquisite juicy feeling you have you
know when you’ve just fallen in love
with someone so you’d think that he’d be
at the top of his world at this point
and so I asked John well what brings you
to my office and he said you know I’m
miserable
I love her but I keep thinking about
leaving her and you know what I’ve even
had thoughts about ending my life now
what was going on here well it turns out
John had struggled for years with
intense self-criticism that kept saying
things like you suck and you’re not good
enough over and over again in his mind
and while John had hoped that things
would get better once he found someone
to share his life with it was actually
getting a lot worse and now I didn’t
know what to do this talk is going to be
about self-criticism and more
importantly what we can do about it and
I’m not referring to the reflective self
corrective process of hmm I wonder what
I can learn from this which is adaptive
and helps us out rather I’m referring to
the attacking shaming and condemning
kind of self-criticism that John was
experiencing and I found a lot about
this topic over the years because it’s
something I see all the time in my work
as a psychologist in coach whether I’m
working with a teenage girl who’s
intensely depressed because she really
dislikes her looks or if I’m working
with an engineer or a creative artist
who keep running in their creative
blocks because the inner critical voice
calls every idea garbage
I’ve especially thought about this
because I noticed early on in my career
that while I was helping some of my
clients with their self-criticism
quite a few of them actually told me
something like this you know Ronnie I
get it on a logical level that I’m not
the most horrible person who’s ever
lived but he still feels like it you
know it still feels like it and these
were devastating moments both for my
clients who wanted to get better and for
me as well because well I do what I do
as a psychologist to help my clients
suffer less and live more fully so this
dilemma eventually led me out on a
research journey to try to find out as
much as I possibly could on how to help
my clients end the struggle with
self-criticism
it’s a journey I’m still on to to this
day however I’ve ran into some big ideas
along the way that have made a
tremendous difference for many of my
clients and when this talk is over you
guys will know three key ideas that can
help you tame your inner critic and as a
result enjoy the benefits of increased
confidence courage and peace of mind the
taming the inner critic tends to bring
about and the first idea I want to share
with you is this but there might be some
helpful intent linked to the self
criticism maybe the self criticism is
trying to push you to be better at
something or maybe is trying to keep you
away from something like failure or
maybe being rejected now I’ll be honest
with you here when I first heard that
idea I thought it sounded like so much
I mean how on earth could this
destructive self-criticism that’s
bogging people down carry anything
useful with it but I kept researching
and I kept stumbling upon the same idea
in several different schools from
psychotherapy and also in the research
literature where people like Paul
Gilbert is finding in the UK that we
actually associate helpful functions to
self-criticism and therefore we might
fear giving it up
but what did all of this mean then well
let’s return to John for a moment
because me and John we were getting
stuck on the I get it logically I’m not
horrible but it feels like it level so I
decided to give this idea but helpful
intent to go with John and essentially I
told him something like this you know
John at times we can have competing
commitments in our minds where it’s like
one part of the mind shows up and says
hey let’s get rid of the self-criticism
then I’ll feel so much better but then
another part of the mind scoops in and
says oh no don’t get rid of me you need
me and then these two parts can start a
sort of a rope pulling contest in our
minds and essentially it just gets us
stuck now do you notice anything like
this going on John John just looked
perplexed and then he said yeah I think
you’re onto something here and so we
decided to explore this idea of helpful
intent together with some simple
questions like what do you fear might
happen if you didn’t criticize yourself
or what kind of values might your
self-criticism be linked to thirty
minutes later we had a couple of answers
first John said you know I think my
self-criticism is trying to push me to
be a grow and be a better man by saying
I’m not good enough and I thought the
other kind of makes sense trying to push
him to be better kind of like a
motivational function there and then
John said my self-criticism says I’m
stupid for getting into this
relationship because now she’s gonna see
my defects then she’s gonna leave me
that’s gonna hurt like heck and again I
thought yeah that kind of make sense you
know protective function trying to keep
him away from being rejected yeah
and then John said and my self-criticism
says I shouldn’t get into any
relationships because I just end up
feeling sadness and shame and now this
one was a little harder to grasp so so I
asked John you know could you clarify
that a bit what’s this about and he said
I need to tell you something I’ve never
told anybody before I was severely
bullied in the army by both male and
female officers and even some fellow
troopers it was just 9 months of living
hell
and I decided at that point that I was
never going to trust anybody ever again
so we talked about this for a while and
then at some point I asked John will
what’s it like to look at yourself
criticism now and he said you know it’s
weird I’m I’ve never connected the dots
before but yeah I’m kinda I’m getting it
you know it’s trying to push me to be
better and it’s trying to keep me away
from ever again feeling that awful pain
of rejection I felt in a mirror theory
you know I get it I get it and I mean
been feeling some warmth towards it now
this caused a shift in John because up
to this point he’d seen his inner critic
as something that he needed to get rid
of and now it just looked a bit more
like well an unhelpful helper and this
is the rattle Universal tain when it
comes to harsh self-criticism if you
look behind the angry facade will often
find fierce and important values
it’s like the inner cricket critic it’s
kind of like an anguish sports coach
really that wants you to succeed and
then it does the only thing he knows how
to do it yells and it screams at you and
essentially it freaks you out and it
doesn’t help you grow or develop at all
so maybe this is an idea that can help
you with your inner critic try to look
behind the anger facade and see if the
inner critic maybe is trying to keep you
away from some pain maybe trying to help
you get something like love or approval
or maybe he’s trying to push you to be
the kind of person you want to be but
with a really poor execution style now
was this all it took for John to get
better well not quite he certainly felt
better in the session and he sensed
something get shifted inside and then it
came back a week later and he told me
that it’s a little less intense but it’s
still taking me over and that’s actually
a very common experience I think most of
us have had the experience of having
just beautiful insights about ourselves
or about how the world works
that’s still don’t translate into any
real change so what else could be done
well let’s take a look at the key number
two for taming the inner critic which is
taking a step back this is something I
first stumbled across in some modern
forms of psychotherapy and it has its
roots in our ancient wisdom traditions
to talk about things like mindfulness
and meditation so what would taking a
step back look like let’s return to John
for some clarification
now first John if you imagine that my
hands here represents John
self-criticism then we could say that
his self-criticism was right here in his
face a lot at a time criticizing shaming
and condemning him now naturally at this
point he’d feel really bad about himself
and he’d also have a hard time like
doing anything that really mattered to
him and I described this to John and he
said yeah that’s exactly what it feels
like and so I suggested to John it would
try to find a way for him to take a step
back
so essentially just getting some
distance from the critic even to the
point that the inner critic would move
into the role of a radio playing in the
background still playing it’s pretty
cool too but without all that much
impact and John really liked this idea
so we talked about it for a while and
and then he come up with this really
cool idea and he said I’m gonna give it
a name yeah I’m gonna call it sake
Johnny because that’s what it felt like
back in the military and and John really
started playing around with this idea
and whenever the self-criticism would
show up he just go oh it’s sake Johnny
paid me a visit again and he’d scoop it
to the side a bit and keep doing
whatever he was doing and it seemed to
help him out quite a bit and and I know
this idea might sound a bit silly so I
want to emphasize that the idea isn’t to
ridicule yourself or ridicule yourself
criticism just to get some distance and
the science behind this idea is solid
indicating the distancing ourselves from
psychological distress can be highly
useful so I suggest you give it a try
with your own self-criticism
you could try writing your critical
thoughts down on a piece of paper and
then distancing yourself from the paper
the artistically inclined among us could
try drawing the inner critic and maybe
add a funny half while you’re at it and
then distancing yourself from the
drawing or you could give it a name like
John did but try to find a way to take a
step back and see what happens there was
one more thing we needed to consider
with John Doe how we define the courage
to be trusting and vulnerable in
relationships again well let’s take a
look at the key number three for taming
the inner critic which is cultivating a
compassionate coach inside so
essentially we’re talking about swapping
out the angry sports coach and instead
bringing in a more kind and
compassionate point of view that will
allow us to access our inner guidance
are we
courage and our inner commitment to
things that matter to us and this is an
idea that’s being shown to significantly
lowere a sense of depression shame and
chronic self-criticism in multiple
research studies over the last 10 years
in some cases even after just two weeks
of practice so what does this idea look
like let’s see how John applied it he
liked this idea of an era coach so we
spent quite some time thinking about
what it would be like if he were a
compassionate coach to himself what kind
of words he would say to himself what
kind of voice tone he would use you know
would it be really Forrest or would it
be calmer and maybe a more reassuring
voice tone how he would hold his body
how he would breed would it be shallow
or deeper and so on and John started
practicing this idea just for a couple
of minutes out of every morning and he
told me that I get up in the morning and
then I just tried to step into the role
of a compassionate coach so I get into
the steady body language I breathe a bit
deeper and then I try to think about
some way that I could dare in my
relationship today and then I offer some
encouraging words to myself like I know
it’s a bit spooky but you can do it go
for it this is important to you and then
one day John came to my office he had a
huge grin on his face and he said you
know I I just told my girlfriend about
the military experience it just it just
don’t pour it out of me and and then we
had the most amazing talk ever and later
on the most amazing sex ever now John
was clearly learning that it might be
okay to be trusting and vulnerable in
this relationship so soon enough our
work together was complete and I hadn’t
heard from him in a couple of years
actually until I got an email from him
last year where he said I just got
married
and PS sake Johnny still shows up at
times but I try to treat him kindly I
think John’s story showcases how some
key ideas can help us grow out of old
patterns like self-criticism so if you
notice that your inner critic is giving
you a hard time why not give these ideas
a shot number one try to understand the
helpful intent number two take a step
back from the criticism and number three
cultivate a compassionate coach inside
and as you access compassion for
yourself I believe that you engage in
helping both yourself and everybody
around you as the great author and
professor Leo Buscaglia once wrote
forgive yourself and be good to yourself
for without you at your best the rest of
us are missing out on many wonderful
things and I hope this talk has given
you some ideas for how to be good to
yourself and others thank you
[Applause]
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