Your inner critic isn’t really your voice. Research says that voice almost always started out as someone else’s, usually a parent or caregiver from way back. The problem is you’ve been repeating it in your own head for so long you forgot it was someone else’s way of thinking and not your own. It’s time to choose what you say to yourself, so today I’m going to help you figure out who you are underneath that voice and my two-step process for getting it to stop running the show.
17-minute read
Introduction
Before we get deep into this, I want to say that if your inner critic is a problem for you, definitely go back and check the two episodes I’ve previously done on this topic. Way back in Season 3, I did an episode called “Negative Self-Talk and Your Inner Critic Need to Go.” In it, I gave you three ways to quiet your inner critic: distancing yourself from it by talking to yourself in the third person, giving it a name, and thinking of it less as an enemy and more as an overprotective bodyguard doing a bad job.
Then in Season 4, I added more in an episode called “Overcoming Insecurity and Silencing Your Inner Critic,” where I came at it from the insecurity side, the signs you’re insecure, where that insecurity comes from, and five ways to build enough security that the critic has less to work with.
Today, here in Season 9, I’m giving you kind of a prequel (and maybe it’s the one I should’ve done first now that I think about it, but here we are, better late than never). What’s different about today’s lesson is that we’re going to go deeper on figuring out whose voice that inner critic really is, and then we’re taking the naming-it tool to another level to truly change your programming.
Why Does This Inner Critic Voice Sound Like You?
Your inner critic isn’t a broken part of your personality; it’s a borrowed one. You picked it up somewhere back in your life from a parent, an ex, a coach, or maybe a teacher. It could also be some cultural voice about what a woman or a man is supposed to be. It’s been saying something critical, often enough, that you absorbed it and started repeating it back in your own voice until it sounded like it was coming from you. It never was, no matter how long you’ve been talking to yourself this way.
The reason you’ve likely failed in reasoning with this internal voice in the past is because, if you think that voice is you, you try to argue with yourself, and (as you already know) you can’t win an argument with yourself, because both sides are you. Yes, maybe you keep the voice at bay for a few days, but it pops back up again, often stronger than ever. The new idea for today is that once you know whose voice it is, you’re not arguing with yourself anymore; you’re telling someone else to leave.
Where Does This Voice Come From?
Psychologist Robert Firestone spent decades on exactly this question. In his early work, he noticed that when people described their self-criticism the normal way, saying “I’m so stupid” or “I always mess this up,” it came out sounding almost reasonable, mild even. So, he had them try saying the same thoughts back as “you” statements instead: “You’re so stupid,” “You always mess this up.” The tone changed instantly, and Firestone said he was caught off guard because he was watching calm, mild-mannered people turn harsh and self-punishing the moment the sentence was aimed at them instead of coming from them.
He realized that this shift meant that the critical voice was never a first-person thought to begin with; it just sounded like your own voice because you’d had years of practice turning it into “I” language. Say it in the second person instead, and you hear what it really is, which is somebody else talking at you!
Firestone called the whole collection of these internalized attacks the anti-self system, and he traced its origin back to (you guessed it) your childhood. Kids who get hurt by the people raising them almost never blame the people raising them, because a kid who thinks their parent is the problem has nowhere to go, while a kid who decides they’re the problem at least has a shot at fixing it by being good enough. So, the criticism gets swallowed, becomes part of how you talk to yourself, and stays there long after the person who gave it to you is gone from your life, even after they’ve died.
Firestone isn’t the only one who’s landed here, either. Psychology professor Daniel Kopala-Sibley, who studies how childhood shapes adult mental health, found that having a critical, uncaring, controlling, or abusive parent is one of the most consistent predictors of becoming a self-critical adult.
And there’s brain-imaging research backing up why the tone of the voice matters (often, even more than the content). In one study, self-critical thinking activated brain regions tied to threat, punishment, and error-monitoring, while self-reassuring thinking activated the same regions that light up when people feel compassion for someone else. Being hard on yourself and being kind to yourself aren’t just different moods, they’re different systems.
Not every version of your internal voice sounds critical, of course. I’m sure (or at least hoping) you’ve heard some positive messages too. But I want you to also be careful with those positive messages because there are some that seem positive on the surface but are really negative and fear-based underneath (sort of like a red flag that looks like a green flag).
For example, Firestone found that some of these internalized voices sound encouraging on the surface, hyping you up, telling you you’re smarter or more special than everyone else in the room, and these can be just as harmful (or even more harmful since they’re so subtle) as the obviously mean ones. Think about it; a voice that builds you up into something unrealistic is setting up the fall for later, because eventually reality doesn’t match the hype, and that’s when the same voice flips and goes after you for not living up to your potential (I think that was on every report card I got in middle school).
This is the voice that grew out of being told you were special as a kid, that you were so smart things would always come easy, that you could be anything you wanted if you just tried hard enough. Nobody meant harm saying those things, but the first time something doesn’t come easy, that same voice flips fast: you were supposed to be the smart one, but you’re really an idiot because you’re not figuring this out!
And you don’t have to have had a rough childhood for this to apply to you, either. Maybe you got your inner critic from a coach who ran practice like a drill sergeant, an ex who never missed a chance to point out what you got wrong, or a boss who made “constructive feedback” into a weapon. Your inner critic will generally take on the voice of whoever was loudest and most consistent.
And, of course, it leaks into your relationships. If the inner critic has spent years telling you that you’re too much, not enough, or fundamentally hard to love, you’re bringing it with you. You read a slow text back as proof that they don’t love you as much as you love them; you brace for the other shoe to drop; you apologize for things that you shouldn’t be apologizing for. The inner critic doesn’t just make you miserable when you’re alone in the shower; it sits in on every conversation you have with the people you love, and it’s consciously or unconsciously driving many of your thoughts, conversations, and actions.
Where Else Does This Voice Show Up?
Again, your inner critic shows up in every relationship you have: on the job, as a parent, as a sibling, as a friend, everywhere.
And the worst is how it shows up in your relationship with yourself. Lucky you has a running commentary on every decision you make. You pick a restaurant and immediately think you picked wrong. You decide between two jobs and within a week you know you should’ve picked the other one. You send a text and reread it four times, looking for the thing you said badly. None of this is about you being thorough; it’s your inner critic driving unhealthy anxiety.
With friends, it shows up as the reason you don’t reach out. You tell yourself they’re busy, or they’d have texted first if they really wanted to hang out, or you’re too much to invite out twice in one month. All of this is your inner critical voice trying to protect you from rejection (which can’t happen if you never take a risk).
With family, it gets sneakier, because your inner critic is sometimes (literally) a family member’s voice. You might hear your mother’s exact tone come out of your own mouth when you mess up a recipe or when you find yourself criticizing your brother. I can remember catching Max in a lie when he was young, and the snide, icky reproach that came out of my mouth was word-for-word something my mother had said to me when I was a kid and she caught me lying. Ugh.
And in a romantic relationship, it’s the loudest, because that’s the relationship where you’re the most vulnerable. It’s where the stakes are highest for you. So, you go looking for proof of your partner not loving you (or not loving you the “right” way), or you feel insecure in an otherwise healthy relationship, or you ask for constant reassurance because that voice is reminding you how unlovable you really are.
In fact, research shows that while self-criticism doesn’t directly make your partner feel less loved, it does diminish the benefit of getting close in the first place, because self-critical people tend to hold back the exact things that make closeness work: sharing what’s really going on, asking for support when they need it, letting positive feelings show. So, the relationship gets closer on paper maybe, but it doesn’t feel closer, because your inner critic has you managing and curating yourself instead of just showing the real you.
Four Ways to Know If It’s Your Inner Critic or Healthy Self-Reflection
So how can you be sure it’s your inner critic and not just you thinking? This is probably the question I get asked the most. Yes, sometimes you did mess up, and a little self-correction is useful, but you’ve got to be able to tell the difference between your inner critic’s voice and your own, true, inner being speaking to you.
Here are four ways:
- It uses always and never. Real self-assessment is specific, not universal. “I was late to that meeting again” is information. “You’re always late, you can never get your act together” is your inner critic, because your behavior is really always or never anything.
- It has a tone, not just content. If you can hear it in a specific person’s cadence, the exact way your dad said “unbelievable,” the way your mom said your name when you were in trouble, or how your ex said your name when they were disappointed, that’s a strong sign you’re hearing an old recording, not a new thought. The example I give is your inner critic harshly says, “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!” while healthy self-reflection sounds more like, “Hmmmmm, why did I do that?”
- It shows up before you’ve had time to think. Real reflection takes a beat, but the inner critic’s voice is instant. If you pay attention, you’ll notice it’s already talking before you’ve even finished doing the thing it’s criticizing, which means it isn’t responding to what happened; it’s just doing what it always does regardless.
- It ends in a verdict, not a next step. Useful self-correction points somewhere: apologize, try again, do it differently next time. Your inner critic just hands down a sentence about who you are and stops there. “OK, I messed that up so next time I’ll do x instead” versus “You’re such an idiot. You’re just useless in these situations.”
How Do You Get It to Shut Up?
As I said earlier, I gave you a lot of tools and processes in the previous episodes, but here’s the two-step process for today: You give it a name that isn’t yours, and then you talk back to it like a person instead of like a thought. That’s the whole thing. It’s two steps, and it’s simple but highly effective. I’ve talked about naming it before (and maybe you’ve heard about this tool from someone else), but this is different in a way that my clients and I have all found much more effective.
Because I love you, the free download for today will walk you through this process.
Step 1: Name It
I’m going to start with how I deal with my own inner critic. I used to call my inner critical voice the Diva. I would notice the voice and say something like, “Oh, there goes the Diva again.” But it turns out I was too polite to her, which resulted in my not fully shifting how I felt inside, so it didn’t work long-term. I didn’t realize something could work way better until a few years ago.
Here’s the story. I was at a large dinner party (picture a big, long table) and was seated across from a man named Chuck (no, I’m not changing his name to protect the innocent, because he’s not). Chuck was that guy who loved the sound of his own voice, and he liked to hear it… a lot! He was misogynistic (he was calling women girls and saying how they shouldn’t dress a certain way at the gym), and he was definitely homophobic. He was talking about how (what he assumed were) gay men at the gym kept staring at him (the gay men I know have better taste, so it’s my assumption they were laughing at him, not trying to hit on him, but I digress).
Chuck was an expert on everything, and when the conversation shifted to Robin Williams’ suicide (don’t remember how that became the dinner topic but there we were), Chuck started going off on how selfish he was to kill himself and leave his children, and how he’d never do something like that. On and on went our man, Chuck. I was quiet until someone said, “Well Abby, you’re the psychologist at the table; what do you think?”
Chuck actually shut up and stared for a minute, clearly unhinged that a girl with real knowledge and experience in this topic was sitting in such close proximity. Normally I would be gentle if disagreeing with someone so publicly, but I’d had to listen to Chuck for about three hours by this point, and I was sort of over it.
So, I said something to the effect of, “It’s easy to say things like he’s selfish when you don’t understand severe major depression, Chuck. Suicide isn’t about selfishness; it’s about mental illness that’s either not treated appropriately or can’t be treated for some reason. Judging someone’s suicide as selfish is like judging someone who has a heart attack for scaring everyone at the table. Their heart didn’t stop because they were being inconsiderate, and depression doesn’t kill someone because they were being selfish.”
Chuck blustered for a moment, but my withering glance kept him quiet. Now, I don’t usually act this way, but this was someone I found supremely distasteful and just someone I had zero respect for. (OK, I kind of hated him. There I said it).
Soon after this incident, I tried naming my inner critic Chuck instead of Diva, and the results were impressive. It seems that naming my inner critic Chuck was brilliant because I could much more easily dismiss anything it said! I mean, Chuck is an asshole! So now, if my inner critical voice says something like, “You shouldn’t have done it that way,” I can picture Chuck saying it, and it’s so easy to not only reject it, but to be annoyed at the voice, just like I was annoyed with Chuck.
When I spoke to Diva I would say, “OK, all is well. You don’t need to help me right now.” But with Chuck? Oh, I tell him to shut the f up! I tell Chuck to shut up with that same withering glance I gave him at the dinner table, so it’s so much more effective! So now, when Chuck shows up, I say it out loud or in my head, doesn’t matter which: “Thanks, Chuck, now shut up and go sit down,” and I’m able to really close that door.
So, if you’re a woman listening, maybe think of giving your inner critic a particular male’s name that you can easily dismiss, like I can with Chuck. If you’re a guy listening to this and Chuck doesn’t land for you, you can try something else. Maybe your critic sounds like a coach who ran you into the ground, an older brother who never let up, or a boss whose voice you can still hear years later.
Here’s why naming it works even though it sounds like a party trick. The second you name the voice, you’ve separated it from you. It’s not “my thoughts” anymore; it’s Chuck’s opinion, and Chuck is definitely not the boss of me. You can be irritated with Chuck without believing a word he says, but you can’t be irritated with yourself in the same way, because you already believe yourself by default.
Step 2: Answer Back (Don’t Just Avoid It)
But naming your inner critic is only half the job. Firestone’s original method didn’t stop at naming the voice because you also need to answer the voice, not just avoid it. Firestone’s original method had you talk back to it in your own words, from your own point of view, and say what’s actually true.
So after you dismiss Chuck, finish the job. If Chuck says, “You always mess this up,” you don’t get to just roll your eyes and move on. You want to say something like, out loud if you can manage it, “I’ve messed up plenty of things and I’ve also gotten plenty of things right, so this is just another imperfect day.” That’s not toxic positivity; it’s just accurate.
I’ve had clients do this with a parent’s voice specifically. One woman I worked with realized the voice that told her she was “too sensitive” every time she brought up a problem with her sister was her mother’s voice, word for word, down to the exact tone. She started naming it “Mom’s voice” instead of believing it was her own judgment, and then she’d answer back to her mother: “I’m not too sensitive, I’m someone who notices when something’s wrong, and that’s allowed to matter.” It takes a little while to make this an automatic habit but, if you stick with it, you’ll see that it works.
Here are a few more examples:
- If your critic sounds like a strict teacher: “Thanks, Mr. Davies, I turned it in, and it’s not perfect, and it’s done.”
- If it sounds like a competitive older sibling: “Thanks, Danny, I’m not behind. I’m exactly where I am.”
- If it’s just your own anxiety dressed up as caution: “Thanks, Chuck, I’ve handled harder than this before.”
The shape is always the same. Name it, dismiss it, say the one true thing underneath.
With all of this, you need to make sure your mindfulness game is on point. If you don’t catch the voice, you can’t change it. The only way I know to consistently catch that voice is to be aware, in your moments, that it’s happening. If you haven’t downloaded my free mindfulness starter kit yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.
Therapy-to-Go Bundle
- A 2-Step Tool for Quieting Your Inner Critic
- The Voice Origin Map
- Is It Voice or Is It You Worksheet
- Script Sheet (Using the Tool in Real-Life Situations)
- Critical Voice Tracking Sheet
- Journaling Prompts
References
- Firestone, R.W. The Critical Inner Voice. The Milton H. Erickson Foundation.
- Tait, A. (2026, January 10). How to finally silence your inner critic, according to psychologists. BBC Science Focus.
- Longe, O., Maratos, F.A., Gilbert, P., Evans, G., Volker, F., Rockliff, H., & Rippon, G. (2010). Having a word with yourself: Neural correlates of self-criticism and self-reassurance. NeuroImage, 49(2), 1849-1856.
- Lear, M.K., Luoma, J.B., & Chwyl, C. (2020). The Influence of Self-Criticism and Relationship Closeness on Peer-Reported Relationship Need Satisfaction. Personality and Individual Differences, 163, 110087.
