Jun 29, 2021
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Inner Critic or Inner Bully?
A healthy, mature inner critic is wise to develop and invaluable in any manner of personal, professional, or artistic development. That critical voice should be all about assessing a work or skill for improvement opportunities and building strategies to get there. Ideally, it should be an honest, even-handed voice that recognizes error as part of the learning process, and isn't too quick to shame an imperfect effort that resulted in growth. The inner critic will also be more enthusiastic about seeking out help from well-meaning experts.
However, especially amongst artists and writers, it seems like something tends to go off the rails here. That inner voice turns into something ranging anywhere from a schoolyard bully to an internet troll to a hostile parent to an abusive significant other or friend. What the inner bully does is entirely counterproductive and antithetical to the function of a healthy inner critic, because at the heart of its behavior is a desire to tear down and punish rather that construct, fix, and build up.
Some warning signs that you're dealing with an inner bully:
Its tone is generally condescending.
It confuses ridicule and analysis, and acts quite authoritative about it.
It sounds suspiciously like a past bully or abuser.
It is pessimistic and/or cynical; extremely biased to arriving at negative conclusions in the name of "facing reality".
It is defeatist.
It silently casts aside positive remarks as irrelevant, facile, or ill-informed, while accepting negative commentary, even while it exists in far fewer numbers, as the unadulterated truth.
It may have something of a sadistic streak, making you feel like a detached part of your mind is kicking you while you're down.
It shames the learning process. Being new at a skill or method is ridiculed as embarrassing.
It is preoccupied with the idea of wasted time. Everything is shame-worthy because nothing is the correct activity; all activities do little more than steal from time that could have been used on others.
It casts others' successes as symptoms of your own failure and makes you feel very small around them. (This can make consistent community participation hellish if not outright impossible.)
It moves goalposts and encourages self-gaslighting. Meeting goals or refining skills feels hollow because there's always some technicality that makes it unreal, or calls into question your very perception that progress has been made at all.
It is addicted to ad hominem attacks--negative critiques are aimed at the artists/ writer's self rather than the works they produce.
One helpful question to ask when determining which one you're dealing with in more subtle situations is, "What does this mood/feeling/mindset intend? What is its endgame?"
Learn to Love the Person You’re Stuck with For Life- You!
Learn to Love the Person You’re Stuck with For Life- You!
Hey! There’s no getting away from it, kiddo! You can never run from yourself. You are confined to yourself and will take this person with you wherever you go. Soooo… Would you rather be stuck for the rest of your life with someone you love or someone you hate? I thought so. Many times, we’ve heard critical and debasing voices of the people around us when we were growing up. And they conditioned…
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Finding joy in helping others, overcoming doubt by doing good, and looking inward instead of outward for answers - EDEM ep. 35 with Donna Marie Post
Finding joy in helping others, overcoming doubt by doing good, and looking inward instead of outward for answers – EDEM ep. 35 with Donna Marie Post
It’s natural to feel doubt in parenting, work, and life. We all do. What matters is what we do with it, how we redirect it and believe in ourselves again.
Meet Donna Marie Post, a mother of one, who shed a part of her old self when she became a mom. It was a part of her she wasn’t proud of, that was judgmental and unkind. It was a bully inside her own self—a voice many of us can relate to and…
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Is anyone else’s inner bully going hard on them today?
I really want to participate in #prettypeopleeat today, but even though I have days where I feel like I’m pretty, I worry about it defeating the purpose. Since it’s to help combat the negative associating of “pretty girls don’t eat” specifically with regards to disordered thinking, I worry that me being fat is counter-productive.
I mean, that’s kind of a gentle way of saying that my inner bully keeps telling me that I’m not the kind of pretty that other people would want to emulate. And that no one would ever doubt that I eat, because I mean come on, look at me.
I love seeing and reblogging everyone else’s stuff, and I would never in a billion years say anything like that to anyone else, so what the hell is my problem? I’m a huge believer that everyone is beautiful and for some reason today it’s really hard to apply that thinking to myself. :(
It's time to Finally Get out of your own way.
It’s time to Finally Get out of your own way.
On Friday I pointed out how dangerous the two words “IF ONLY” were…
Today I am going to dive into that idea a little bit deeper.
How differently would your thoughts be if the instant they occurred they would pop out and onto your forehead like a billboard?
Would you still talk to yourself the same way if those thoughts were visible for others to see?
Definitely NOT!
We all put on a…
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