CATASTROPHIZING: If you are going through a challenging patch creatively, feeling stuck or bored or scared, the critic will jump in with doom statements like "It's always going to be this way. This will never change. In fact it will only get worse. You should just quit now." If that doesn't work and you continue plowing ahead with your creative project it will pull out the death and ruination card." If you stay on this path of creativity you will lose your job. Become a bag lady. A plane could crash into your house. You could die of some horrible rare disease. In fact ,what is that weird pain you are feeling in your left toe? " Of course all of this is completely ludicrous, but the critic is counting on years of training in slavish devotion to anything it says to blind you to the ridiculousness of these statements.
DEMANDING that you do the impossible. The critic loves to set you up for failure by giving you creative assignments that you couldn't possibly fulfill based on a skill level you couldn't possibly have (being able to paint flawless realism the first time you pick up a brush) or in a time frame that is completely unrealistic (a completed novel in a month) and then berating you mercilessly when you fall short of the mark.
TOO MUCH, too big, too scary, too, too! Whenever you hear the critic saying you are too ANYTHING, turn it around and try to be even more of what it doesn't want you to be. The critic says what you are doing is trite or kitschy? Fine! Pull out all the stops and show that old judging mind what kitschy is really all about. Gleefully make it jump up and down. Practice being too much.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS be very suspicious of the critic's motivations for giving you a particular message. Whenever you hear the critic mouthing off always ask the question "WHY? Why is it going after me now? How have I threatened it, how am I getting too big or powerful or otherwise stepping outside of my familiar box?" Never engage with the critic in an argument on its own terms. The only interaction you should ever have with the critic is some version of telling it to take a hike. Remember... it is not rational , so don't interact with it as if it is. Giving it that level of respect feeds the critic and diminishes you. You can't win an argument with a crazy person... even if that crazy person is lurking inside of your own head.
AND FINALLY...the critic will never go away. This process of standing up and fighting back is not meant to ultimately get rid of the critic because that just isn't possible. The Inner Critic is just one aspect of your unruly monkey mind. It's part of the hardwiring in being human. So there's no shame in having to deal with it again and again. You need to have compassion for the struggle, and recognize that although you can't get rid of the critic itself, you can change your relationship to it, so that it is no longer running your life. And after you've kicked its butt about 5 million times, you can then begin to have compassion for its scared, misguided, annoying self!
About the Author:
Using counseling, astrology and the expressive arts, Chris Zydel, MA, at http://www.creativejuicesarts.com, has worked with hundreds of people over 28 years, to help them joyfully grow and expand into their full creative potential.
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