Making Friends With Your Inner Critic

Human beings are complex organisms. I mean, I don’t know when the last time was that you tried to design a self-aware, interactive, embodied consciousness with the capacity to to learn and evolve and alter its environment, but it’s not easy. You’re bound to wind up with some parts that seem a little dysfunctional.

Take the inner critic as an example. Who wants one of those things around? They’re mean. They make you feel bad. Seems like you could do without one and be better off.

But your inner critic, dysfunctional as it may be, has been trying to be your ally all along. Like all aspects of your consciousness, your inner critic has an essential role to play. In order for it to play that role, however, you first have to make friends with it. Here’s how!

About the Author

Steve Bearman, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He founded Interchange Counseling Institute in 2002 and is the lead teacher of Interchange's San Francisco-based year-long counseling and coaching training. When he's not counseling people, leading workshops, and advocating for social justice, Steve climbs mountains, adventures in the urban wilderness, explores the edges and limits of what's possible, deconstructs everything, and finds new ways to put it all back together.