Inner Critic Quotes

“Inside Critics

The critical voices in our own heads are far more vicious than what we might hear from the outside. Our "inside critics" have intimate knowledge of us and can zero in on our weakest spots.

You might be told by the critics that you're too fat, too old, too young, not intelligent enough, a quitter, not logical, prone to try too many things...
It's all balderdash!

Some elements of these may be true, and it's completely up to you how they affect you. Inside critics are really just trying to protect you. You can:

Learn to dialogue with them.
Give them new jobs.
Turn them into allies.
You can also dismantle/exterminate them.”
― Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK), A Creative Companion: How to Free Your Creative Spirit

“In the inner courtroom of my mind, mine is the only judgment that counts.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“Your inner critic is simply a part of you that needs more self-love.”
― Amy Leigh Mercree, The Compassion Revolution: 30 Days of Living from the Heart

“Give space to your thoughts, clear the noise in your head, chit-chat with your inner critic, decide and move on.”
― Cristina Imre, The Hidden Language of the Mind: Self Help Guide: Explaining the hard stuff the easy way

“People often miss out on their own human genius because they’re trying to be more perfect than the gods.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“The more a child is abused, the more the child uses his abilities to anticipate, manage, prevent, dismantle, and challenge the abusing ways of his parents.”
― Steven Franssen, Make Self-Knowledge Great Again

“Words can’t harm you when they don’t mean anything to you.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“Without confidence we feel insecure. We replay the doubting voices of our parents on a loop in our own minds.”
― Steven Franssen, Make Self-Knowledge Great Again

“Many people spend their whole lives doing their best to follow the coaching, guidance, and warnings of the inner critic. Society supports this. However, if you choose to pursue inner work--the search for understanding who you are, what your life means, and what reality is--you are by necessity setting yourself directly in conflict with your judge. To explore what you believe, what you experience, why you act and feel the way you do, is to question the authority of the judge. To bring the underpinnings of your psychological reality (how you think and feel) into consciousness means potentially replacing those assumptions and beliefs with direct knowledge. This would mean experiencing that your conscious awareness can begin to take the place of accepted standards and beliefs. Then you don't need to be guided, limited, and controlled by the unconscious through your judge.”
― Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within

“[Self]-distrust manifests blatantly in the judge's reaction to your experiences of expansion. 'Expansion' here refers to situations when you try something new, success at something you're never done before, stop a self-destructive habit, speak up in your own defense, recognize a truth about yourself, take on a new responsibility, and so on. The expansion is a shift in your sense of who you are or who you have taken yourself to be: who you are becomes a little bigger, includes a little more than it did before.

What does the judge do with these moments? Most everyone has experienced some sort of contraction after they expand: some letdown, some fear creeping in, some shame about being bigger, some withdrawal from the expansion. In one sense, this is part of a natural cycle of expansion and contraction. However, the contraction is seldom seen as part of the normal flow of the unfolding soul.”
― Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within

“Vronsky’s interest in art and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had sufficient taste for art to be unable to finish his picture. He ceased painting it because he was dimly conscious that its defects, little noticeable at first, would become striking if he went on.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“When we direct a lot of hostile energy toward the inner critic, we enter into a losing battle.”
― Sharon Salzberg

“The good news is that opportunities for love enter our lives unpredictably, whether or not we’ve perfected self-compassion or befriended our inner critic.”
― Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

“Whenever one person in a relationship is unwilling or unable to contact his or her vulnerability in the interaction, there is a simultaneous movement into judgement: self-attack, attack of the other, or both. This is a chicken-or-the-egg situation: Do you resort to judgment for protection because you don't feel safe, or are you not feeling safe because of the presence of judgment? This is a fundamental question in dealing with the judge.”
― Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within

“We established most of our self-beliefs during our childhood, but they were based on our limited understanding of the world around us. They are either flawed or have become outdated. We can’t take these beliefs at face value anymore.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“The truth is everything is impermanent. Nothing stays the same. Flowers wither. Our bodies grow old. Even our thoughts and emotions seem to dissolve over time. When we have a fixed concept of self, we lose ourselves in the past and don’t allow ourselves to just be who we are in the present.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“Our reaction to self-criticism is more important than the self-criticism itself. Paying attention to our reactions is very important because the only thing we have control over is how we react.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“The inner critic isn’t an enemy.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“The most powerful, dangerous and damaging skill of the Internal Critical Parent is its tactical ability to disguise itself as the voice of expansion.”
― Markus William Kasunich

“Maybe self-criticism isn’t the problem, but rather how we react to the criticism that is the problem.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“Perception of reality is not the same as reality. What we interpret is not the same as what we see.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“Don’t change your self-criticism habit. Change your habitual reactions to self-criticism.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“It’s difficult to see your thoughts when you are in your thoughts.”
― Yong Kang Chan, The Disbelief Habit: How to Use Doubt to Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

“Trust your Inner-Creator and let go of your inner-critic.”
― J.R. Incer, Mastering Success: The Key to Self Empowerment and Higher Consciousness

“The internal Censor (and maddening companions); the necessity for privacy; the security of secrecy. To control these three fears is to unlock the secret of how to slip under the surface of the conscious mind where connections and freedom flourish.”
― Alexandra Johnson, Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal

“Being aware of this inner critic and its ability to limit you is an important part of silencing it.”
― HUMAIRA SYED, 55 Habits for Mindset Mastery: A Perfect Collection of Everyday Simple HABITS to Change Your Life Forever

“Would you continue with the limiting belief of 'I am not enough' if you fully accepted that it robs you of what you want?”
― Lizzy Cangro, Reclaim the Rebel: 12 Rebellious Acts to Achieve Unconditional Love for Your Body

“When someone who hates you admits your work is good, believe them. That kind of compliment fought its way out of the trenches of pettiness, past barbed-wire fences of disdain, and still made it to your ears. That’s not praise; that’s a hostage escaping to tell the truth.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“We all carry a constant companion: the voice in our head that narrates our days. ... The tone we take with ourselves shapes our mental landscape far more than we realise. ... Many of us would never say to a friend, “You’re so stupid, you always fail,” but we might say it to ourselves. ... What if, instead, we spoke to ourselves the way we would speak to someone we love? Encouraging, honest, and forgiving”
― Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"

“It’s funny how you doubt yourself through and through, when the sun and the moon are parabolically on a pilgrimage, encircling the Mecca of you.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones, Mirrors Of The Sun: Finding Reflections Of Light In The Shittiness Of Life