Name and shame (and love) your inner mean girl

You know that fun little voice inside that says really mean things to you?

Geez your arse looks huge.

Why would anyone listen to you?

You’re not good enough.

Don’t smile or everyone will see your ugly teeth.

Yeah, that one. Let’s deal with that fucker today.

Everyone’s got an inner critic

It’s a fact. Every single one of us has a little voice inside that barrages us with criticism and negativity. For some of us, it’s constant and debilitating. For others, it’s more occasional — an irritating distraction that comes and goes.

But for all of us, it’s there. Mumbling, shouting, needling.

Gahdamn.

So the first thing I want you to know is, You’re not alone. It’s part of the human experience. You know that person you admire and want to be like who is rocking her world and seems like she’s got her shit sorted? She’s got an inner mean girl. Telling her mean things. Making her doubt herself.

No one is immune.

Yours might not be a girl, obvs. But mine is. And since a man came up to me after a keynote recently and said, “You know it’s funny — my inner critic is also a small woman named Shelly,” I think we’re just gonna stick with she/her pronouns for the purposes of this discussion. *shrug emoji*

The birth of the inner mean girl

So whyyyyeeeeeeee? If we’ve all got one, where does she come from???

Our inner critic is the result of internalised criticism from the world around us — whether it’s from actual people in your life like parents or teachers or random strangers who once shouted at you — or whether it’s from societal messages about things like perfection and beauty and acceptance and success.

So a small, usually young part of us takes on those messages that caused us harm, and in an effort to protect us from the possibility of future harm, she reinforces those messages. She doesn’t want us to get told we’re ugly, so she tells us we’re ugly instead — in the hopes that we’ll do something about it, and thereby avoid being seen as ugly.

She voice doesn’t want us to fail, so she tells us we’re a failure so we won’t try things and fail. By criticising us, she hopes she can protect us from the pain of failing.

When you look at it like that, it’s pretty fucked up.

So let’s give her a name

A super powerful thing you can do is to name your inner critic. When you can hear that voice and be like, “Hey, Gertrude, you’re back.” You start to create some separation between the beliefs she holds and your actual identity. Without that separation, those are YOUR beliefs.

So if you can hear that mean voice and be like, “Oh hey, I know you. Hi!”, then immediately you’ve reclaimed some power. You’ve started a process where you can deal with your inner critic as an entity that’s distinct from YOU. You can have conversations. You can develop a working relationship.

So what are you going to call your inner critic? Is it Brian? Is it Angeline? Is it Spike? Is it Mr Snodgrass? Be inventive. Give it a name. Your inner critic is NOT YOU. Naming her helps reinforce that.

Then learn to love her

Although I regularly joke about telling my inner mean girl to fuck off, the fact remains that she’s trying to protect me. She’s not actually trying to cause me harm.

And so it actually follows that the way to quieten her is to make her feel heard and appreciated. And it’s easier to do that once you understand that she’s trying to protect you.

Now you can say, “Oh hey Bertha, I hear you. I know you’re worried that people might laugh at me on stage. Thank you for looking out for me. I know it’s true that people might laugh at me, so I’m preparing myself for that possibility. I also think it’s pretty unlikely, so I’m willing to take the risk. Thank you, and maybe we can be brave together.”

Now you can say, “Oh Spike! I know you’re so worried about me showing my chicken legs when I wear these shorts to the beach. I don’t actually think my legs are that skinny. I think we remember when that dick Tony at school called us chicken legs and we’ve just believed it ever since. What if we try this out — let’s go to the beach and see if anyone says anything? Maybe Tony was wrong.”

And now I’ll go have a chat with Rochelle, my inner critic who’s a scared little girl inside me who wants to follow all the rules and always please everyone. She’s mocking the shit out of me cos I thought I was gonna write a short, punchy blog today.

“Oh, heeeeey Rochelle…”