There is a powerful antidote to the Inner Critic, but you will need to learn how to cultivate it: self-compassion.
Compassion means “to suffer with.” When you see a small child break an arm, you naturally feel moved to offer kindness and comfort. You may not be able to stop the pain, but just being there to hold a hand and say reassuring things can soothe some of the suffering. Your presence has a calming and encouraging effect.
Both giving and receiving kindness releases oxytocin, a.k.a. “the love hormone,” which makes us feel warm, safe and connected. It’s an incredibly powerful hormone that gives mothers overwhelming love for their infants even after the pain of childbirth.
Self-compassion is about keeping good company with yourself when you are suffering. If you can learn to flood your brain with oxytocin, your emotional pain—acute, chronic and deeply buried traumas—can heal and shift. The more warmth you can give yourself, the less the Inner Critic needs to take over.
Few of us were taught to consider relating to ourselves at all, much less compassionately. You may believe that compassion needs to come from others, not yourself. This idea is due in part to the Inner Critic’s fear that if you are too kind to yourself, you will succumb to your weaknesses.
But self-compassion isn’t self-pity or self-indulgence. It’s not getting wound so tight around your problems that you lose sight that others are suffering, too. It’s not chowing down a pint of ice cream. It’s not giving yourself permission to lash out at others or letting yourself off the hook.
Compassion isn’t something that you need to earn for being good enough. The child with a broken arm didn’t do anything to deserve your compassion. You deserve to feel compassion for yourself because all human beings deserve compassion. You are a child of the sun. It shines on you with as much warmth as it shines on every other living thing. And why shouldn’t it?
Self-compassion is your antidote that can be applied no matter what you’ve done or haven’t done. It will heal the knotty parts of yourself that have never been adequately acknowledged or cared for. Demanding that these parts shut up, stop whining or get it together doesn’t make them go away, does it? Self-compassion has a way of melting the knots.
Tool: Loving-kindness Meditation
A kind and loving approach to self may be antithetical to the way you have been raised. If that’s the case, it’s helpful to develop a practice of self-compassion. I’m partial to Loving-Kindness (a.k.a. Metta) Meditation. It comes from the Mindfulness tradition and is designed to develop warm feelings for ourselves and all beings.
1. Loving-Kindness to Yourself
With an open, loving heart, breathe gently, and recite the following traditional phrases directed toward your own well-being.
May you be happy.
May you be safe
May you be well
May you be free from suffering.
For most of us, offering ourselves love is foreign. Be aware that this may feel awkward or irritating at first. If that happens, it’s especially important to be patient and kind with yourself. It may help to visualize yourself as a young child.
Alternatively, you might find it easier to bring to mind a friend or loved one—living or non-living—or an animal that loves you as you are. Someone who wants you to be happy, who when you think of them brings a sense of warmth to your heart. Envision this being sending you your good wishes in the four phrases above.
When you receive loving-kindness from another, it will fill you with positive feelings of abundance and goodwill. It can help to repeat the phrases multiple times, paying particular attention to the intention behind them.
2. Loving-Kindness to Those You Care About.
After you connect to the preciousness of being loved unconditionally, you take this overflowing abundance of love and goodwill and direct your attention to a person or animal beyond yourself, a friend, a loved one and someone in need. Holding them in your mind’s eye, you send the same wishes:
May you be happy.
May you be safe
May you be well
May you be free from suffering.
3. Loving-Kindness to Toward All Beings
Often at this point in the meditation you will begin to feel a kind of opening of the heart, a sense of inclusivity. In this step, you expand your loving-kindness to those in distant places that you may never come in contact with.
We might imagine everyone in your city, state or country. You might include everyone in the world or in a particular place.
May you be happy.
May you be safe
May you be well
May you be free from suffering.
You might also bring to mind someone who could really use loving-kindness, such as an infant in a far away land just being born, someone dying, or someone caring for a sick parent saying internally to ourselves.
You might also include non-humans, too. You might visualize all animals and plants, a particular animal or even a single celled amoeba, bacteria or virus.