Eight Ways Your Inner Critic Sabotages Your Life

We are given a conscience by God, but that conscience is not given fully formed. Our conscience is shaped by our experiences and our responses to life. It is further molded by the perceptions we have of our experiences. This is also a part of spiritual formation. Everyone experiences spiritual formation, from Christians to atheists, we are all spiritually formed in one direction or another.

A great influence on spiritual formation is your family of origin. Since formation takes place in the early years of our lives, we don’t readily recognize it. It becomes evident when you recognize you are doing something, without thought, just like one of your parents.

One of the funniest things I’ve witnessed was my wife say something, then to abruptly stop talking. Next, she exclaimed, “I sound just like my mother!” I’ve experienced this with both of our adult daughters: “I sound like mom!” It’s a startling realization that we are being shaped in the early part of our lives, for years at a time, often without even knowing it, only to realize it as adults.

This kind of formation is a double-edged sword. It can be great if you had someone to help you interpret these experiences in a healthy way. The other edge is when you don’t have the best of examples or a healthy person in your life to interpret life-shaping events. Our formation is then found wanting.

For most of us, our spiritual formation is a mixed bag. We have some very good values on the one hand and in the other, we are challenged in how we view the world. Our early experiences are interpreted for us by parents, religion, siblings, caregivers, teachers, and friends. These then become the structures in which we view everything else. The structure of our thoughts determines our view of the world.

The thought structures that we’ve adopted may be true or false, or a variation of both depending on the circumstances. This becomes part of your inner critic.

Next, we are going to list eight different ways our thought structures have been formed that are harmful to us. It is essentially eight ways your inner critic may sabotage your life.

It is important for us to be critical with our inner critic and acknowledge to ourselves when we have been holding thought structures that sabotage our lives, making our situations worse than it really is or needs to be.

I’ve drawn these eight different ways from two books by Dr. Daniel Amen. I’ll reference them at the end of the blog. So here are the eight ways your inner critic can sabotage your life.

1. All-or-nothing thinking

This kind of thinking is focused on absolutes. You won’t hear “maybe” or “sometimes” come out of this kind of thinker’s mouth. This thinking uses words like “all”, “always”, “never”, etc. Part of this thinking is believing that everything is either good or bad, that there is nothing in between. It’s a black or white rigid thinking.

You might get away with this in simple math, but not in simple relationships. One secret to building long and successful relationships is the ability to compromise. Anyone who has been married for a while knows the application to this statement: You can be right, or you can be happy, but you can’t be both. Which one can you live with?

2. Focusing on the negative

This is when your thoughts see what is bad or negative, ignoring anything good that may be in the situation. You may be speaking in front of a group of people, and you didn’t cover the material as you had thought you would. That may cause you to feel like the presentation was terrible. However, there were likely many there who got something good out of it. They didn’t know what you knew. They didn’t have the same expectations you had of yourself. Remember, “God works all things together for good” (Romans 8:28).

3. Fortune telling

Fortune telling is letting one bad experience determine how the rest of the trip, job, or life will turn out. Getting a flat tire early in a car trip does not mean that the rest of the trip will be bad. Having a bad dating experience doesn’t mean all members of the opposite sex are idiots and you should give up. Do you see where I’m going with this? Don’t give up. You don’t know how it will turn out. Give life, love, and God a chance.

4. Mind reading

Mind reading is believing you know what the other person is thinking even though they haven’t told you. This is a major reason why people have so much trouble in relationships. They assume they know what the other person is thinking even before they get a chance to give evidence. It’s hard enough when someone assigns bad motives to your actions, let alone putting their own words inside your head. Give people the benefit and wait for them to speak. It may be much better than you thought.

5. Thinking with your feelings

Feelings may lie to you. Your thoughts may lie as well. Be aware how dangerous it is to say, “I feel you don’t love me” or “I feel like a failure.” You must counter “thinking with your feelings” by thinking with your thoughts. Look for evidence. Maybe these feelings are just coming from your own insecurities or unrealistic comparisons with others.

6. Guilt beatings

This is a specialty of the inner critic. Guilt beatings begin with “I should…” or “I ought…” or "I must…” There are expectations tied to these statements about your performance.

Dr. Amen states that it is better to replace “I should…” with “I want to….” It removes it from the guilt arena and moves it into positive motivation. Guilt beatings are effective, but only for a while. They soon lose their power because the benefit of good behavior is clouded by our negative motivation. When we see it is good for us, we can move from “have to” to “want to” to “get to.”

7. Labeling

When you label someone or something with a negative image, you limit the way they can be perceived. If you label someone a “jerk” it will be almost impossible to see anything good come from them. There may be much good that the person does, but the “jerk” label covers it up. The same goes for yourself: “I’m too stupid”, “I’ll never get it right”, and “I’ll never change.” These are all labeling. When you apply that label, it makes it easy to give up and not try anymore.

This can also work in the positive side but in a negative way. Someone has labeled a son or daughter as being “perfect.” Now they cannot see what everyone else sees about them. They have flaws and shortcomings like everyone else. But the person who has labeled them “perfect” just can’t see it.

8. Blaming

This is the worst one of the eight. Blaming is when you blame others for the problems in your life. Statements like: “It’s not my fault”, “If you hadn’t…” or “How was I supposed to know…” It is unattractive when a child does it, but it is downright insulting when an adult will not just take responsibility for their own actions or inactions. It’s a sign of a real change in character when a person accepts responsibility for the failures in life. It means that they can do something about it. When you don’t take responsibility and it’s always someone else’s fault, you are powerless to make change.

It's not necessary to overthink how you think, but it is good to do a check-in to verify if your thinking is matching up with reality. Sometimes a good objective friend can help. But for most of these, simply withholding judgment on others is enough. You’ve got enough trouble in this world without making yourself part of it.

For further reflection on these, Dr. Daniel Amen has put this into two of his books: Change Your Brain Change Your Life, Revised and Expanded. by Daniel G. Amen, M. D. pgs. 116-117 and in his book Feel Better Fast and Make It Last. pgs. 100-106.

Your Inner Critic: What It Is and How It Works

“I always strive to have a clear conscience toward God and men.” (Acts 24:16, CSB)

The practical working out of our salvation takes time and effort. There are pockets and potholes of resistance in all of us as God is working to use all things so that we may be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-29). As Dallas Willard so famously said, “Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning.” Even so, we are to be willing partners with God in the shaping of our lives, especially our inner life.

All of us have to some form and degree an inner dialogue. We have inner thoughts and even discussions within ourselves over issues of the day, our personal interactions with others, and reflections of ourselves. This is important to recognize. It’s important because we should be discerning in our self-talk. Our self-talk has several assumptions that we should question from time to time. They carry assumptions about life and how the world operates that may not be true. Perhaps some assumptions are mostly true but not completely and others are just false. Leadership coaches call these self-limiting beliefs. To the degree our assumptions do not align with reality they limit our flourishing.

Besides our assumptions and self-limiting beliefs, we have a conscience. Most people, when they think of conscience think of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other both whispering into your ear what to do, or not to do. Conscience is the “ought” impulse.

Personally, my conscience whispers: I “ought” to be productive. I “ought” to put others needs before mine. I “ought” to be out sharing the gospel. I “ought” not to be eating that dessert. That’s conscience. It’s the internal conflict that can feel like voices going off in our heads.

The Bible talks about the conscience as an accuser to us along with God's law written in our hearts: “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Romans 2:15, ESV) We have the capacity to know when we do good, could have done better or just flat out sinned.

We have a conscience because we have a capacity for moral judgment. Capacity is something that may be expanded or contracted. You can grow or shrink your conscience. You can also abuse it or make it thrive.

God is involved in our conscience. He gave it to us in the first place and expects us to take care of it. Your conscience is a gift from God. God knows what is going on in our heads with our conscience and whether we are obeying it or not, whether we have trained it or have abused it.

No two consciences are exactly alike. If they were, we wouldn’t need passages in the Bible like Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 which teach people with differing consciences to get along in the church. Because of this, no one’s conscience perfectly lines up with God’s will. So don’t use your conscience to judge someone else’s.

I mentioned that you can abuse or damage your conscience. You can do this in two directions. You can make it insensitive, or you can make it oversensitive. You make it insensitive by ignoring the promptings of it and of the promptings by the Holy Spirit though your conscience. Pharaoh is an example from the Old Testament who hardened his heart to God. In the New Testament, the book of Hebrews warns us not to “harden our hearts” to God’s promptings or will, as others have in the past, suffer a similar dire fate.

You can also make your conscience oversensitive by packing it up with all sorts of rules that are not really a right or wrong thing but just opinion. The Apostle Paul issues a warning about this to Timothy and the church at Ephesus. You can see both insensitivity and oversensitivity in one passage.

“Through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared. They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods that God created to be received with gratitude by those who believe and know the truth.” (1 Timothy 4:2–3, CSB)

They ignored God, but then imposing strict and unnecessary rules about food and marriage. It is vitally important to evaluate the truth of your beliefs because true or false, they will program your conscience.

I’m thinking of a personal experience that may help with this. Growing up in west Texas, I faithfully attended a Methodist Church. In our church’s fellowship hall were pool tables and ping pong tables. The other kids and I had a lot of fun playing on those tables before Sunday School. When I got to High School, each year, we had a dance in the church fellowship hall for all the students. I never saw anything wrong with playing pool or dancing. After graduation I went off to college. The school had regular sponsored dances in the University's Student Center. They were good with live bands and popular DJs. I enrolled in a couple of social dance classes at the University. I learned the two step, the three step, polka, and square dancing. Believe me, I was no “Dancing with the Stars”, but it was a great way to socialize and have fun.

During this time, I came to know Christ and my life was changed. On the one hand, some of the things I did as an unbeliever I needed to stop. On the other hand, there were some things, now as a Christ follower, I needed to start doing. Going to school dances was not one of those things I ever felt like I needed to stop. In fact, I brought many of my dance friends the campus Baptist Collegiate Ministry, until I was told that going to dances would hurt my witness and stunt my spiritual growth. I was a new believer. I was also told by some more “mature Christian students” not to listen to any other music, but only Christian music. I followed their direction and stopped both dances and listening to any other music. I allowed my conscience to be restricted in an area that I now understand was not a right or wrong issue, but someone else’s conscience paraded as right and wrong for everyone, including me. My conscience became overly sensitized, and I fell into a subtle form of legalism.

To quote the Apostle Paul again, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13, ESV) The flesh can and will move us to extremes: Excesses in behavior or to pride by abstaining.

To sum it up, our internal dialogue, self-limiting beliefs, and conscience make up what I call the inner critic. We need to be aware and be diligent in managing our self-talking, self-limiting, and self-judging. Knowing what your inner critic is and how it functions leads us to steward it for an aligned life before God, others, and ourselves.

“For why is my freedom judged by another person’s conscience? If I partake with thanksgiving, why am I criticized because of something for which I give thanks? So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I also try to please everyone in everything, not seeking my own benefit, but the benefit of many, so that they may be saved.” (1 Corinthians 10:29–33, CSB)

Taming Your Inner Critic

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7a, NKJV)

You can’t control what other people think or say about you, but you can tame what you say about yourself. We say hurtful things to ourselves that we would never say to another person. For example, have you ever said to yourself:

“I’m no good.”

“Why would anyone want me?”

“I’m a failure.”

“I’m so stupid.”

“I’ll never be able to stop that.”

“I’m an idiot.”

Way back in the 1990s, Dr. Daniel Amen, M.D. gave these thoughts a name. He called them “ANTs.” Yes, he called them ANTs: Automatic Negative Thoughts. What’s important to remember is that these thoughts are real, and they have a direct impact on how you feel and how you behave.

ANTs are all too common. Brain scientists tell us that most of our thoughts are negative, which they maintain is perfectly normal. These thoughts pop up to keep us on the alert and safe. But ANTs can also become a habit. There is an adage in the neuroscience community that goes like this: Neurons that fire together wire together. In other words, the more you have a reoccurring thought pattern the more likely it is that you will continue to have that thought pattern. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to break a bad habit.

Another challenge that surfaces with your negative thoughts is the issue of truth. Just because you are having a thought does not mean it’s true. It could even be harmful. Most of us would question someone else telling us we are stupid. We would even get angry at someone for calling us an idiot. But when we say it to ourselves, we just accept it. We don’t question it. You need to question it. Question your self-talk.

One way to do this is to recognize your thoughts when they are negative and talk back to them. Dallas Willard has written, in his book “Hearing God” that we should stop listening to ourselves and begin talking to ourselves. This advice may seem strange in a book about hearing from God, but I promise you that it is sound. If you can learn how to not believe every stinking thought that you have in your head, you will go a long way into moving toward mental, physical and spiritual health.

Our problem has been that these thoughts pop us automatically, seemingly out of the blue and then they pile up. If it were just one or two a day, it would not be so bad, but they accumulate and take over our lives to a greater or lesser degree. At any rate, they consume a lot of energy and cause us to miss some great opportunities.

Another way to combat these thoughts is to write down the thought and then write down what is true that counters the thought. I’m a fan of journaling. For me, writing stuff down has a way of freeing my mind.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when you have a negative thought or an ANT:

• Is it true?

• How can I know that this is really true?

• How do I react because of believing that thought?

Here’s the gut check question:

• How would I feel if I didn’t have that thought or ever have it again?

These questions will put some objectivity to your self-talk.

I don’t want to get deep into neurobiology, after all, I’m no neuroscientist. But I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express! With that said, I have read and heard over and over from qualified people in this field as to how our ANTs affect our health.

Whenever you have a negative thought, such as anger, sadness or depression, your body releases chemicals into the limbic system (that part of the brain [stem] that control your autonomic nervous system) that make you feel bad, both emotionally and physically. It fires you up and puts you on alert. The limbic system gives us the emotional fuel that increases your heart rate among other things.

When you have a positive thought, such as happiness, joy or hope, your body releases chemicals into the same system, but these are different and make your emotions and body feel good. So, your body reacts to every thought that you have in some way and to some degree.

This why thoughts are so powerful. They can make you laugh and sing or cause you to have a headache and double over with pain in your gut.

I believe it is possible for us to train our thoughts to be positive and filled with hope. If we can change our thoughts, we can change the way we feel. When we change the way we feel, it will change the way we treat ourselves and others. It will change our lives.

You may be wondering if this is biblical. Well, it is. David, the great king of Israel often asked himself why he was thinking or feeling a certain way. He would then make adjustment in his thoughts and bring them back to the truth of Scripture.

“Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.” (Psalm 43:5, CSB)

“My soul, bless the Lord, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. My soul, bless the Lord, and do not forget all his benefits.” (Psalm 103:1–2, CSB)

This is part of what the Apostle Paul was referring to when he said to renew your mind. He wrote, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2, CSB)

We are to think God’s thoughts. Of course, you cannot think God’s thoughts if you don’t know God’s thoughts. This is where Scripture reading, meditating, and memorizing come in. I can say with certainty that you are not thinking God’s thoughts if you are berating and condemning yourself. “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,” (Romans 8:1, CSB). Not even a little condemning. Zip, zero, nada, none.

So, take notice of your self-talk and if it’s not in line with God’s talk about you, rebuke it and tame it in the powerful name of Jesus.