How to deal with your inner critic as a creative
Let’s talk about that little voice inside our heads that keeps so many of us from tapping into our creative potential – the inner critic.
I want to discuss how the inner critic tends to show up for us neurodivergent and multi-passionate women of color creatives, who tend to feel different or misunderstood. It’s time we take a closer look at how this might be impacting our ability to create and ways we can work around this. So, we can experience more ease and confidence when exploring our creativity.
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Personally, I’m really familiar with the inner critic inside my head. I used to struggle with it quite a lot. It not only impacted my creativity but also my day-to-day life. For example, I never felt good enough when it came to some of the most ordinary things in my life. Things like how I chose to spend my day, the clothes I wore, the food I wanted to eat. I always felt I was doing something wrong or not doing things the “right” way or how other people expected of me to.
Common ways the inner critic shows up
You struggle to make decisions. You second guess yourself. You are constantly questioning and wondering if you are actually any good at evaluating people and situations. You worry about how this will be received by others and this keeps you paralyzed by indecision.
You feel like everyone else always knows more than you. You’re constantly comparing yourself to others. It’s like everyone got the manual of how to do life and you didn’t. They know just the right things to say and how to behave. This one hits hard especially as a neurodivergent person because you could legitimately struggle with reading social cues or social anxiety. So, this makes you feel inadequate and you end up stressing yourself out whenever you’re stuck in unfamiliar places and situations.
You have very high expectations of yourself. You think you should be able to do all the things and do them flawlessly. Anything less than perfect makes you feel like a complete failure. So, you tend to overcommit, say yes to everything, and you’re always busy doing things out of obligation and fear of disappointing yourself and others.
So, what is the inner critic?
The inner critic is a harsh voice of self-doubt, judgment, and negativity. It's a constant voice judging everything you think, say, and do. It’s like you have to put yourself down before others do it for you.
This often stems from early life experiences, maybe it was our critical and controlling parents or authority figures in general, who treated us harshly and thought that by criticizing us they were motivating us to be better. Also, societal expectations or personal beliefs. For example, you might believe that working super hard to build your way to the top is the way to go. Maybe you always feel the need to be available for others even at the expense of your own well-being.
Then, as marginalized creatives, we also face unique pressures. For example, when you may be first in your family or community to achieve a big milestone like graduating college or working in a corporate environment. So, it feels like although you should be celebrating, you’re also worrying about everything you don’t know or have to figure out. It can also look like being the only POC in the room which automatically makes you feel like the odd one out. It’s only natural that this makes you wonder why you’re the only one in the room and if you’re worthy of being in this space.
Perhaps, you like doing a bunch of different things but you’re constantly hearing that you need to focus on one thing if you want to have success in life. This makes you feel completely insecure and you’re left wondering when you’ll finally be able to put your head down and stick with one direction. As you can see, the inner critic can be triggered by so many day-to-day situations and this can be debilitating.
The impact of the inner critic on your creativity
Now, let’s explore how the inner critic may be impacting your creative potential.
The inner critic will make you afraid of making mistakes. In our effort to be the absolute best, we hold ourselves back from exploring creatively because we don’t want to do it wrong or make any mistakes. This would feel like an absolute waste of time.
It will keep you stuck in perfectionism. So, we don’t create because we think we have to wait until we know exactly what we want to do. Or we don’t finish projects because we hate the way they are turning out. We judge them prematurely.
It keeps us from truly developing our unique voice and point of view. We are too focused on what other people are doing and what's getting likes and approval from the outside world. So, we copy these people and avoid doing the work to figure out what interests us. We are too afraid to go outside of the box.
As you can see, if we don’t stay vigilant, this critical voice can take over and destroy our creativity. So, what can we do?
Three strategies to work with your inner critic
Create an inventory of all your positive qualities and refer to it often. As humans we tend to focus on the negatives, this is just how our psychology works. So, it takes intentional effort to break the pattern and focus on the positive. And we can do this by writing it down. It may feel weird at first because you’re not used to looking at your good qualities. But believe me, once you start doing it over and over, you start to embrace it. You’ll realize that not everything about you is bad. I also think it’s really helpful to be able to refer to this list often to remind yourself of who you truly are.
Remind yourself that the inner critic is not your true self. Remember, the inner critic is an accumulation of criticisms, harsh judgements, and negative messages that we have collected throughout our lives. Most of us have never challenged this voice and have taken it at face value. It’s essential that we realize this voice is not of our own making and it needs to be challenged and interrupted.
For example, if your inner voice is telling you that you suck at learning or that you're too slow at picking up new concepts, think about all the times in your past when you succeeded at learning something new. This is how we start to break the pattern and take your power back. You have the power to shape your inner dialogue into a more compassionate and supportive voice.Replace negative thoughts with empowering ones. Whenever you find yourself being harsh or judgemental towards yourself, shift towards a more neutral or empowering voice.
Here is an example of what this might look if you were thinking about starting to paint.Critical Thought: I don’t know why I should continue painting, I suck at it.
Neutral Thought: I want to try painting. I want to see what I can learn.
Empowering Thought: I'm interested in painting and I'm going to give myself a chance to learn before I say it's not for me.
As you can see, shifting the way that we talk to ourselves can transform our creative practice.
In summary
The inner critic is something a lot of people struggle with. You are not the only one, don’t let it hold you back!
In fact, you have the power to shift this negative voice into a more empowering one, so you can be your most creative and fabulous self!
Need personalized support?
If you are ready to shift your inner critic into a more encouraging inner voice and need help, I would love to support you. Schedule your free discovery coaching call today and let’s get you on your path towards more confidence and self-love.
Renata is a creativity coach empowering neurodivergent and multi-passionate women of color creatives to overcome creative blocks with therapeutic art making and strategic planning so they can create with ease and achieve their creative goals. She’s currently offering a free copy of her therapeutic art making workbook when you sign up for her email list. Sign up here to get your free copy.
