How to leverage your inner coach to quiet the negative talk

We all have it; that little voice inside our head that whispers, “You screwed up.” That voice is your inner critic. As a life coach and retired psychiatrist, I encounter the topic of inner critics frequently within the medical community and although everyone possesses one, I’ve observed the inner critics of medical professionals to be harsher than most. Often my clients don’t even realize the extent to which their thoughts, feelings, and actions are governed by this. Through coaching, my clients manage to find a healthy balance for their inner critic, and amplify their inner coach, resulting in healthier self-talk, and an ability to embrace and learn from mistakes.

And it all stems from one crucial lesson of my coaching: the idea of choice. 

What is our inner critic, and where does it come from?

I think of the inner critic as a collection of our self-critical thoughts. These are the judgments we carry about ourselves (whether they are true or not). Our self-critical thoughts are ideas we’ve taken in from the world around us, from other people’s criticisms and judgments all the way back to our infancy. Some of them we know to be true—and they are. Others we believe to be true—even though they’re not.

We learn these self-critical thoughts from people close to us, like our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, mentors, and even the media and our larger culture, and they stick to us like gum. Usually these people don’t intend for their judgments to stick for a lifetime, they may not even realize their influence in the moment, but because the judgments often come from those closest to us, they hurt. And pain is an incredible motivator, for better or worse. Medical training is a grueling process, during which medical students submit themselves to daily judgment and critiques. It’s unsurprising that this can take a toll on a person’s sense of self, and feed into the negativity of their inner critic.

Ask any doctor and they’ll list the mistakes they’ve made in their career, going all the way back to medical school, often decades in the past. We try to learn from them, but those mistakes, and the shame we feel from them, sticks with us. 

Add to that the criticism we receive from others (which unfortunately is often more plentiful than praise), and our self-critical thoughts are reinforced, without credit and compliments to counterbalance them. 

The upside to our inner critic

It’s important to understand that our inner critic is a very healthy and necessary component of our psyche. Without it, our ego would run rampant. A healthy inner critic will allow us to see ourselves honestly, with thoughtful reflection. It will allow us to recognize if there’s an area of ourselves requiring development or improvement. Without it, we wouldn’t grow because we wouldn’t see where we fall short.  

A great way to understand what a healthy inner critic should resemble is to think of a good supervisor, or manager. A good one won’t shy away from correcting their direct reports, and letting them know where they’ve fallen short. The impetus for the correction is what really matters here. A good supervisor does this in order to help their team members learn, improve, and grow. It’s not to ridicule or shame and embarrass them. They ultimately want their students or team members to succeed.

So, when your inner critic kicks in, does that little voice in your head sound like a supervisor who ultimately wants you to learn from your mistake and overcome the challenge? Or is it a whole lot of negative, and unproductive, self-talk?

How can we find a healthy balance with our inner critic?

Someone with a really harsh inner critic will beat themselves up when they fall short. They’re punishing themselves, and there’s no learning that comes from this verbal abuse. In fact, the situation often becomes worse from this kind of inner critic, because if you beat yourself up every time you make a mistake, you’ll become fearful of mistakes, and you might just stop trying altogether!

How does the situation differ in someone who possesses a healthy inner critic? When the mistake occurs, they can comfortably acknowledge it. They’ll see if it’s possible to undo and correct the mistake. If not, they’ll try to minimize the damage. From there, they’ll make amends if necessary. And then they’ll really look at what happened, and ask themselves, “What did I do wrong here? What can I do differently in the future? How can I make a commitment to doing things differently in the future?”

With this mindset, an individual is focused on learning and growth without blame. 

How to strengthen our inner coach

Breaking negative thoughts and building up our inner coach to work in tandem with our inner critic is a process, but I find the initial step is quite simple. For most of us, our inner critic is on autopilot, we do it without even thinking about it. Getting people to recognize the harshness of their inner critic disarms it pretty quickly. In coaching, I try to have clients look at the way they treat themselves, and then compare it to how they’ve been treated by good supervisors or teachers or coaches. And then I ask them to think about how they’ve felt around harsh supervisors, teachers and coaches. Comparing the way both experiences felt and motivated them really puts the inner critic in perspective. The lightbulb goes off, and clients universally want to be the kind, supportive coach.

By imagining the perfect balance between the inner critic and inner coach, we aim for an inner critic who can be upfront and honest, who doesn’t shy away from mistakes or shortcomings, but has the fortitude to charge forward, learn from their mistakes, and evolve to do better, all thanks to the encouragement of that inner coach. Having that healthy mindset helps us see the good in ourselves.

How it works in coaching

Most people don’t walk through life asking, “What’s my inner critic saying?” Typically it’s not even a subject that clients bring up when they seek coaching. But their inner critic quickly presents itself as we begin to discuss their obstacles.

Awareness is a huge part of bringing about change, so we talk about that little voice in their head, what it says, and how it says it. We talk about the benefits and drawbacks of an inner critic, and the style that elicits both. People often believe a harsh inner critic keeps them from being laissez faire. That’s what will keep them from making mistakes. But really, it keeps them from growing. So we’ll talk about what works as a motivator and what doesn’t, what the pain of a harsh inner critic feels like. I propose what an alternative, softer, more encouraging inner critic might feel like. I offer an alternative model, and we talk about what that looks like, and try to practice it. 

It’s important for my clients to understand the harm of a harsh inner critic, so they can comprehend how unhealthy this frame of mind is. People with a harsh inner critic tend to suffer from low self-esteem, feeling unworthy or unlovable, or dumb. They lack confidence interpersonally, and carry a fear of rejection. I’ve also observed an unwillingness to try new things, and a fear of failure. For many doctors, it’s important to excel at all things, and for some, that desire is so strong, it actually prevents them from trying new things, because, as most of us know, no one is great at everything the first time they try it. 

An approach I often try with clients in this situation is to have them try something new, something unrelated to their field of work, but something that might feel challenging, and awkward. I have my clients put themselves in a situation where they could be harsh towards themselves, and invite them to take a different approach. We practice it, and I might model a healthy inner critic, so they can recite similar, encouraging thoughts from what a healthy inner critic and coach would say.

Coaching physicians’ inner critics

Physicians pose a unique challenge in my coaching because of the immense pressures placed on them personally and by society to not just be good at something, but to be perfect at it. In medicine, mistakes aren’t readily accepted (for good reason!). I have an approach in my coaching that usually helps physicians let their guard down, and that’s sharing the concept of common humanity. Common humanity is an aspect of self-compassion, and it’s when we recognize that we’re all human, we all struggle, and we all fall short at times. When my clients can accept that we’re all imperfect beings, trying our best, with successes and failures, the shared feeling can be very helpful to dampen their inner critic, and find comfort in being one of many experiencing life and feeling the same way.

I’ve always believed that therapists and coaches can only help people where we personally are not stuck. It helps greatly to have spent decades of my life as a psychiatrist because I understand all-too-well the pressures and stresses that physicians face. But having learned to overcome them, and cultivating a healthy balance between my inner critic and coach, I can now help others do the same. You can’t really take people farther than you’ve gone yourself. You wouldn’t trust a mountaineer to guide you to a peak they hadn’t already summited. I think of coaching in the same way. 

That applies to so many of my clients too, who are in positions of teaching and supervising younger professionals in the field of medicine. 

Embracing a healthy inner critic and coach

The greatest lesson I try to impart to my clients is this: you have a choice. Once you manage to turn off autopilot and become aware of your inner critic, you then have a choice about who you want to be. Do you want the type of inner critic who mocks and criticizes? Or embraces the opportunity to learn more, try again, and succeed? There’s always an opportunity to choose differently, even mid-moment as your inner critic begins berating you for a simple mistake. You can always stop and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, what happened here? And why am I beating myself up over it?” 

I describe it to clients like being in a room with multiple televisions all playing at once, and you can hear bits and pieces of each. Which channel do you choose to tune into? Which channel do you mute? The voices of your inner critic and coach can be quieted or amplified in the same way. It’s all about the choice you make.

One of the things I love about coaching is the idea that we don’t have to be the person we were yesterday. We can bring out new parts of ourselves with each new day. And while most of us aren’t going to wake up tomorrow and be radically different people, we can practice being different in some ways. Coaching is forward looking, it’s optimistic, and it’s very much about possibility. It’s about the idea that we can not only forge a new path, but we can be different kinds of people. A key question in coaching is, “Who do you want to be in any given situation?” So when you make a mistake, who do you want to be when you’re responding to your mistake?  

That progress of empowered choice about who you want to be, and how you want to respond, is so meaningful. The more you do it, the easier it’ll become, and the earlier it’ll kick in, until eventually, that pesky, nasty inner critic is nothing more than a faint echo, and your confident inner coach will do all the talking.