Making friends with your inner critic

In the stone age our main priority was to stay alive. We were hunter/gatherers living from instinct. Foraging, fighting; fleeing from predators and relying on our survival instincts; where any changes warned us of danger.

For this, our sympathetic nervous system working with the three Fs; flight, fight, freeze of survival mode of our limbic brains was very useful indeed. Protecting us from the latest threat to our lives as we strove with the ´survival of the fittest´aspect of being.

In this fast paced world; we still function with the limbic brain rushing from one task to another; dealing with stress/competition at work; overloading our senses with every day noise of technology; television; news; adverts and traffic to name but a few. This way of living; produces increased amounts of cortisol in our system switching on our limbic system of survival. The three fs are still very much in play; protecting us from any kind of ‘danger’ in our lives.

How many times have you decided to make healthy changes in your life that have felt so right for you at the time but in one way or another an inner voice/critic has shown up warning you to steer clear? Telling you that you can't do that and playing out various ´´what if´ scenarios in your head? This is your limbic brain thinking it is helping you from impending doom.

All our limbic brain wants to do is keep us safe from harm and stop the change from happening. We can be sent into a spiral of crippling fear or illness (freeze); bring up huge resistance to taking action and become distracted (flight) or give so many reasons and excuses not to take this action; (fight).

To continue making healthy changes of what we know is best for us; all we need to do is change the narrative. Try this exercise:-

Take some time apart with a pen and paper.

Think and feel of something you would like to change. It can be as simple as a fresh lick of paint in the house to a more life altering decision. The first thought of change that comes up, that is what we will work with.

Write this down.

Now, without judgment, write out all that comes up for you. Absolutely everything. Get it all written down. All the reasons why not, just let it all come out of you into the pen onto the paper.

Notice how your body is reacting. Have your shoulders raised? Has your breath become shorter? Has your heart rate increased? Have your thoughts become faster and repetitive?

Allow yourself to feel into this moment and just notice the changes in your body. Notice that ultimately our inner critic is a physical reaction to keeping us safe.

Now say inside to yourself or out loud "we are safe". Say this a few times if need be.

Notice the difference. Have your shoulders lowered? Has your breathing relaxed? Do you feel much calmer?

Feel into this state.

By telling ourselves we are safe; the limbic brain no longer needs to react. The sympathetic nervous system switches to the parasympathetic nervous system and we function from a relaxed state of mind and body.

Should your ‘inner critic’ start to take over as you create beautiful changes in your life; remember this is your limbic brain simply trying to protect you. Imagine you are assuring a frightened child that all is well and you are both safe. See how much easier it becomes to move forward with your best life.