Tapping Away Your Inner Critic

Have you ever seen an old movie where one of the characters starts hearing voices? Seems like there’s always someone wanting to call the men in the white coats, with a net, to haul the person off to the loony bin.

Ironically, I suspect most of us have a voice in our head, offering an ongoing and rather negative narration. It’s all about how we’ve messed up, or how we’re about to. For some people this can be pretty intense, intrusive and discouraging.

If there’s no such narrator in your own mind, consider yourself lucky. There’s definitely a spectrum, and you’re on the happy end of it. Yay!

Alas, many of my clients are not so fortunate. Their inner critic gives them no peace and pretty much ruins their day-to-day life. When I ask for examples, it’s often pretty harsh:

            “You’re going to say something stupid – they’re never going to hire you”
            “Don’t eat those cookies, your ass is huge!”
            “You’ll miss this shot, you always choke when the stakes are high”
            “What the hell is wrong with you? How could you forget her birthday, you idiot?”

Where it gets fun (for me) is in pointing out that this voice in their head isn’t their voice.
'What do you mean it’s not my voice? It’s in my head!'
'Yeah, but it’s saying ‘you’, right? We don’t refer to ourselves as ‘you’. We don’t walk into a deli and tell the counter guy “Yeah, you’d like a pastrami on rye”. You’d say “I want a pastrami on rye”. That’s not your voice.'

Of course, this begs the question: If it’s not your voice, whose voice is it?
It usually takes about 3 milliseconds to for that realization to hit.

Most often it’s mom or dad. Not always, but usually. Or more accurately, it’s an internalized version of their parent. Mom isn’t secretly broadcasting into their head from an undisclosed location!

What seems to happen, for many of us, is that we begin to internalize the voice of our critical parent (or parents) as young children, in an attempt to avoid punishment. Even a relatively mild scolding can be a big deal for a sensitive child.

Unfortunately, some parents are actually brutal, and may have an agenda of finding fault as a justification for punishing their child. They’ll pounce on the slightest infraction or just make issues up out of thin air. And so, the rules are mystifying and it’s almost impossible to stay out of trouble.

Internalizing the voice of a scary parent may actually be an act of self-defense. A strategy for anticipating and avoiding their wrath. Whether it actually works or not, years later we’re stuck with them ‘living rent free in our head’.

That’s the bad news. I suspect there’s pretty much zero benefit to that sort of critical voice. It’s never seems to be encouraging or helpful in any real way.

The good news is that it can be tapped away!

I’ve seen this happen in several ways –suddenly it’s just gone! Or the volume starts to go down. It shows up less and less. Or now there’s an option to simply not listen, and turn away. It might not even be that hard to do, once the intention is set.

Here’s a simple tapping script to get you started, if you like.

On the Karate Chop point:
Even though I have this critic voice in my head, that’s not my voice and I forgive myself for ever taking it on.

And tapping through the points:
This voice in my head
This harsh, critical voice
It never says anything nice
It’s never encouraging
I’d love to stop hearing it
I’d love to have blessed silence in my head!
But even if it doesn’t just go away
Even if it never goes away
I choose to stop listening
It’s okay for me to make mistakes
I’ll always make mistakes in my life
Just like everyone else
I don’t need to be perfect to love and respect myself
I don’t need to focus on my faults
This awful voice
This harsh, critical narrator in my head
I want to get to a place where I can just roll my eyes
OMG there it is again, how funny
Until I don’t even hear it anymore

Please Note: with conditions like schizophrenia, people sometimes hear hostile voices of strangers, narrating their experience or telling them to do self-destructive things. This is an entirely different kind of problem. Please consult a mental health expert for any serious mental health issues.