The Inner Critic Isn't Trying to Hurt You

Many of us carry a voice that finds fault — with ourselves, with others, with how things are going. It may point out what went wrong before we’ve even finished doing the thing. It can be hard for a win to land without that same voice reminding us of what’s still not good enough.

It’s easy to treat this voice as an enemy. But it likely didn’t show up to cause harm. It showed up to protect — and it may have simply never gotten the memo that the job is done.

How the Inner Critic May Have Begun

Many of us carry a voice that formed a long time ago, in response to something that felt unsafe, unpredictable, or threatening. Being hard on ourselves, staying vigilant, or holding ourselves to an impossible standard may once have felt like the way to stay safe.

Maybe being self-critical first meant catching mistakes before someone else did. Maybe staying alert to what could go wrong offered some sense of control in a situation that otherwise felt uncontrollable. Maybe holding such high standards felt like the only path to approval, safety, or love.

Whatever the original job was, the critic likely took it seriously — and, by many measures, did it well. For many of us, it may still be on duty.

The Problem Isn’t That It’s Cruel. It’s That It Can Be Outdated.

Here’s the part that tends to change things: the critic usually isn’t malfunctioning. It may simply be doing the job it was built to do, often decades after the original situation has passed. As adults, many of us no longer need that kind of protection — though the critic may not have quite caught up to that yet.

This could be part of why trying to silence the critic through sheer force rarely works, and can sometimes backfire. Criticizing ourselves for being self-critical can become just another round of the same pattern. It can be 

hard to out-argue a voice that’s convinced it’s keeping us safe.

What the Critic Might Actually Be Pointing At

There’s another layer worth considering: sometimes the critic’s harshness is a sign that something genuinely does need attention — even if the way it’s being delivered isn’t helpful.

Think of a hand resting on a hot stove. The pain isn’t the problem — it’s the signal. It’s telling you to move your hand. If the focus stayed only on managing the pain without ever moving the hand, the actual point would be missed entirely.

The critic can work similarly. Underneath the harsh judgment, there’s sometimes a real concern trying to get through — a boundary that’s been crossed, a need that’s gone unmet, a situation that genuinely isn’t working. The critic’s mistake isn’t that it’s noticing something is off. It’s that it tends to respond with judgment instead of useful information.

Getting curious about what’s underneath the criticism — rather than just trying to quiet the voice — can be the more useful move. Is there something here worth addressing? If so, the critic may have been onto something, even if its delivery needs work.

What Tends to Help: A Different Relationship, Not a Battle

The shift isn’t really about silencing the critic — it’s about changing the relationship to it. A few things tend to help:

Noticing it, and naming it. Simply recognizing “that’s the critic talking” — rather than treating the thought as simply true — can create a small but meaningful distance. The voice becomes something we can hear, rather than something we are.

Sometimes, on closer listening, that voice doesn’t even sound entirely like our own. It can carry the cadence of a parent, a teacher, or someone else whose words were absorbed long ago and quietly mistaken for our own thinking. Recognizing that the voice may have originally belonged to someone else can be its own kind of relief — and it’s a topic worth its own exploration in a future post.

Getting curious about where it came from. What was this part trying to protect against? What did it learn was necessary for safety? Many people find, once they actually ask, that the critic’s rules were written a long time ago, in response to circumstances that may no longer apply.

Listening for what’s underneath. Rather than dismissing the criticism outright, it can help to ask whether there’s a real concern buried in it — something worth genuinely addressing, separate from the harshness of how it arrived.

Meeting it with thanks rather than a fight. This can sound counterintuitive, but it often helps. The critic may soften when it feels heard rather than attacked — when it’s acknowledged for trying to help, even while being let known that this particular kind of help isn’t needed anymore.

This kind of work — relating to different inner voices with curiosity instead of conflict — is something we often do directly in hypnotherapy sessions. The critic can soften remarkably quickly once it’s met with understanding instead of being treated as the enemy.

Not Broken — Just Possibly Carrying an Old Job Description

If an inner critic has been especially loud lately, it might be worth getting curious about what it’s actually trying to protect against right now — and whether that protection is still needed, or whether it’s time for that part to be given a quieter, easier job.

Curious to Explore This Further?

If support working with an inner critic — and the parts it’s protecting — sounds helpful, a free consultation is a good place to start talking through what that might look like.

Book your free consult here → brooklynhypnotherapy.nyc/book-online

Spring Haughton is a certified clinical hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner. She works with clients virtually on anxiety, stress, gut-brain health, relationships, sleep, and personal growth.