The Inner Critic Cure

Ten years later, I report back on my rituals to calm my Frenemy Within

Oh, hello!

Welcome to all my OG friends, new friends, and a special shout-out to TBM listeners and Pathway members who just heard my podcast episode with Jessica . I’m thrilledyou’re here and hope to help expand your vision of what’s possible for you. Because I see GRAND things for you. Every week I give you, you guessed it, a little thing that helps! And if possible…a few lolz, because, wow do we need a little more levity. Amirite?

The Inner Critic Cure

We all have an inner critic. Maybe yours is named Lisa. Or Don. I feel like Don would be a real inner critic. I call mine my Frenemy Within. Someone I’ve known forever and hang out with due to social obligations (we’ve just known each other for so long, ya know? I can’t ghost her!), but who I truly, really, wish would just shut the f*ck up. At the start of my “healing journey” (gag me) she was the ONLY voice I could hear. I would walk around the streets of Manhattan completely lost in thoughts about how I was ugly, un-lovable, uncared for, irredeemable, and that because I wasn’t a HUGE professional success at the age of 25, I never would be. I was too bad too late and too old to amount to anything.

Any of the above resonate with you? Welp. I know it has to because humans have 70,000 thoughts a day, and of those, 80% are negative, and 95% of those are repetitive thoughts. That means you have 53,000 NEGATIVE LOOPING THOUGHTS A DAY!A living nightmare! No wonder so many of us are in a bad mood! I go into my own misery time in excruciating detail in my first book, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies , and share the tools I used at that time to help myself. Now, ten years later, I want to report back on how those tools, used with regular practice, worked out for me.

Well…Please don’t hate me (or do, you do you, boo), but I rarely disparage myself in my head. And when I do - I know exactly how to respond. I would call this a miracle but it’s just science, technique, and practice (which I will go into for my Sunday journaling subscribers).

This does not mean I live in a bubble of toxic positivity where I am “perf, thanks, byeee.” I try to see my shortcomings as much as I can and, to the chagrin of my friends, ask for feedback pretty regularly (friends reading this, I’m sorry for my bi-annual text message asking if I have hurt you, how I can improve, etc). I just no longer believe lies about myself. Because when we really dig down, our inner critic is mostly, if not exclusively, feeding us lies we picked up from the world. And do we need to believe lies? Hell no. If I didn’t need to believe my ex when he told me he was a millionaire BUT needed me to lend him $1,400 to tow his truck from Carlsbad to Los Angeles (ridiculous full story in my second book, Glow in the F*cking Dark ), you don’t need to believe the garbage in your head.

And so, ten years later, I wanted to share my Inner Critic Cure, a process that with repetition has brought down the volume on my self-hate:

1. I take a moment and NOTICE my inner critic is speaking to me. Just about the worst thing you could do is a) dismiss the thought as “not important” or b) criticize yourself for criticizing yourself (as in, “UGH! What’s wrong with me, why am I so down on myself?!). Those strategies only make you feel much worse. Instead, I try to, as neutrally as possible just notice: “oh, hello inner critic, I see you!”
2. I take out a piece of paper and create 2 columns: fact and fiction. In the middle, I write “Is this really true? All of the time?”
3. Under the fiction column, I write down my negative beliefs.
4. Now I ask of my fiction, is this really true? All of the time?Is it true that I’m a bad daughter ALL OF THE TIME? Or is it more true that I love my dad, have done everything in my power to have a better relationship with him, and, sure, I could call more often, but that doesn’t make me a “bad” daughter, it makes me a human. Or one of my foundational negative beliefs: I am unloveable. Is that 100% TRUE? Or, am I loved by my sister, friends, and maybe even, possibly, one day, by you? That’s right, I’m talking to you, gorgeous. When I notice I am thinking “black or white” - I know it ain’t right. There’s no way an absolute like, “you are unlikable” is true because absolute statements are basically never true, so I don’t need to believe it.When I think black or white - I know it ain’t right.
5. I write down the FACT, the actual truth!Let me just show you an example that came up for me this week in line to buy a $13.00 smoothie I then nursed for three hours until someone tried to throw it away because it looked like trash, not precious smoothie remains yet to be feasted upon.

• I wrote down the fiction, “I have terrible taste in men. I always choose the wrong one.”
• Then, I asked, “Is this really true? All of the time?”
• I wrote the answer in the fact column ‘cus it’s ACTUALLY TRUE: “I don’t go out of my way to choose less than ideal partners. I'm healing and making better and better choices all of the time! Also: someone else sucking is not my problem.” BOOM! IN YOUR FACE NEGATIVE BELIEF!

This process re-wired my brain and it can re-wire your brain too (journaling club members: we will initiate re-wiring on Sunday!) My default thought is not, “I suck,” but more typically, “oh wow, my skin feels good,” or, “Oh no! There’s a situation that needs to be handled - good thing I’m the right person for the job!” Ugh. I am grossed out by this and sort of shy to tell you this but…I’m pretty content and my life feels…easy? Not that I don’t work hard, lord not that, not that there aren’t issues - but by comparison to how life used to be… it’s a hell of a lot easier to live when you aren’t in a constant battle with yourself.

Try it out! Send me a picture of your own journal and how you worked on one negative belief, or let me know in the comments how this went for you, I read and reply to every comment (I see).

Testify:

Your words, thoughts, triumphs, setbacks, alllll of it is welcome here. Please tell me how this newsletter or the books are resonating with you, send me photos of your gratitude lists, journals, art inspired by the books, etc! I’d love to know! (By sending I might just share with the community but never your full name!)

This week, I just wanted to share a little feedback from my January course:

From a participant who discovered self-compassion for the first time:

“I’ve come across IFS work before, but the gentle account you described of meeting your little lonely girl was so, so helpful. I encountered a similar part, sitting alone in her closet with her favorite stuffed animals because she didn’t feel understood by her family.?When you said “if you said yes, that you want to help this part, you just experienced self-compassion” I actually gasped. In my 39 years I don’t think I’ve done this before.” - L

From a participant who I guess wanted to make me cry:

“Before taking Tara's course I felt like I was often reacting to life, not cultivating my dreams. Certainly not living within my values (I didn't even know what they were!). Working with Tara is like a balm to the soul…she gives the most incredible advice and helps you pull the best out of yourself. And she does it while prioritizing grounding and safety in a life-changing way. Seriously bringing those tools into my day is transformative. I had a huge breakthrough as well- realizing that there was a core negative belief, AKA a lie, deep in my mind that I was unlovable. I have spent weeks eroding that and feeling like I love myself in a new way.” - S