Confronting Your Inner Critic ✨ Sleep Meditation

[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Karissa Vacker and welcome back to Sleep Wave, a podcast where we let waves of relaxation wash over you through original sleep meditations created to help you fall asleep tonight. And don't worry if you don't hear the end of an episode, I encourage you to drift off

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[00:01:12] Join in two taps via the link in the show notes. Cancel any time. But now, a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible. Have you ever said something critical to yourself, and then if you happen to share this

[00:02:02] insecurity with someone else, they say something along the lines of, I don't see that at all. This used to happen to me all the time a few years ago when I was an on-camera actress.

[00:02:15] I would be preparing for an audition or a shoot day and say to my husband, I feel like I'm having a weird face day. To which he would usually reply, What? Your face looks the same to me as it always does.

[00:02:29] In truth, I was probably just feeling tense or nervous because of the upcoming shoot or audition and that tension was what I was noticing. There are things, physical or otherwise, that we notice about ourselves and may become critical

[00:02:45] of that other people simply don't, certainly not in the way we imagine they do. We live with ourselves all day, every day, and thus it can become easy, certainly when under stress, to put excess attention on our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and appearance.

[00:03:06] One thing I like to do when I have that critical voice come up is to stop and check in with what the emotion is behind that voice. Do I feel fear? Sadness? Anger? Anxiety?

[00:03:20] Once I can identify the emotion behind it, it helps me to disconnect it from the critical reaction of it. For example, during my weird face days, once I realized that was more often than not about

[00:03:34] the underlying nerves and tension I was feeling, I could address the tension instead of feeling critical about my appearance. I could do some deep breathing, meditation, go on a walk, jot down a gratitude list, any number of things to help me take my focus off my self-criticism.

[00:03:54] The bonus is that when I felt calmer, I looked in the mirror and also felt better about myself. Sometimes that critical voice is quiet all day only to pop up just as we are laying ourselves down to rest at night.

[00:04:09] In the quiet at the end of the day, we may hear that voice saying some pretty unkind, unhelpful things. This is part of the reason why meditation before sleep can be such a beneficial practice.

[00:04:23] It can help us slow down enough to listen into ourselves, feel what we feel, and let both the thoughts and feelings come and go without needing to react to them. Trying this before sleep is a gentle and easy way to begin being kinder to ourselves at

[00:04:43] night and when we wake up in the morning too. Let's give ourselves the warm embrace of peace and kindness as we meditate together to Confronting Your Inner Critic by Billy Gill The inner critic is a voice, or perhaps many voices, that sound in the background of your

[00:05:15] mind and can manifest in feelings, thoughts, and self-talk. For many people, this inner critic is an amalgam of messaging that gradually formed and developed over a long period of time. For some, the inner critic can be harsh and demanding. It can lead to feelings of inadequacy and depression.

[00:05:40] The initial impulse may be that we should silence this inner critic, this complex of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and self-talk. Meditation is a process for watching the mind. Very often, when we establish a meditation practice, the mind becomes very quiet.

[00:06:02] When the mind becomes quiet, the inner critic may become quiet as well. However, this inner quiet is more of an effect of meditation than a description of the process itself. Through mindfulness, an important component of meditation, we learn to examine the habits

[00:06:24] of our minds and bring more awareness to the subtle dynamics that operate beneath the threshold of our conscious attention. Over time, the process of meditation allows us to discover a sense of space as we observe the stream of thoughts that play in our minds.

[00:06:43] This sense of space, or detachment, allows us to observe the mind and reveals the habits of thought that can dominate our lives, including the inner critic. When we see that the mind tends to think compulsively, it's easier to realize that we need not

[00:07:02] attach to our own mental activity just because it's happening in our own head. As we take a deliberate step back from that mental activity, it tends to slow down. By detaching from thought, it's as though we don't interfere with the mind's natural ability to quiet itself.

[00:07:21] At other times, when we are very much involved in the thoughts, the stories, the messaging that we've adopted over the course of a lifetime, and when we implicitly accept those thoughts simply because they came from a voice in our own head, we egg the mind on, stirring

[00:07:38] up more mental activity, and the mind remains restless. Deliberate sleep meditation reminds us that we have a choice to bring more awareness to these voices in our own minds. By letting these voices simply arise, much as you might let the voices on the radio or

[00:07:59] the television exist without much special importance, we get the necessary distance for perspective. We have an opportunity then to ask ourselves, is that true? Byron Katie's method for bringing more awareness to the thoughts that permeate our

[00:08:17] consciousness, often causing us pain, frustration, anger, sadness, and a whole host of other negative emotions is referred to in her book, Loving What Is, as The Work. It's a system of inquiry that has a transformative ability to pause out what thoughts are causing

[00:08:38] us pain and how we might negotiate our relationship with those thoughts. The inner critic tends to focus on perceived flaws, mistakes, and shortcomings, contributing to feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, and low self-esteem. Katie's system reveals a practical method for how to deal constructively with those narratives.

[00:09:03] The Work is very much based in mindfulness and meditation principles, and presents us with a simple approach to creating freedom from the areas of our mental lives that keep us feeling stuck. Make sure that you are relaxing comfortably in your bed.

[00:09:27] Take a deep breath in through your nose, and as you exhale, open your mouth and release the cares and worries of the day. Again, breathe in through your nostrils. Feel the slightly cooler temperature as the air outside of your body enters through the

[00:09:54] nose, which warms and filters the air. On your exhale, open the mouth and observe the warmth of the breath as the air from your lungs exits through the mouth. Once again, breathe in through the nose. Notice a brief pause at the top of the inhale.

[00:10:20] Exhale, release the breath through the mouth and feel tension melting away as you surrender into the deep comfort of your bed. Now, do your best to breathe through your nostrils on both the inhale and the exhale. Notice the difference in temperature.

[00:10:53] Notice the different qualities of the inhale and exhale. There is no need to verbally label what you observe. Simply be with the breath and cultivate a sense of curiosity about what is arising in the here and now as your breath continually flows in and out of the nostrils.

[00:11:20] Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Continue on at your own pace for some time. As you grow more and more relaxed, perhaps there is some voice that presents you with a feeling of sadness, anger, frustration, fear, etc.

[00:13:35] One insidious aspect of the inner critic is that while it's often directed inward towards oneself as in the case of negative self-talk, it can also become projected outward toward others, usually in the form of blame.

[00:13:53] Byron Katie takes advantage of this natural tendency of the mind to become a projector to reveal how our minds work. There's no use in trying to suppress a harsh inner critic, only to externalize that criticism

[00:14:09] onto someone else and perpetuate the root cause of our pain while simultaneously damaging our relationships. When an image is projected, if there is a spot on the lens of the projector, it often appears on the screen.

[00:14:26] We may think that the blemish on the screen is the problem, but unless and until we clean the projector, no amount of scrubbing the screen will get rid of the spot. Still, if we start by inquiring about ourselves to discover where our thoughts are causing

[00:14:43] us trouble, there are often underlying motives and subsequent solutions that haven't worked in the past. When we judge other people, we tend to let loose and see very clearly where they should live and what they should do.

[00:15:00] Since the aim of the work is to examine hidden patterns of thought that keep us out of alignment with the truth, and therefore in a repetitive loop of stress and anxiety, Katie recommends that we begin by paying attention to how other people have made us feel sad, hurt,

[00:15:19] afraid, etc. While culture has tried for thousands of years to discourage us from judging others, the truth is that we are constantly making judgments about how others behave anyway. It may be difficult at first to allow your inner critic to externalize onto someone else,

[00:15:45] but it is a useful technique to get around all the ways we may deceive ourselves when we look inward. She encourages us at this phase not to come up with reasons why someone with whom we're angry or sad or frustrated did what they did to justify their behavior.

[00:16:09] The purpose of this exercise is to uncover the hidden working of our minds. She calls this the judge your neighbor exercise, and encourages us not to hold back even if it feels like you are being childish or petty.

[00:16:34] An example of this might be, my husband doesn't listen to me. Remember that she is encouraging us to point the finger outward. Now, think of someone who has made you feel angry or saddened or frightened. In your mind, formulate a statement about those feelings.

[00:16:58] I don't like blank because blank. Katie's example is, I don't like Paul because he doesn't listen to me. Feel free to fill in the blank with your own circumstances and people. Do so now. I don't like because... The next aspect of the work is inquiry.

[00:17:43] This is the essence of the method, and it involves four basic questions. The first question is, is it true? Ask yourself if it is really true. In the example, the question would be, is it true that Paul doesn't listen to me? The answer is either yes or no.

[00:18:14] Take time when considering this question. Allow time for stillness. The work is about discovering what is true from the deepest part of yourself. It may not coincide with anything you've ever considered before, but when you experience your own answer, you'll know it.

[00:18:41] Just be gentle, sit with it, and let it take you deeper in. There are no right or wrong answers. You are listening for your answers. This can be very unsettling at first because you are entering the unknown. Just be gentle as you give yourself to the inquiry.

[00:19:08] Is it true? Relax and allow yourself to breathe with this question and notice anything that arises for some time. The next question is, can I absolutely know that it's true? This is an opportunity to go deeper into the unknown, to find the answers that live beneath

[00:21:38] what we think we know.

[00:22:53] The third question is, how do you react? What happens when you believe that thought? How do you treat yourself? How do you treat the person you've thought about? What do you do? How do you live when you believe that thought?

[00:23:30] What do the reactions feel like physically inside of you? Where do you feel it? What sensations are associated with it? What is the self-talk that goes on in your head when you believe that thought? Finally, who or what would you be without the thought?

[00:24:28] Keep your eyes softly closed and wait. Imagine yourself just for a moment without the thought. Imagine that you didn't have the ability to think the thought. As you stand in the presence of that person, or in that situation, how is the situation different? How does it feel?

[00:25:30] What are the possibilities for living your life without this concept? How would you treat the person differently in the same situation without the thought? Another important technique in the work is the turnaround. In the previous example, Paul doesn't listen to me.

[00:27:09] Some possible turnarounds might be, I don't listen to Paul, or I don't listen to myself, or perhaps Paul does listen to me. The importance of the turnaround is to challenge your original statement to discover if any turnaround statement seems somehow more true than the first statement.

[00:27:42] Now that you have gotten a taste of the work as applied to the statements about someone else, you may begin to experiment with this inquiry meditation as it applies to your inner critic. Again, we'll go through them.

[00:28:01] What is a thought that may be contributing to your inner critic? Now open yourself up to the inquiry. Is it true? Can I absolutely know it's true? How do I react when I believe that thought? Who or what would I be without the thought?

[00:30:55] Consider a turnaround for the thought. Does that feel more true than the original thought? Return to the inquiries if any persistent thoughts arise. Challenge them with curiosity and compassion, knowing that this process is a journey towards self-compassion and understanding.

[00:32:39] Byron Cady's The Work is a tool that empowers you to question, release, and embrace a more compassionate perspective. Remember that you have the power to transform your inner dialogue. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.