Your inner critic is not your conscience - Episode 1

When correcting yourself becomes condemning yourself

You've written an email — simple, nothing out of the ordinary. Just a few lines.

But it hardly matters. Because you read it back, once.

You change a word, then read it back again.

And that little voice in your head, asking: “Isn't that sentence a little too… direct? ”

So you rework the sentence a little, you add a turn of phrase, then take it out, and you check the spelling for the eighth time, because that nagging voice is always there: “You make so many careless mistakes, and you know it! And what will they think of you if it's full of errors?”

You also check the recipient, the attachment. There — everything's fine!

Now you can click “Send” with a clear mind — but something holds you back at the very last moment.

“Are you sure everything's fine?”

So you read it again, and again — but this time, you're no longer really checking the email.

That voice again: “It looks a bit amateurish…”

So you change a sentence, you rewrite the opening, the ending, you try to find your way out with this feeling: “Why do I find it so hard to write something this simple?”

And after the umpteenth read-through, the verdict is final: “I'm going to look stupid, that's for sure… and honestly, I should be able to do better than this.”

You sit motionless in front of your screen. Time seems to have frozen. The email has barely changed for several minutes now…

Because if at first you were correcting a text, now… you're correcting yourself.

Because somewhere between the two, a voice has taken on a place far greater than a simple proofread.

That voice — almost all of us know it.

You know the one — that comments, that compares, that corrects, that points out what could have been better, that remembers what we did badly, that sometimes finds the very detail we would rather not have seen, and that has one disconcerting feature:

It speaks in our own voice.

So we tend to trust it — after all…

“If I'm the one telling myself this… it's probably true.”

But is it really that simple?

There is an immense difference between a voice that can tell us: “There, you got it wrong. ”, and a voice that concludes: “You're truly useless.”

Both can arise in exactly the same place.

From the same mistake, in the same mind.

And yet… they do not do the same work at all.

Talking to yourself is perfectly normal

Let's begin with an essential clarification, to clear up any confusion.

Having an inner voice is not a problem!

Your inner monologue — what researchers call “inner speech” — is part of ordinary psychological functioning.

We speak to ourselves silently to prepare an action, solve a problem, organise our thoughts, remember something, rehearse a conversation or regulate our behaviour.

In 2015, Ben Alderson-Day and Charles Fernyhough devoted a major review, published in “Psychological Bulletin ”, to this phenomenon. They show that inner speech is involved in many cognitive functions, notably action control, planning and certain executive functions.

You probably do it several times a day — sometimes even out loud, for some people.

“Don't forget the keys.” “Redo that sentence.” “Wait before you answer.” “There, you've gone too far.” “Focus.”…

Nothing pathological in that — and just as well, because a human being unable to examine their own actions would have serious trouble learning, growing, or living with others.

We need to be able to look at what we do, to acknowledge a clumsy move, to notice a mistake, to ask ourselves whether we could have done otherwise…

We need a system capable of evaluating us.

So the problem is not that we judge ourselves now and then.

The problem begins elsewhere.

Somewhere in the way the judgement is worded.

And above all… in what it takes as its target.

From the voice that informs to the one that condemns

Let's go back to the email. When you read it over, you noticed: “This sentence isn't clear. ” That was information. The sentence could be improved; you reworded it, you checked that it was clear, that the recipient was the right one and that the attachment was there.

And you sent it.

But a few hours later, you thought back to what the email said: “I was a bit blunt in the way I put things…”

That thought may be unpleasant, but it makes you acknowledge something you would rather not see.

And yet it is precise: it speaks of a behaviour:

“I was a little too blunt, I didn't soften it enough. I'll send a note to clarify and soften my point, and even apologise if need be.”

Much like: “I forgot something,” “I didn't prepare this presentation enough,” “I wasn't listening,” “I made a bad decision”…

That voice is not necessarily gentle — it can even be very demanding — but it has one essential quality:

It still produces usable information!

Something remains possible; the mistake still points somewhere.

Perhaps that, at heart, is the most useful role of inner evaluation:

Not to tell us who we are, but to inform us about what we do.

But sometimes… the voice crosses the line and takes on a role that is not its own.

Then the voice no longer says: “That wording was clumsy.”; it declares: “You were clumsy.”

If you fail at something, it no longer says: “This time, it didn't work.”; it says: “Of course it didn't work. You always mess everything up! ”

If you've said something you regret, it no longer says: “What you said was hurtful,” but: “You really are a bad person.”

Look closely and it's only a word or two of difference — and yet we have changed levels entirely.

The first voice assesses “an act”

The second passes a verdict on “a person”

And that person… is you.

Correcting yourself… or punishing yourself?

In 2004, the psychologist Paul Gilbert and his colleagues studied the various forms and functions of self-criticism in a sample of 246 female students. Since then, the structure of the model (the FSCRS scale) has been found well beyond that sample, across many countries.

Their work shows that self-criticism is not a single phenomenon.

They distinguish, in particular, a form centred on a sense of inadequacy — what they call the “Inadequate Self” → where the person fixes on their mistakes, their flaws, the sense of not being good enough.

They also distinguish a far more hostile form, the “Hated Self” → in which disgust, rejection or hatred towards oneself appears.

But the most interesting distinction concerns the “function” of self-criticism.

Why do we criticise ourselves?

The answers clustered, above all, around two very different logics.

→ The first: criticising yourself in order to correct or improve yourself.

→ The second: criticising yourself in order to punish yourself, to persecute yourself, to make yourself pay for a failure.

So it isn't only the amount of criticism that matters, but what it is trying to accomplish — and that distinction changes a great deal.

You can be extremely demanding of yourself without seeking to humiliate yourself.

You can acknowledge, very firmly: “There, what I did was not acceptable”, without adding: “I am a pathetic person.”

You can want to grow… without becoming your own torturer.

Using the truth… to manufacture something else

This is perhaps what makes the inner critic so hard to spot.

It doesn't necessarily lie at the outset, because you may really have made a mistake, really forgotten the attachment, been clumsy — and your presentation may really have been underprepared.

So the critic has a real foothold — but it performs an almost invisible operation, moving from: “This behaviour is a problem” to: “This behaviour reveals something about who you are.”

And because the first part is true… the second seems true as well.

It's a kind of logical smuggling.

The fact comes in through the door; the verdict slips in, hidden behind it.

You no longer see: “I've just done something imperfect”; you see: “The imperfection has just revealed my true nature.”

And that is exactly where the email stops being an email.

It becomes an examination.

A piece of evidence.

And sometimes even… a verdict.

The inner courtroom

Now imagine that every mistake you make walks into a courtroom.

The first voice is an expert examining the facts. It can be severe — but once the information is given, its work is done.

→ “This part wasn't prepared enough.”

→ “That answer was too quick.”

→ “That decision had this consequence.”

The second voice — that of the inner critic — works differently: it's a prosecutor building a case, whose aim no longer seems merely to understand what happened, but to establish what it “proves about the accused”… and the accused… is always you.

→ “Failed again. ”

→ “Useless, as usual. ”

→ “As hopeless as ever.”

But notice something: these sentences rarely give any new information, nor do they offer solutions.

→ “You're useless” doesn't say what to improve.

→ “You're hopeless” offers no strategy.

→ “You always ruin everything” no longer even describes precisely what happened.

The language sounds evaluative.

But it has stopped truly informing.

And yet… we often keep believing that it helps us improve.

Try an experiment

The next time you catch yourself criticising yourself, don't immediately try to silence the voice at all costs.

Don't answer it: “No, that's not true,” and don't replace the negative sentence with a positive affirmation.

Simply listen to its structure and ask yourself:

“Is it speaking about what I did… or about who I am?”

Is it speaking of an act: “I didn't work hard enough.” “I answered too aggressively.” “I don't yet know this subject well enough. ”

Or is it speaking of an identity: “I'm lazy.” “I'm toxic.” “I'm an impostor.”

And the difference will stand out with surprising clarity.

Because a useful criticism usually still holds a possibility of action.

Condemnation, on the other hand, closes it down — turning a situation into a definition.

So, when you're sitting in front of your screen about to send your email — probably ready long ago, and read over time and time again — perhaps, if you watch yourself closely, you'll notice something you didn't see before.

At what moment did you stop correcting the message?

At what moment did the question “Is this clear enough?” become: “Am I competent enough?”

At what moment did an imperfect sentence begin to speak about you?

For this is perhaps where the true power of the inner critic begins.

Not when it sees a mistake, nor when it corrects you, nor even when it is demanding.

But when it performs this silent transformation:

“When what I did becomes what I am.”

And the moment the trial is about your identity…

… no proof of what you do will ever be enough to satisfy it.