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Your Anxiety Toolkit - Practical Skills for Anxiety, Panic & Depression
How to SILENCE Your Inner Critic: 3 Self-Compassion Skills To Use IMMEDIATELY 476
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You don't have a mean brain, you have a protective brain that is just trying to keep you safe and reduce your suffering. Now you might think, safe suffering, what? This is not keeping me safe. This is not reducing my suffering. Now for our agenda today, if you want to quiet your inner critic, we don't shut it down. We are here to retrain it. And my hope is to help you silence that inner critic using science, not grit. Hello, my name is Kimberly Quindlen. I am an anxiety and OCD specialist. I am on a mission to equip over 10 million of you on how to use evidence based, science based skills so that you can manage your anxiety. It is a hefty goal, but I am pretty certain I can get there. And with your help, I'm so happy you're here because together my hope is I can help reduce your suffering and help you feel empowered to manage your own anxiety. Now the thing to remember here is the voice in your head isn't trying to ruin your life. It's trying very aggressively to keep you safe from failure, from shame, from rejection and from uncertainty. Now I am going to teach you three specific self compassion skills. To help reduce self judgment, reduce self criticism and self punishment. And to help you improve how you handle situations when things don't go the way that you want. This is going to be a self compassion plan that you can use. I want you to think of it like a road plan where you move from one skill to the other and eventually arrive you on a roadmap that will help you manage and navigate any uncomfortable moment where the inner critic is taking over. Our goal here is to focus on on responding effectively and kindly to that inner critic. Now the number one step in this roadmap is to name it, don't become it. What do I mean by this? Now when you have that inner critic voice that shows up telling you that you're the worst or you're bad and you did something wrong and everyone's going to be mad or no one will ever forgive you, your first step is to diffuse from those thoughts. Now remember, just because you think something doesn't mean it's true. And just because you think something doesn't mean you need to respond to it as if it is true and factual and important. What we want to do here is just name it. You might just say, there's my inner critic. Now what you can also do is give your inner critic a name. You might call it Martha. Sorry for all of the Marthas out there, but you might say, thanks Martha. I see that you've got a lot to say again or thanks, Martha. You're always such a buzzkill. You can just name the presence of the inner critic and this gives you a little bit of distance so that you don't have to treat it like it's a fact. You don't have to treat it like it's oh so important. The other thing you can do here is when you name it, you're practicing, not personalizing it. When we have a thought about ourselves being terrible or bad or a loser, you know all the things that we can say to ourselves. Often we personalize this by going, it must be true about me. It must mean something about me. It must be another, yet another thing that I've done wrong today. Now, there is a term that I use. This is not a clinical term, but it is a term that I use often with my patients, which is called gathering. Gathering is an action where you gather details and data to back your thought up. An example might be you have the intrusive thought or the inner critic thought that you're a loser. Once you have it, if you don't diffuse from it and you don't name it and you start to personalize it, you then start to gather data of why it's true. And you start to go, yeah, and I was loser. Remember that one time when I didn't do this? And what about that time? And remember this time and you start gathering all of this negative data and evidence to really stir the pot of that inn in a critic. So we want to practice here, just naming it. Don't become it. We're going to observe it. We're not going to fuse with it. Let's now move over to step two of our self compassion roadmap. Step two involves understanding your positive beliefs. Now hang with me here because this is very, very important. So many times clients have come to me, they've practiced compassion. Maybe they've gone to a self compassion workshop or their therapist has mentioned it. They've practiced it for a couple of days, but within those two days, they just fall off the wagon. It doesn't stick. And that's usually because they haven't addressed their positive beliefs about their inner critic. So let's talk about that. What we want to do in this step is learn the hidden positive beliefs about why you believe self criticism keeps you safe. So let's go over this now. In our course, your self compassion toolkit, we go through this in depth. I've actually pulled up here one of the worksheets we have where you can start to fill out specific questions that help you identify your positive beliefs. Now let's go through some of the most common positive beliefs I see in my practice. Number one is that criticizing myself keeps me motivated and driven. Many people believe that that criticism is what keeps them going and I always tell them that's actually not true. Your values to be successful and driven and motivated is what makes you motivated and driven. You're just using self criticism to get the ball rolling and we actually learn other strategies. They're going to be here just in a few minutes to help you continue into motivation and being driven without having to rely on self criticism. The belief that it's the self criticism that keeps you motivated is actually not true. Now, as you know, I have a private practice. I have six amazing therapists in Calabasas, California. However, we do not take insurance. Now if you are looking for insurance covered OCD or BFRB treatment, I want to let you know about nocd. NOCD provides face to face live video sessions with specialized licensed OCD therapists. Now their therapists use exposure and response prevention. We know this is the gold standard standard for ocd. So you can be absolutely confirmed that you're in the right place there. And they have a clinically proven app that helps you stay connected to your therapist and others who have OCD between sessions so you'll always feel supported. Now the cool thing is NOCD is available in all 50 US states and even internationally and they accept most insurance plans, making it affordable and accessible. We love that. Now if you think you might have OCD or you're struggling to manage your symptoms, you can book a free call. Just click the link in the show notes@nocd.com I am honored to partner with NOCD. I want to remind you that recovery is possible. Please do not forget that. Now big hugs and let's get back to the show. The second positive belief that people have about self criticism is that they believe that self criticism pushes them to achieve and maintain high standards. Again, false. Really your values is what pushes you to have high standards. Your wants and your dreams and what's important to you keeps you going in that direction. It's not actually the criticism itself. Again, the self criticism is the vehicle you use to get you to maintain those standards. Now what we also find is once people drop the self criticism, they actually start to realize that the high standards that they had for themselves aren't healthy. And so we can explore that at a later date. But for right now, we just have to understand that criticizing yourself isn't what holds those standards up high and stable. The third most common one I see is that being self critical prevents laziness and complacency. Now, yes, a lot of people have used self criticism as a way to sort of whip themselves into getting moving. And again, yes, self criticism can be a vehicle that propels you into action, but you can actually learn other ways to move into action. The only reason you want to move into action is because you value those things. It's important to you. You, we can change the vehicle in which the gets you up and at them. The fourth one is that self criticism keeps me accountable for mistakes. Often we think of self criticism as a punishment, and we believe that punishment will prevent us from making that mistake again. But I have never, in this case had a client who's punished themselves so much that they haven't made errors. It doesn't work like that. Human beings make errors. Self criticism isn't actually what's going to prevent that. Often it's just a small degree of planning and good luck. And so you ultimately here have to give yourself permission to be a human who does make mistakes. The fifth one is that self criticism prepares me for criticism and rejection from other people. Now, I always laugh at this one because I always sort of screw up my face and I say, so you're telling me that in effort to, you know, get ahead of people who may or may not be criticizing you or rejecting you or judging you, you're going to do it first. That just means you suffer less and you're creating a lot of suffering for yourself just in case they judge you. We don't actually know that they're going to judge you yet. Really, all you're doing is, is you're placing a lot of suffering just for the sake of preparing yourself for more suffering. It doesn't work that way. And I'm sure you're giggling as you hear that, because it is ridiculous. But these are the positive beliefs we have, and if we don't address them, you will rely, you will land back on these behaviors. The next one is it protects me from failure. No, it doesn't. It doesn't protect you from failure. It just makes it harder and you suffer more as you try to do the thing you're trying to do. The next one is common. That I see is that it builds discipline, it builds resilience, it gives me grit. You know, you can't be treating yourself like a little, a little snowflake. Well, actually, no. We have a lot of research that self criticism increases depression, increases anxiety, it decreases our overall well being, it increases procrastination, it decreases motivation. And so we really have a lot of evidence that that's not true. So what can we do from there? We can now move on to step three and that is to start practicing engaging with what we call a kind coach. If you followed me before, you know this concept. The kind coach is the voice that is encouraging. It is kind, it is warm, it really wants you to win it, it knows your strengths and it reminds you of your strengths. It knows your challenges but it doesn't use your weaknesses against you. It is there to help you win and it is encouraging you. It's saying you can do it. Let's go. Keep going. You can do it every single day. When I am working and I am doing all the work that I'm doing, working so hard to get this mission achieved, I am using the kind coach. I'm not saying just do it Kimberly, or you're a loser, everyone's going to laugh at you. I'm saying, hun, you are doing beautiful work. Keep going one step at a time. How can I support you? What do you need? Do you need some water? Do you need a rest? Can I rub your shoulders? Oh my Han, my darling, my love, you're doing so great. That is the kind coach. It is cheering you on every step of the way. And that is the voice I want you to practice strengthening so it becomes your new default. Not the inner critic, but your kind coach is the default. Now they are the three main steps but now we're going to talk about more of a mindset shift that's going to be required to stay on this path. When we move to step number four, it's going to be practicing this daily. This is not a one and done. This is something you are going to have to practice over and over and over again. You are going to have to strengthen this practice. And I promise you, I don't make promises very often, but I promise you, you will not regret this work. You must be consistent. Number five is really easy. It's never stop, never stop this work. You're going to have days where you do default to that inner critic. And that is completely normal. That is a normal part of the work that we do. And so here what we want to remember is this is not about perfection. This is a 21 day guided step by step process where I walk you through the specific skills that I have found to be the most effective for my clients who have anxiety, who have intrusive thoughts who get stuck in panic. I have found that these are the exercises that they have found the most helpful and that I have found the most helpful. The ones that if you strengthen them and you practice and you're consistent, that you can be absolutely shocked at how much you have grown and how far you have come, how confident you have come, how more motivated you have become, how much it reduces your anxiety and depression when you practice these skills. Now, before we finish up, we must really tune in. We must really tune into these core key concepts. Your brain is just trying to protect you, but you can replace that inner critic with a kinder, more compassionate voice. It is possible. Do not give up. As always, thank you so much for being here. I know how valuable your time is. It is an honor that you have chosen to it is an honor that you have chosen to spend your time with me and trust me to be on this journey with you. As always, it is a beautiful day to do hard things. Head over to cbtschool.com and there are so many resources there to help you. If you're someone who has a very strong inner critic or you struggle with anxiety, ocd, all of the anxiety conditions, we are there to help. I cannot wait to see you in the next episode. Have a wonderful day. Please note that this podcast or any other research sources from CBTSchool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting CBTSchool.com.