Dear mute:

“I know it’s not a practical solution, but I’m investigating ways to finally sleep. The kind of sleep you don’t wake up from. Any suggestions are more than welcome”-

– I am glad to read that this is not a practical solution for you. I suggest this practical solution: start the process of putting to sleep- not all of you- but just the part of you that is making your life miserable, the inner critic part of you who “has been living rent-free in (your) headspace for sometime”.

Your username is mute, but your inner critic is not mute. These are some of what it says to you loud and clear (I will make minor changes to your quoted sentences, such as changing the pronoun from I to you when needed):

“I’m sorry that you exist!… Your art is just sh*t!.. It always was!… Your art is trash!.. Your opinions and perspectives are trash too!.. You are a sad state of a being with nothing worth listening to!.. You are an artist with nothing to say!.. You are pathetic!… You bring nothing to the table!… You are selfish!.. You are a cautionary tale at best! You are taking up space and living on borrowed time and empty pity!.. Oh, Woe is you. You have so many problems and refuse to do anything about them outside of airing your grievances anonymously because you’re a cowardly self-deprecating sack of sh*t!”.

It is no wonder that when you have an actively loud and hostile inner critic invading your headspace- that you lost your motivation, your passion, and that your drive to create has been “replaced by shame and fear”.

Too many of us share our headspace with a hostile, destructive inner critic, an inner critic which often takes after the real-life critics in our lives. I had one myself. It takes healing over time to quiet that inner critic, to render it mute, replacing its hostility with empathy toward yourself.

Have you heard of the concept of the inner critic?

anita