Dear Tammy Meaney:

You are very welcome. The inner critic, when it is overly critical and harsh, usually takes after a person in your childhood to whom you were very attached, and who overly and harshly criticized you. A child encounters a number of critical people, often many (parents, siblings, other family members, peers at school, teachers, people in the street, etc.), but the most powerful real-life critic in a child’s life is someone the child is most attached to, someone the child spends a lot of time with.

The reason it is important to identify that person is that changing the inner critic from an overly-active/ obsessive, harsh critic to a less active, gentler kind, takes understanding that as a child, you did not deserve the harsh criticism you received, that you were innocent of it. It is the belief in your innocence as a child that disarms, over time, the harsh inner critic.

anita