Imposter syndrome is a real thing, and it's certainly possible to be overly self-critical. But plenty of people aren't "in the right place," and aren't "doing the right thing." People only get "stronger, smarter, ... and more productive" through intentional self-development, not by wishful thinking. For most of us, to love ourselves means we should be aspiring to something better, and not content with how we are now. Telling yourself you're worse than you are isn't healthy, but neither is it healthy to tell yourself that you're better than you are.
I would advise someone to overcome imposter syndrome by anchoring in objective facts about reality.
And what really mean to be "in the right place"? I think the idea is to stop thinking about the place you are right now, because that's the result of your earlier choices and you can't change that anyway. It is the "right place" for now. But you can start to think about what you can do to get to the place you want to be if there is one. Or maybe accept that life is not always about getting somewhere but about appreciate where you are, because life will never be perfect.
Yeah, which is why people tell themselves that their self doubt is just "impostor syndrome", there is no way they actually are bad its just them underestimating themselves! We all know how research shows how humans usually underestimates their own capabilities, right???
But I guess if that makes them happy why not. But it gets old quick when everyone says they have impostor syndrome.
Nobody seems to be incompetent at anything anymore, but weirdly enough everyone has impostor syndrome now.
For me, the nagging, head spinning inner critic that doesn't leave me alone is a major driver for curiosity, learning, creativity and general improvement.
Impostor syndrome is when there's clear evidence that you're successful and competent but you still don't believe it and you are _afraid_ that this is uncovered. It is an irrational fear and a brutal delusion. It's one of those where you can get presented objective evidence that the fear is unwarranted but you still can't get rid of it.
I never had impostor syndrome, but I can relate to those types of fears and mental challenges. It's very hard work to clear these types of things up. You don't even want to talk about it.
People who suck at something do not have impostor syndrome, by definition. What is much more likely is that they are in the phase where they start to get that they suck ("valley of despair"). But that's not a mental blockade induced by crippling fear like impostor syndrome is.
Realizing you suck at something calls for _celebration_. The delusion is broken! There's only going to be improvement!
On one hand, there seems to be a society-wide stress engendered by the global events of the last several years, which could explain more and more people have anxiety about many things, including themselves.
On the other, sure, when a concept such as impostor syndrome becomes widespread, more people are going to try to weigh themselves against it, and try to appear on the "right side" of it. Thus, in almost in a humblebrag manner, dismiss flaws as self-doubt or lack of confidence.
> The delusion is broken! There's only going to be improvement!
Not everyone has the same productive inner critic. Some people can be self-critical to the point of paralysis, to the extent of wallowing doubt. To self-loathing and absolute defeatism. Look at the increases in mental illness, addiction, and worse in society. Some inner critics kill, whether a person's potential, or their actual life.
Now, the OP uses a generic one-size-fits-all, vapidly positive self-help soothing solution, which might not help a lot of people. And so it becomes easy to dismiss, and to dismiss impostor syndrome as simply an excuse. But I'm just reminding you that not everyone is able to step up to challenges in the same way. Not everyone has a healthy growth mindset to overcome one's mental blockades. Some do lose themselves in the valley of despair, and could benefit from self-affirmation. Maybe just not the basic content-written approach in the OP.
I experienced some of the issue you described. But in my above comment I generalized my own experience too much.
For me personally, it was a combination of kindness and brutal honesty that helped me to overcome these challenges. Well meaning bullshit only worsened my self-perception. For me it meant that my inner self-critic got sharper, more precise and clear instead of the carnage it created before. I didn't shut it up or try to soothe it and I'm glad for it. But that's _me_ so thank so for reminding me that it's too easy to generalize these kinds of things.
The less I take myself seriously, the more I apply self-compassion, and the less I let my performance/failures define my sense of self, the happier and less stressed I am.
I discovered this by accident. I used to be the opposite: my self-image used to be relatively inflated, and my sense of self was tightly integrated with external events. When those external events turned south hard enough to totally shatter my ego, it felt like my brain -- utterly against my will -- decided, "I guess we gotta let go of caring about stuff this hard." I ceased to be able to care as hard (seemingly permanently). I've been happier and chiller ever since. :p
i got to the same point but i view it as self denial since i just basically ignore objective reality and assume i’m doing well even if evidence contradicts this
people telling me i suck doesn’t bother me because i know their wrong
i used to be hyper critical of myself now i don’t worry about it
It's all about balance though, isn't it? Someone that doubts themselves to the point of never trying or doing anything, needs _something_ to get them out of that mode. Maybe they read this article and something resonates with them and they can make a change for the better.
Likewise, there might be someone completely delusional that thinks they are gods gift to the world that can do no wrong. So the only reason they aren't more successful is bad luck or something. Reading this article and taking something from it would be counterproductive, they need to read something else to get out of that head space.
This is magical advice; there's a huge body of work concerning the Law of Attraction and the power of regularly making positive statements. The most well-known book in this category is The Secret but it goes back to the early 1900s.
Typically, any long-form writing in this category will spill some ink reminding you that shit happens a lot faster if you put some effort in, so you're definitely not wrong here.
Have you personally overcome imposter syndrome through this advice? Because it sounds to me like a theoretical take, not one that has been well tested.
The people I know who are or have been overly self critical are not lacking in "objective facts". They have been damaged by dealing extensively with people who are overly critical, often to the point of emotional abuse. So they have problems with selecting which facts to focus on and how to weight them emotionally. These are often not conscious problems, and so getting out of them doesn't just require rational-mind realizations, but changing deep habits of thought.
I also am very concerned about this, which I think is potentially harmful to some people, especially those struggling with self esteem:
> For most of us, to love ourselves means we should be aspiring to something better, and not content with how we are now.
I think this could easily be read as meaning that aspiration is a precondition of self love. For people who have been told from their earliest memories that they are inadequate, tying self-love to self-improvement puts them on a treadmill that never stops. Love does not require improvement or perfection.
As someone who’s dealt with emotional abuse, this really struck a chord. You can see and understand the objective facts. But it’s very hard to accept positive reinforcement emotionally. You don’t believe it’s genuine.
> Have you personally overcome imposter syndrome through this advice?
Yes, this is personally what I do.
> I think this could easily be read as meaning that aspiration is a precondition of self love.
I suppose I could have been more clear. Aspirations need not be professional, they could be moral, relationship based, experiential, etc. You're right that if we say "I can only love myself when I'm better" means you never will be happy with yourself, and that's not what I'm trying to say. But one of my favorite definitions of the word "love" is to will and act for the good of someone - and if you aren't doing something to make yourself or your life better in some way, then you are not acting with love to yourself. On the flip side, saying "Yeah, everything is great" is not actually making things better (and at the same time, neither is saying "everything is horrible").
Does it not? Try framing it more charitably. Someone suffers or will suffer or simply misses out on something you know theyd greatly appreciate because of their behaviour, if you love them will you ignore it? Or will you, while showing respect, endeavour to prompt or support their changing?
I think there are good and bad ways to express this, and I think the feeling itself isnt intuitive.
This viewpoint implies that everyone successful achieves it through merit. I think a ton of people achieve success just through insane confidence.
Look at something like Scientology. It is just one insanely confident man willing an entire religion into existence and holding it all together with his own over-confidence. I hate cults but they are an example of how delusion levels of self-confidence can bring things into existence that make no logical sense.
Lacking the merit, I'd consider this to be arrogance rather than confidence. One is based in reality, one is just wishful thinking. Granted, most people can't tell the difference looking at someone whose background they are not familiar with.
knowing oneself is hard but rewarding work and for me requires self-doubt and criticism and the action that comes out of that, it’s a non-terminating cycle. sometimes peace and joy are involved, many times not. some of these affirmations could be useful, but I’ve always had issues with this overly gentle and kind of self-delusional approach. The road to self-actualization is not opened up by repeatedly telling yourself that what you wish were true is true.
This line of reasoning has been formalized by the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy school of psychology. Read "Feeling Good" by Dr. David Burns to learn how professionals who have made issues such as the nature and quality of one's self conversation their entire career focus. That book and these professionals have significantly higher quality information than this blog post.
In modern therapy it is considered[0] that at least some of the inner critic issues are responses to past traumatic events and emotional trauma. It tries to help you avoid doing something that hurt you in the past, like a legacy broken failsafe mechanism.
Perfectionism, avoidance and other problems often have very traceable roots in the past, and there are therapy tools like EMDR[1] that help to fix or mitigate the root causes.
In my experience, it is not really possible to fix serious emotional trauma with affirmations, and deeper emotional work is required to start seeing your inner critic (and other trauma symptoms) shrink.
The best way to start working on such problems as inner critic is to find a licensed mental health specialist.
Pete Walker writes good books, but sometimes I find his prescription of out-fighting the critic counterproductive. I observe that the voice of certain unproductive thoughts I have is more like a wounded child than a critical adult. It says "Why even try?" sadly rather than mockingly. Fighting it makes this worse. It needs love and cuddles.
That was my experience as well. I am not a big fan of his 13 step flashback management process, or some of the other strategies, as they never worked effectively for me, but in my opinion he does an excellent job to map the battlefield, establishing causes and effects.
His book is a good starting point, along with two other classics[0][1], but it is also rather old (10 years this year!), with more strategies and research done on top of it by other psychologists since then.
Inner Critic: This is bullshit. I do not love and accept myself exactly as I am.
You: What's missing?
Inner Critic: I'm out of shape, I live alone, and I make two cents out of every dollar I make for my boss.
You: Yeah, those all suck. Damn. What can we do about these things?
Inner Critic: Man I dunno, I just know this sucks.
Inner Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Hey, remember that broadsword club that meets in the park every Saturday? We could start doing that again, it's free, and it's an hour or so waving a heavy thing around with a bunch of other people, some of whom you know damn well have better jobs than us and could end up being a valuable connection if we end up as friends, some of whom might also turn out to be potential housemates, friends, or lovers. No promises of anything beyond "getting in better shape" but that's certainly more opportunities for something to happen.
Word of caution is that such '5 Why' trains of questions might not dig out the real reason, and will steer you away from the actual problem. Oftentimes inner critic reacts[0] to strong emotions in the present, trying to validate, "fix" or rationalise them, purely because you are not used to working with such strong emotions -- this could be due to upbringing, emotional neglect and some other reasons.
Critic might not be logical at all.
Referenced is an excellent book[0] from a clinical psychologist that has many detailed strategies to dig out the reasons behind critical thoughts and properly reframe them.
A book I read recently suggested to let your inner critic speak, but then let, what it calls, your inner advocate get the last word - counter what the inner critic is saying. I have tried this on a number of occasions and it's been net positive for me - YMMV.
> You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top, and providing your brain undeniable evidence you are who you say you are.
Yes... and also failing and learning how to take care of yourself, rethink things, and make new plans after you do.
I’ve been successful in my work over the past decade, but no matter how many awards, how much recognition, or how much money I received, I always struggled with a negative inner voice telling me I was worthless, not living up to my potential, and that people didn’t like me. It was only after I started combatting these thoughts with daily affirmations that the voice turned around, and I recognized when I was feeding myself negative thoughts.
Or may be by realising that there is always someone at top and someone below you in everything. And hopefully that will reduce the urge to be at top of everything and that results in compassion towards one's own self.
> You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top, and providing your brain undeniable evidence you are who you say you are.
You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top...
If you repeatedly come out on top you're just doing easy things. Ideally you should be failing at about half the things you try to do if you're aiming high enough.
> You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top, and providing your brain undeniable evidence you are who you say you are.
Ironically, this is basically just a positive affirmation in a slightly different form, and it's not any more helpful.
Some people's brains have a remarkable ability to deny, invalidate, or straight-up forget any evidence that would potentially bolster their confidence. This kind of trite advice may be great for people who are already predisposed to confidence and find themselves in a rut, but as someone who's in therapy for this kind of thing, some people need more help to get to a better place.
> If your problem is that you are unjustifiably negative, then maybe chanting positive things to yourself will help.
Not sure if I'm misreading you or if you misread me, but my comment was not a defense of positive affirmations. I don't believe that positive affirmations will help with the necessary mental reframing needed to combat deeper emotional trauma and mental health struggles.
That said, I'm not convinced by this:
> I think the problem facing most people is having standards they see others meet that they do not.
If someone feels badly enough about not meeting a standard that those feelings rise to the level of a problem, then I agree that positive affirmations probably won't help, but meeting the standard isn't necessarily a panacea either.
Taking your example, if someone thinks "I should be married by now", there's presumably some kind of deeper emotion behind that. If that feeling is within a normal range and the person can manage it effectively, then it may motivate them to work harder to find a relationship and settle down, but in that case it wouldn't be reasonable to call it a problem.
On the other hand, if they have a stronger feeling like "All my friends are married but me. They must think I'm pathetic." or "I keep getting older but nobody wants to date me. What if I'm just doomed to be alone forever?", then this is much more likely to be problematic. This kind of feeling might motivate them to settle for a relationship that doesn't make them happy, to move more quickly than they're comfortable with, to do things that go against their own needs, to stay in the relationship even in the face of problems, etc. just to try and meet that standard.
In this latter case, the standard isn't the issue, but it's tied to the deeper issue. The standard is the focus in the person's mind because it feels like the truth, but their mental framing is also biased in a way that prevents them from seeing their underlying motivation, and thus from resolving the true problem.
For example, the person who feels pathetic for being the only unmarried person in their friend group likely has deeper confidence issues that won't be addressed by marriage alone, even if their partner is supportive. Likewise, the person who fears being alone forever may temporarily alleviate that fear through marriage, but they'll also probably come to fear their partner leaving them, leading only to more anxiety and distress.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
My understanding is that creative work pays little unless your work is very popular. See for example the distribution of royalties for music streaming or for authors of books.
Given this low likelihood of monetary gain it seems unlikely the money is a primary motivator.
Making a living off ones art isn't easy. It's hard work generally just polishing the skill to a point people might appreciate it enough to pay for it in some way - then starts the hard work of getting people to watch, listen, look, etc. If you manage that without some stroke of serious luck it can be years to build a sufficient base that a high enough percentage of them buy something every release or whatever your output is.
Like the quote says, a lot of people quit. A lot that don't quit don't make it either, and the lucky among them end up sort of art adjacent. You aren't the host, but you're a writer, you're not a rock star but after your band fell apart you ended up doing sound and lights at a venue you frequented, you're not Ira Glass but you're a producer or editor.
Also, you don't see the first draft, you see the final edit.
For me, this means that it's OK to try stuff. For a long time I got mad at myself for taking half a day to change two lines of code. Of course to get to those two lines of code, I had to learn a lot and I had to try 10 different approaches.
The units of work for software development are learning and trying things, not lines of code.
the Paris Review often prints draft versions of significant stories, poems, essays, etc. with editorial notes and marginalia on them. It really helps to see how these things weren't always in their final state.
The irony of affirmations: Why do I have to remind myself of being something, if I am already that? In effect, I am reminding myself of that which I am not.
Your mind is not infallible. It’s like when you’re searching for your glasses and you realize that you’re wearing them, or when you’re looking for your car keys and realize that you’re holding them.
I wonder if there is a gender gap here when it come to self talk. Most articles I've read about affirmations are usually written by women. For me as a man I just don't identify with things like: "you are enough", my self talk is usually some expletive ridden tirade about what I'm doing wrong.
Your inner voice is essentially how you parent your inner child You. Imagine that 10 year old You was standing in front of adult you right now. Would you still use expletives etc? We ought to learn from 5th grade teachers on how to talk to kids - encouragement, “could” vs “should”, avoiding harsh criticism. Affirmations work because it’s giving deliberate encouragement/praise to our inner child selves. Saying things out out & hearing them is “special” to our brain. Deliberately using emotion (rather than saying it dryly & rote) is effective. Music can help.
> my self talk is usually some expletive ridden tirade
Dan Harris gave a short talk about how alien self-love practices felt to him, having lived with similarly harsh self-talk. It’s entertaining and it might resonate with you too:
I'm one of those lucky people with high self-esteem. I see myself as smart and creative and likeable and good and, honestly, even nice to look at.
I think I got to be this way by growing up in a very loving household, but I think how I maintain it in the face of my regular missteps and fuckups is by not judging myself (or anyone, really) based on achievement or success. Millions of very smart people have been spectacularly wrong. Millions of creative people have no audience. Some people who I like very much are unpopular or have very few friends. I've known very beautiful people who have been very unlucky in love.
I'd love to see a debate between your viewpoint and that of MauranKilom in the thread. I think I'm kind of stuck between your two perspectives and I'm not sure I really understand your perspective while I feel like MauranKilom's is my default.
Exactly my thoughts. "I love and accept myself, exactly as I am." seems like an entirely defeatist attitude, and one that completely discounts the idea of self-improvement.
I think the mantras above might be important for a person who struggles with criticising things they can't change about themselves, height, beauty, hair loss, age, that sort of thing.
I agree that it comes across defeatist using these mantras in relation to things you can change, like skills, outlook, fitness, number and/or quality of relationships.
Squaring the circle here: I love and accept myself right now, with all the flaws I know I have. I'm trying to improve, but who knows what I will and won't ultimately fix. Maybe this old lump of coal never will be a diamond. But I'm not going to wait til I've climbed the asymptote to start loving myself, I can just love the self I'm stuck with here and now.
I like the idea, but I'm also not a fan how they phrase it. For me I have two voices in my head. One is the nice voice telling me the affirmations, the other is a very harsh voice telling me that I still have work to do. It's a balancing act and you can't just listen to one voice.
I feel like I must have some sort of different personality type from those with these comments having one or perhaps even more than one "voice" in their head that talks to them
There is no silver bullet for growth. Some people need to actively seek to be more critical, others need to make that criticism more constructive, or be less harsh on themselves.
Have you considered seeing those lines less as the desirable inner monologue of the person, but rather as an exercise to shift that inner monologue to a more positive mindset ?
"I love and accept myself, exactly as I am" and "I am a person striving everyday to improve in multiple dimensions" are not mutually exclusive! It sounds like a paradox but I think that's a result of our imprecise language. Accepting yourself and improving yourself are two side of the same coin.
Affirmations may work for some but for me they were useless or probably negative. After reading "Think and Grow Rich" I did morning affirmations every day. I never felt anything positive from them but actually felt more and more like a fraud because I was constantly repeating stuff that wasn't true. And nothing ever changed.
Like all other self-help, give it a try and see how it works for you.We have vastly different personalities and life experience so don't expect that a thing that works for one person will work for everybody.
Mental health is mechanical. Most anxiety and suffering within mental health are second order effects from unconscious fears that we have about behaviours we feel are risky to take. For example, if you grow up in a household where your personal distress causes distress in others, you will hide your own personal distress and attempt to appear good all of the time. You will have high levels of anxiety in situations in which you might have to admit distress/dissatisfaction/not be a happy person that makes everyone else happy.
To improve mental health, more behaviours on the spectrum of all possible behaviours need to become calmly accessible. This allows the brain to be calmer in a wider range of situations; previously a situation that might cause distress might have been avoided/cause a spike in anxiety, now the situation can be faced calmly and the newly integrated behaviour allows the individual to say "sorry, I'm finding this too stressful, I need to stop".
Everyone typically has their own unique combination of behaviours which are not easily accessible. In my personal therapy I found that my dreams were a useful way of diagnosing what behaviours I was not comfortable with. I got very interested in this and ultimately completed a Masters in Psychology to write a paper on the topic based on the underlying neurology that occurs during REM sleep.
Not massively. The theory within psychotherapy is quite messy at the moment. It's one of the reasons I'm training to be one. Why Love Matters is a good book though.
I also made a long YT video explaining my theory, but it was a long time ago and I haven't watched it in a long time so I can't remember precisely what I was thinking at the time. I think it explains most of the concepts well enough though. It's here if you want to watch it: https://youtu.be/iPPNxc7nApY
If one develops a habit of meditating on their affirmations, the ideas within the affirmations are more likely to come to mind during an emotional incident and help to regulate behavior towards the desired outcome.
The "coming to mind" of valuable self-regulating ideas is "mindfulness". Yes. It's subjective. That's OK. And yes, it may not work for everyone. People are different and have different ways of reacting and different levels of self-awareness.
I kinda agree with everything except that affirmations DO work, they are like self hypnosis and reach the unconscious in ways that add up.
Every time a horrible cringe/guilt memory comes up, instead of expletive Fuuuuuuu (mental or out loud) literally reprogram yourself to immediately say "I love me!" or "Different now" or something else that's positive.
The silly goodness of the thing legit interrupts the pain of the memory.
Thoughts and feelings that fire together wire together, so you MUST to break the connection of old shit spiraling into bad mood, paralysis, etc in the moment.
This is daily housekeeping for mental health. No one has endless time to meditate or waste money on therapy
once you have a few of these solid habits, you feel strong enough to do the heavy murky freudian trauma unraveling that's more longterm and releases the tight gordian knots from childhood etc.
But daily tools DO work and are just as important.
in person therapy is a waste of time/money for most people unless you're so wealthy you can afford the wise old superstar in their field (most of the best have already dropped dead of old age).
less charitable: those who knock the easy/free/practical-yet-harmless-woo are kinda just protecting the value of their profession / special modality, consciously or unconsciously imo, like doctors who don't accept basic fasting thats been around a thousand years, eating keto/carn, or benefits of natural immunity... lol
I say don't be loyal to any 'experts', steal whatever works from their cheap books and youtube and other resources across modalities and put together a hodgepodge of stuff for yourself!
Research and libgen and then buy physical books and highlighters and a journal and especially a medium/large STUFFED ANIMAL with expressive eyes to mimic eye contact while to talk out loud to instead (like rubber ducking with trauma) and do it yourself. You can process feelings privately, keep a journal of progress and try one book/method at a time at your own pace.
Most normal people (esp men) can't cry in front of strangers, but can cry in private.
ONE session of therapy is $50 to $150, and only gives you one hour with barely ONE insight or emotional moment a session. Thats after many sessions of fighting defense mechanisms and intellectual tricks to maybe get to the real meat of what's painful.
The classics of the field are mostly books that cost $10-15 as paperbacks on amazon and each can provide MONTHS of insight /catharsis if you DO/work thru feelings that arise as u read each chapter instead of just reading it and throwing it aside for the next book.
People just race thru and don't APPLY anything, that's as useless as reading a programming book and not trying any of the code/psets. Slow it down, only one chapter a week, the same way in person therapy is only one hour a week, the insights/feelings that you chew on the other 6 days until the next session. Make a schedule and DIY.
Unplug your alexa and phone and u can say stuff out loud to your plushie that you cannot legit say to a therapist-- they are truly a stranger with LEGAL BUREAUCRACY and social programming makes them often unable to handle realities of anyone unlike themselves.
Therapists gossip and share stories at parties and know little about real privacy in the digital age where two random anecdotes can google-fu most clients.
The lame psych majors you met in college are the same people your insurance will cover a pathetic 10 sessions with. They get bored and tune out or jump to their fave diagnostic buckets when they can't untangle your issues and unconsciously need to make themselves feel more competent.
The money is bad so they compete for clients and aren't going to tell you hard truths that would HELP you when that risks being dropped, a bad review, bad word of mouth, or risk of legal/license headache.
You are just paying for a 'legitimized' comfort zone, rather than a strong helpful truly honest person to guide you out of your own misery-is-safe-and-familiar comfort zone.
Incentives are not on your side.
The types of people that become therapists are not emotionally hardy, mentally strong, stable, world-weary people with a strong sense of character.
If you knew any in real life as friends, you would never hire them.
Seriously consider what you disclose and reset your expectations.
more ranty side points----------
therapy is like the 80-20 garbage/quality ratio of all fields, especially the affordable ones most likely a mediocre broken person with their own baggage/desires/ego they'll project onto you.
Good luck being a hot girl, philosophically and politically anything but a very liberal humanist, having any personality type that isn't already a feely crier who understands your emotions, any one with working class common sense, any...
Interesting take but it seems some past experiences have colored your opinion here. Which, I'm not rejecting. In response to "just do it yourself" there are lots of people who are in mental state where they literally just can't get themselves to do that. They sometimes need that person / therapist to get started.
I wished I'd had legit 'bad' experiences, then I'd know they were outliers and would make for a story, but really I was shocked by deep mediocrity of several therapists, diff regions, male and female, diff costs etc.
The costs / risks of trusting important matters to average middling people makes it not worth it.
It's not a horror show, it's just a waste...
The reputation of therapy came from the top/excellent practitioners in the field over several decades.... and now it's a cheapened wonder-bread experience and even app based, lmao
Your inner critic is what you think the others think of you, and—setting aside coping techniques, however helpful—truly silencing it is possible in two ways: others stop giving you reasons for fearing their opinion, or you become a sociopath. I find the first option preferable, but getting there is on all of us…
it is about what story you are telling yourself. Its not the affirmations that work or not work. If it works, its the narrative/story that 'I am doing affirmations everyday and these will make me a better person' . If it doesnt work 'I am doing affirmations but hey whats the point this is silly'.
If your inner critic is critical to the point of being debilitating, the advice in the article may be helpful. But I'd be careful of trying to silence it.
Recently, I was made to look from afar on what I've accomplished at $WORK and even my inner critic had to agree that it's been a real success story. Paradoxically, this really killed my drive for a while. "I don't have to prove myself, to the company or myself. Colleagues and management are glad to have me around." Ironically (and thankfully) this resting on my laurels of course brought the critic right back.
So while I do like feeling 100% confident in myself and my skills, a healthy (!) dose of self-doubt is also necessary for me to stay humble and keep pushing myself. And this is true outside of work just the same.
Naturally, this need not apply to anyone else. But as positive as "being happy with yourself/your work/your lifestyle" sounds, it also risks removing the gradient toward improving your behavior/skills/situation. Or, put another way (in the spirit of TSAONGAF): You will always have problems, but maybe wrestling with your inner critic is a good problem to have.
It should be OK to rest on your laurels a little bit after a big win. When your ancient caveman ancestors killed a mammoth, everybody in the tribe chilled out for a couple days afterwards I bet.
Many of the critiques of this piece are well spoken to by Dr. Jordan Peterson when he says it can be quite troubling to a person who senses things are not right in their lives when we say things like "You're ok", "Don't be so critical" (ie call this situation "good") . etc. And he mentions it can be quite distressing because if now is "good" then a) what hope is there? They're experiencing suffering/distress and we've now told them to just suffer it (and now in silence). and b) it disarms the one true lever we have in life, thoughtful action. and often people who are hypercritical are paralyzed by self-doubt/fear/perfectionism.
I think he has a point.
Maybe affirmations do not work, but some of the sentiment behind them could be powerful. "You have a sufficient plan to move forward, and you're a sufficient person to take those first steps".
I don't think imposter syndrome is real, or I think it's overstated. I think most people are good at ascertaining their competence or lack thereof. If you take a math class, for example, I think it's reasonable to assume that one can reliably ascertain their knowledge of the material by exam or homework performance. If you can follow along with the lectures and do the problems, then you are competent, no?
In my experience impostor syndrome is mostly a mismatch between thinking and feeling. E.g. I know I'm a competent programmer, probably even a good one. I still feel like I'm going to get fired for gross incompetence on a semi-regular basis though.
I find it worrying that most comments seem to follow gut feeling and common sense when dealing with psychological issues like that, instead of relying on therapy and research.
If inner critic gives you real trouble, the best way, by far, is to start working on such problems with a licensed mental health specialist.
Second best way is to catch up on modern research in psychology and psychotherapy. (I'm generalising below with most important knowledge I have on the topic based on my replies to other comments.)
In modern therapy it is considered that at least some of the inner critic issues are responses to past traumatic events and emotional trauma. It tries to help you avoid doing something that hurt you in the past, like a legacy broken failsafe mechanism.
Possible root causes might include:
- Complex PTSD [0][1]
- Childhood emotional neglect [2]
- Traumatic stress [3]
- Style of your upbringing and some other issues from the past, including learned responses to life stresses [4]
Sources referenced above are very useful in 'debugging' yourself, are widely known, and are written by psychologists.
This knowledge is in part a modern (last decade) evolution of older Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ideas[5] from the 1980s. OP article describes typical CBT strategy. CBT, while being helpful to manage critic-related problems, rarely addresses any of the underlying root causes.
If you don't want to dig deep into root causes, I want to explicitly highlight [4] as it does a great way of summarising core CBT and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) ideas, and helps to address the critic issue directly via many actionable strategies.
Therapy is out of reach for many/most people, at least in the US. Getting an appointment can take months and often they're only offered online, which isn't quite the same for a lot of people. Also expensive. Then, if you do get an appointment and can afford it, your therapist might be handling 400 cases at the moment, so your relationship is unlikely to progress past a superficial level where you can benefit.
This kind of articles have weak metaphysical grounding, that's why there's room for so many "yes, but"s after them: "be yourself" <=> yes, but not if you are a blonde depressed suicidal addict.
Consider the first sentence, a rhetorical question: "Have you ever doubted yourself?"—who is this you so promptly assumed. If giving advice meant to impact the entire present and future life of an agent, one should at least wrestle a bit with the plethora of concepts taken for granted, unless one is writing another Dictionary of Received Ideas [1]. In this aspect, you doubting you, perhaps the perspective from Jeff Hawkins' A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence is more luminating: of course you would doubt yourself because in actuality there is a you_1 who doubts you_2 and currently you_1 is overpowering you_2 in the vote of all the other yous. Maybe you don't have an inner critic, maybe you have 999 inner critics. In this light, a question such as "have you ever doubted yourself" would look more like "why is the current you still the dominant aspect, still winning the vote of all the other yous, of who/how you could be in the space of all the yous".
every time I hear the word "affirmations" I have to think of this Mr Robot scene[1]. There's something truly Patrick Bateman like about this self-talk that seems like it comes straight out of some business self-help book.
I think this kind of stuff isn't really helpful. For one self-doubt may very well be correct given the circumstances. It's not really sound to attempt to drown that out or not be your own critic. Even more importantly it gets people tangled up even more in their own thoughts. It may be a trite insight at this point but you aren't your own thoughts. You can just listen to them without immediately being caught up in them.
If you can deliberate or act on things without being too caught up what your 'inner voice' is telling you at any given moment, that's a much more solid foundation than repeating weird chants to yourself.
> Affirmations are a powerful and proven tool to calm your inner critic and increase self-compassion.
Instead, I recommend reading (or listening to) Kid Confidence by Eileen Kennedy-Moore. It's applicable to adults and to ones own self.
Here is a paraphrased excerpt:
---
Address your fundamental needs for connection, competence, and choice. When these needs are met, you'll be less preoccupied with evaluating yourself and questioning your worth.
Connection: Build meaningful relationships with family and friends. This is how you'll feel known, accepted, and valued by others. Also, spending time with people you care about will give you more interesting things to think about than your own self-worth.
Competence: Gain real skills so you can do things that matter to you. To feel competent you have to have genuine competence. Learn how to learn, so you can grown your own competence and unblock yourself when you are stuck.
Choice: Figure out what matters to you so you can make decisions that are in line with your values. Embrace opportunities to make your own meaningful choices.
---
Based on personal experience, I believe this is the right framework for real self-improvement. Your inner critic is there for a reason. Respect it and become a person it can be proud of. Affirmations and other popular self-help techniques are mostly bullshit. Also, it's interesting to note that if you inverse the above advice, you basically have the classical framework for running a cult.
I dunno, maybe my brain is wired differently but this sounds like fluff.
Maybe I've been fortunate that growing up, I've had stoic figures in my life and through their beliefs/actions solved problems through grit and hard work.
I struggle to understand if people live their lives by looking themselves in a mirror and saying positive mantras and hoping that one day they will see themselves this way. I thought this was just the lore of movies.
If a voice (myself or a anyone else) said "I love and accept myself, exactly as I am/I love my well lived-in body" and would suspect it was trying to trick me somehow/pulling my leg and I would laugh and tell it/them to F-off.
I think my critical voice has gone from inwards to outwards. It doesn't say "You suck and you're an imposter", because it's been distracted by the so many examples of other people being so much more incompetent and lacking basic critical thinking skills, that even if I'm a complete screw up, I'm not that bad. e.g. lack of basic financial understanding, solving problems, tribal voting.
I think I've come to realize if I want to fix certain things about me, that I've chosen (at this point in time) not to do it and to move on, but that I can revisit and try and fix it in the future.
103 comments
[ 407 ms ] story [ 2064 ms ] threadImposter syndrome is a real thing, and it's certainly possible to be overly self-critical. But plenty of people aren't "in the right place," and aren't "doing the right thing." People only get "stronger, smarter, ... and more productive" through intentional self-development, not by wishful thinking. For most of us, to love ourselves means we should be aspiring to something better, and not content with how we are now. Telling yourself you're worse than you are isn't healthy, but neither is it healthy to tell yourself that you're better than you are.
I would advise someone to overcome imposter syndrome by anchoring in objective facts about reality.
i found that the more delusional i get myself, the happier i am.
maybe bad long term but feel better than seeing the “truth”, whatever that is anyways
But I guess if that makes them happy why not. But it gets old quick when everyone says they have impostor syndrome.
For me, the nagging, head spinning inner critic that doesn't leave me alone is a major driver for curiosity, learning, creativity and general improvement.
Impostor syndrome is when there's clear evidence that you're successful and competent but you still don't believe it and you are _afraid_ that this is uncovered. It is an irrational fear and a brutal delusion. It's one of those where you can get presented objective evidence that the fear is unwarranted but you still can't get rid of it.
I never had impostor syndrome, but I can relate to those types of fears and mental challenges. It's very hard work to clear these types of things up. You don't even want to talk about it.
People who suck at something do not have impostor syndrome, by definition. What is much more likely is that they are in the phase where they start to get that they suck ("valley of despair"). But that's not a mental blockade induced by crippling fear like impostor syndrome is.
Realizing you suck at something calls for _celebration_. The delusion is broken! There's only going to be improvement!
On the other, sure, when a concept such as impostor syndrome becomes widespread, more people are going to try to weigh themselves against it, and try to appear on the "right side" of it. Thus, in almost in a humblebrag manner, dismiss flaws as self-doubt or lack of confidence.
> The delusion is broken! There's only going to be improvement!
Not everyone has the same productive inner critic. Some people can be self-critical to the point of paralysis, to the extent of wallowing doubt. To self-loathing and absolute defeatism. Look at the increases in mental illness, addiction, and worse in society. Some inner critics kill, whether a person's potential, or their actual life.
Now, the OP uses a generic one-size-fits-all, vapidly positive self-help soothing solution, which might not help a lot of people. And so it becomes easy to dismiss, and to dismiss impostor syndrome as simply an excuse. But I'm just reminding you that not everyone is able to step up to challenges in the same way. Not everyone has a healthy growth mindset to overcome one's mental blockades. Some do lose themselves in the valley of despair, and could benefit from self-affirmation. Maybe just not the basic content-written approach in the OP.
For me personally, it was a combination of kindness and brutal honesty that helped me to overcome these challenges. Well meaning bullshit only worsened my self-perception. For me it meant that my inner self-critic got sharper, more precise and clear instead of the carnage it created before. I didn't shut it up or try to soothe it and I'm glad for it. But that's _me_ so thank so for reminding me that it's too easy to generalize these kinds of things.
The less I take myself seriously, the more I apply self-compassion, and the less I let my performance/failures define my sense of self, the happier and less stressed I am.
I discovered this by accident. I used to be the opposite: my self-image used to be relatively inflated, and my sense of self was tightly integrated with external events. When those external events turned south hard enough to totally shatter my ego, it felt like my brain -- utterly against my will -- decided, "I guess we gotta let go of caring about stuff this hard." I ceased to be able to care as hard (seemingly permanently). I've been happier and chiller ever since. :p
people telling me i suck doesn’t bother me because i know their wrong
i used to be hyper critical of myself now i don’t worry about it
i am what i am
Likewise, there might be someone completely delusional that thinks they are gods gift to the world that can do no wrong. So the only reason they aren't more successful is bad luck or something. Reading this article and taking something from it would be counterproductive, they need to read something else to get out of that head space.
Typically, any long-form writing in this category will spill some ink reminding you that shit happens a lot faster if you put some effort in, so you're definitely not wrong here.
The people I know who are or have been overly self critical are not lacking in "objective facts". They have been damaged by dealing extensively with people who are overly critical, often to the point of emotional abuse. So they have problems with selecting which facts to focus on and how to weight them emotionally. These are often not conscious problems, and so getting out of them doesn't just require rational-mind realizations, but changing deep habits of thought.
I also am very concerned about this, which I think is potentially harmful to some people, especially those struggling with self esteem:
> For most of us, to love ourselves means we should be aspiring to something better, and not content with how we are now.
I think this could easily be read as meaning that aspiration is a precondition of self love. For people who have been told from their earliest memories that they are inadequate, tying self-love to self-improvement puts them on a treadmill that never stops. Love does not require improvement or perfection.
Yes, this is personally what I do.
> I think this could easily be read as meaning that aspiration is a precondition of self love.
I suppose I could have been more clear. Aspirations need not be professional, they could be moral, relationship based, experiential, etc. You're right that if we say "I can only love myself when I'm better" means you never will be happy with yourself, and that's not what I'm trying to say. But one of my favorite definitions of the word "love" is to will and act for the good of someone - and if you aren't doing something to make yourself or your life better in some way, then you are not acting with love to yourself. On the flip side, saying "Yeah, everything is great" is not actually making things better (and at the same time, neither is saying "everything is horrible").
That is not love. Does loving your wife mean not being content with how she is now, and aspiring for her to be better? It does not
I think there are good and bad ways to express this, and I think the feeling itself isnt intuitive.
Look at something like Scientology. It is just one insanely confident man willing an entire religion into existence and holding it all together with his own over-confidence. I hate cults but they are an example of how delusion levels of self-confidence can bring things into existence that make no logical sense.
who is this stuff actually targeted at?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=754u7BL1Tkk
Perfectionism, avoidance and other problems often have very traceable roots in the past, and there are therapy tools like EMDR[1] that help to fix or mitigate the root causes.
In my experience, it is not really possible to fix serious emotional trauma with affirmations, and deeper emotional work is required to start seeing your inner critic (and other trauma symptoms) shrink.
The best way to start working on such problems as inner critic is to find a licensed mental health specialist.
0 - http://www.pete-walker.com/shrinkingInnerCritic.htm and similar research on CPTSD
1 - https://cptsdfoundation.org/2020/02/17/emdr-and-trauma-what-...
His book is a good starting point, along with two other classics[0][1], but it is also rather old (10 years this year!), with more strategies and research done on top of it by other psychologists since then.
[0] Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...
[1] Running on Empty by Jonice Webb & Christine Musello https://www.amazon.com/Running-Empty-Overcome-Childhood-Emot...
----
Inner Critic: This is bullshit. I do not love and accept myself exactly as I am.
You: What's missing?
Inner Critic: I'm out of shape, I live alone, and I make two cents out of every dollar I make for my boss.
You: Yeah, those all suck. Damn. What can we do about these things?
Inner Critic: Man I dunno, I just know this sucks.
Inner Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Hey, remember that broadsword club that meets in the park every Saturday? We could start doing that again, it's free, and it's an hour or so waving a heavy thing around with a bunch of other people, some of whom you know damn well have better jobs than us and could end up being a valuable connection if we end up as friends, some of whom might also turn out to be potential housemates, friends, or lovers. No promises of anything beyond "getting in better shape" but that's certainly more opportunities for something to happen.
Critic might not be logical at all.
Referenced is an excellent book[0] from a clinical psychologist that has many detailed strategies to dig out the reasons behind critical thoughts and properly reframe them.
0 - Self-Esteem by Matthew McKay; https://www.amazon.com/Self-Esteem-Cognitive-Techniques-Asse...
You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top, and providing your brain undeniable evidence you are who you say you are.
Yes... and also failing and learning how to take care of yourself, rethink things, and make new plans after you do.
I’ve been successful in my work over the past decade, but no matter how many awards, how much recognition, or how much money I received, I always struggled with a negative inner voice telling me I was worthless, not living up to my potential, and that people didn’t like me. It was only after I started combatting these thoughts with daily affirmations that the voice turned around, and I recognized when I was feeding myself negative thoughts.
It's not enough for many people, including myself
If you repeatedly come out on top you're just doing easy things. Ideally you should be failing at about half the things you try to do if you're aiming high enough.
Ironically, this is basically just a positive affirmation in a slightly different form, and it's not any more helpful.
Some people's brains have a remarkable ability to deny, invalidate, or straight-up forget any evidence that would potentially bolster their confidence. This kind of trite advice may be great for people who are already predisposed to confidence and find themselves in a rut, but as someone who's in therapy for this kind of thing, some people need more help to get to a better place.
I think the problem facing most people is having standards they see others meet that they do not.
"I should be married by now" might be a dumb standard, but if most people you know meet it, maybe it isn't the standard that is an issue, right.
In this case, repeating positive statements aren't likely to work, because they won't change the standard or the fact that you aren't meeting it.
Not sure if I'm misreading you or if you misread me, but my comment was not a defense of positive affirmations. I don't believe that positive affirmations will help with the necessary mental reframing needed to combat deeper emotional trauma and mental health struggles.
That said, I'm not convinced by this:
> I think the problem facing most people is having standards they see others meet that they do not.
If someone feels badly enough about not meeting a standard that those feelings rise to the level of a problem, then I agree that positive affirmations probably won't help, but meeting the standard isn't necessarily a panacea either.
Taking your example, if someone thinks "I should be married by now", there's presumably some kind of deeper emotion behind that. If that feeling is within a normal range and the person can manage it effectively, then it may motivate them to work harder to find a relationship and settle down, but in that case it wouldn't be reasonable to call it a problem.
On the other hand, if they have a stronger feeling like "All my friends are married but me. They must think I'm pathetic." or "I keep getting older but nobody wants to date me. What if I'm just doomed to be alone forever?", then this is much more likely to be problematic. This kind of feeling might motivate them to settle for a relationship that doesn't make them happy, to move more quickly than they're comfortable with, to do things that go against their own needs, to stay in the relationship even in the face of problems, etc. just to try and meet that standard.
In this latter case, the standard isn't the issue, but it's tied to the deeper issue. The standard is the focus in the person's mind because it feels like the truth, but their mental framing is also biased in a way that prevents them from seeing their underlying motivation, and thus from resolving the true problem.
For example, the person who feels pathetic for being the only unmarried person in their friend group likely has deeper confidence issues that won't be addressed by marriage alone, even if their partner is supportive. Likewise, the person who fears being alone forever may temporarily alleviate that fear through marriage, but they'll also probably come to fear their partner leaving them, leading only to more anxiety and distress.
― Ira Glass
Or because it is a relatively simple white collar job that pays crazy money. Which is more likely?
Given this low likelihood of monetary gain it seems unlikely the money is a primary motivator.
Like the quote says, a lot of people quit. A lot that don't quit don't make it either, and the lucky among them end up sort of art adjacent. You aren't the host, but you're a writer, you're not a rock star but after your band fell apart you ended up doing sound and lights at a venue you frequented, you're not Ira Glass but you're a producer or editor.
It's not simple, it's not white collar, and it doesn't pay crazy money. I wonder where you get that impression from.
For examples, refer to most artists, musicians, poets, writers...
For me, this means that it's OK to try stuff. For a long time I got mad at myself for taking half a day to change two lines of code. Of course to get to those two lines of code, I had to learn a lot and I had to try 10 different approaches.
The units of work for software development are learning and trying things, not lines of code.
Dan Harris gave a short talk about how alien self-love practices felt to him, having lived with similarly harsh self-talk. It’s entertaining and it might resonate with you too:
https://youtu.be/NuhIzO57HVk
“Typically it’s good to have a couple affirmations that work for you“ — “work for you” — so simple! Duh!
I think I got to be this way by growing up in a very loving household, but I think how I maintain it in the face of my regular missteps and fuckups is by not judging myself (or anyone, really) based on achievement or success. Millions of very smart people have been spectacularly wrong. Millions of creative people have no audience. Some people who I like very much are unpopular or have very few friends. I've known very beautiful people who have been very unlucky in love.
> I love and accept myself, exactly as I am.
> I am enough. I have enough.
> I am in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.
How the hell are you supposed to assess and improve on the infinite dimensions of yourself when this is your inner monologue?
I agree that it comes across defeatist using these mantras in relation to things you can change, like skills, outlook, fitness, number and/or quality of relationships.
Have you considered seeing those lines less as the desirable inner monologue of the person, but rather as an exercise to shift that inner monologue to a more positive mindset ?
Like all other self-help, give it a try and see how it works for you.We have vastly different personalities and life experience so don't expect that a thing that works for one person will work for everybody.
Mental health is mechanical. Most anxiety and suffering within mental health are second order effects from unconscious fears that we have about behaviours we feel are risky to take. For example, if you grow up in a household where your personal distress causes distress in others, you will hide your own personal distress and attempt to appear good all of the time. You will have high levels of anxiety in situations in which you might have to admit distress/dissatisfaction/not be a happy person that makes everyone else happy.
To improve mental health, more behaviours on the spectrum of all possible behaviours need to become calmly accessible. This allows the brain to be calmer in a wider range of situations; previously a situation that might cause distress might have been avoided/cause a spike in anxiety, now the situation can be faced calmly and the newly integrated behaviour allows the individual to say "sorry, I'm finding this too stressful, I need to stop".
Everyone typically has their own unique combination of behaviours which are not easily accessible. In my personal therapy I found that my dreams were a useful way of diagnosing what behaviours I was not comfortable with. I got very interested in this and ultimately completed a Masters in Psychology to write a paper on the topic based on the underlying neurology that occurs during REM sleep.
The paper can be read here: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz
It was discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590
I also made a long YT video explaining my theory, but it was a long time ago and I haven't watched it in a long time so I can't remember precisely what I was thinking at the time. I think it explains most of the concepts well enough though. It's here if you want to watch it: https://youtu.be/iPPNxc7nApY
It depends. They definitely DO work for some people and do nothing for others, YMMV.
When they work, the carefully chosen words and ideas in the affirmations help to remind us of things and steer us towards more mindfulness.
The "coming to mind" of valuable self-regulating ideas is "mindfulness". Yes. It's subjective. That's OK. And yes, it may not work for everyone. People are different and have different ways of reacting and different levels of self-awareness.
Every time a horrible cringe/guilt memory comes up, instead of expletive Fuuuuuuu (mental or out loud) literally reprogram yourself to immediately say "I love me!" or "Different now" or something else that's positive.
The silly goodness of the thing legit interrupts the pain of the memory.
Thoughts and feelings that fire together wire together, so you MUST to break the connection of old shit spiraling into bad mood, paralysis, etc in the moment.
This is daily housekeeping for mental health. No one has endless time to meditate or waste money on therapy
once you have a few of these solid habits, you feel strong enough to do the heavy murky freudian trauma unraveling that's more longterm and releases the tight gordian knots from childhood etc.
But daily tools DO work and are just as important.
in person therapy is a waste of time/money for most people unless you're so wealthy you can afford the wise old superstar in their field (most of the best have already dropped dead of old age).
less charitable: those who knock the easy/free/practical-yet-harmless-woo are kinda just protecting the value of their profession / special modality, consciously or unconsciously imo, like doctors who don't accept basic fasting thats been around a thousand years, eating keto/carn, or benefits of natural immunity... lol
I say don't be loyal to any 'experts', steal whatever works from their cheap books and youtube and other resources across modalities and put together a hodgepodge of stuff for yourself!
Research and libgen and then buy physical books and highlighters and a journal and especially a medium/large STUFFED ANIMAL with expressive eyes to mimic eye contact while to talk out loud to instead (like rubber ducking with trauma) and do it yourself. You can process feelings privately, keep a journal of progress and try one book/method at a time at your own pace.
Most normal people (esp men) can't cry in front of strangers, but can cry in private.
ONE session of therapy is $50 to $150, and only gives you one hour with barely ONE insight or emotional moment a session. Thats after many sessions of fighting defense mechanisms and intellectual tricks to maybe get to the real meat of what's painful.
The classics of the field are mostly books that cost $10-15 as paperbacks on amazon and each can provide MONTHS of insight /catharsis if you DO/work thru feelings that arise as u read each chapter instead of just reading it and throwing it aside for the next book.
People just race thru and don't APPLY anything, that's as useless as reading a programming book and not trying any of the code/psets. Slow it down, only one chapter a week, the same way in person therapy is only one hour a week, the insights/feelings that you chew on the other 6 days until the next session. Make a schedule and DIY.
Unplug your alexa and phone and u can say stuff out loud to your plushie that you cannot legit say to a therapist-- they are truly a stranger with LEGAL BUREAUCRACY and social programming makes them often unable to handle realities of anyone unlike themselves.
Therapists gossip and share stories at parties and know little about real privacy in the digital age where two random anecdotes can google-fu most clients.
The lame psych majors you met in college are the same people your insurance will cover a pathetic 10 sessions with. They get bored and tune out or jump to their fave diagnostic buckets when they can't untangle your issues and unconsciously need to make themselves feel more competent.
The money is bad so they compete for clients and aren't going to tell you hard truths that would HELP you when that risks being dropped, a bad review, bad word of mouth, or risk of legal/license headache.
You are just paying for a 'legitimized' comfort zone, rather than a strong helpful truly honest person to guide you out of your own misery-is-safe-and-familiar comfort zone.
Incentives are not on your side.
The types of people that become therapists are not emotionally hardy, mentally strong, stable, world-weary people with a strong sense of character.
If you knew any in real life as friends, you would never hire them.
Seriously consider what you disclose and reset your expectations.
more ranty side points----------
therapy is like the 80-20 garbage/quality ratio of all fields, especially the affordable ones most likely a mediocre broken person with their own baggage/desires/ego they'll project onto you.
Good luck being a hot girl, philosophically and politically anything but a very liberal humanist, having any personality type that isn't already a feely crier who understands your emotions, any one with working class common sense, any...
The costs / risks of trusting important matters to average middling people makes it not worth it.
It's not a horror show, it's just a waste...
The reputation of therapy came from the top/excellent practitioners in the field over several decades.... and now it's a cheapened wonder-bread experience and even app based, lmao
The hype needs extreme push back.
it is about what story you are telling yourself. Its not the affirmations that work or not work. If it works, its the narrative/story that 'I am doing affirmations everyday and these will make me a better person' . If it doesnt work 'I am doing affirmations but hey whats the point this is silly'.
The best I've found on the subject is Steven Pressfield's The War of Art https://blackirishbooks.com/product/the-war-of-art/
Recently, I was made to look from afar on what I've accomplished at $WORK and even my inner critic had to agree that it's been a real success story. Paradoxically, this really killed my drive for a while. "I don't have to prove myself, to the company or myself. Colleagues and management are glad to have me around." Ironically (and thankfully) this resting on my laurels of course brought the critic right back.
So while I do like feeling 100% confident in myself and my skills, a healthy (!) dose of self-doubt is also necessary for me to stay humble and keep pushing myself. And this is true outside of work just the same.
Naturally, this need not apply to anyone else. But as positive as "being happy with yourself/your work/your lifestyle" sounds, it also risks removing the gradient toward improving your behavior/skills/situation. Or, put another way (in the spirit of TSAONGAF): You will always have problems, but maybe wrestling with your inner critic is a good problem to have.
I think he has a point.
Maybe affirmations do not work, but some of the sentiment behind them could be powerful. "You have a sufficient plan to move forward, and you're a sufficient person to take those first steps".
If inner critic gives you real trouble, the best way, by far, is to start working on such problems with a licensed mental health specialist.
Second best way is to catch up on modern research in psychology and psychotherapy. (I'm generalising below with most important knowledge I have on the topic based on my replies to other comments.)
In modern therapy it is considered that at least some of the inner critic issues are responses to past traumatic events and emotional trauma. It tries to help you avoid doing something that hurt you in the past, like a legacy broken failsafe mechanism.
Possible root causes might include:
Sources referenced above are very useful in 'debugging' yourself, are widely known, and are written by psychologists.This knowledge is in part a modern (last decade) evolution of older Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ideas[5] from the 1980s. OP article describes typical CBT strategy. CBT, while being helpful to manage critic-related problems, rarely addresses any of the underlying root causes.
If you don't want to dig deep into root causes, I want to explicitly highlight [4] as it does a great way of summarising core CBT and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) ideas, and helps to address the critic issue directly via many actionable strategies.
0 - http://www.pete-walker.com/shrinkingInnerCritic.htm and similar research on CPTSD
1 - Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker https://www.amazon.com/Complex-PTSD-Surviving-RECOVERING-CHI...
2 - Running on Empty by Jonice Webb & Christine Musello https://www.amazon.com/Running-Empty-Overcome-Childhood-Emot...
3 - Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...
4 - Self-Esteem by Matthew McKay https://www.amazon.com/Self-Esteem-Cognitive-Techniques-Asse...
5 - Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
Consider the first sentence, a rhetorical question: "Have you ever doubted yourself?"—who is this you so promptly assumed. If giving advice meant to impact the entire present and future life of an agent, one should at least wrestle a bit with the plethora of concepts taken for granted, unless one is writing another Dictionary of Received Ideas [1]. In this aspect, you doubting you, perhaps the perspective from Jeff Hawkins' A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence is more luminating: of course you would doubt yourself because in actuality there is a you_1 who doubts you_2 and currently you_1 is overpowering you_2 in the vote of all the other yous. Maybe you don't have an inner critic, maybe you have 999 inner critics. In this light, a question such as "have you ever doubted yourself" would look more like "why is the current you still the dominant aspect, still winning the vote of all the other yous, of who/how you could be in the space of all the yous".
[1] "Metaphysics. Laugh it to scorn: proof of your superior intellect." https://archive.org/details/gustave-flaubert-dictionary-of-a...
I think this kind of stuff isn't really helpful. For one self-doubt may very well be correct given the circumstances. It's not really sound to attempt to drown that out or not be your own critic. Even more importantly it gets people tangled up even more in their own thoughts. It may be a trite insight at this point but you aren't your own thoughts. You can just listen to them without immediately being caught up in them.
If you can deliberate or act on things without being too caught up what your 'inner voice' is telling you at any given moment, that's a much more solid foundation than repeating weird chants to yourself.
[1]https://youtu.be/a8qbJraveSI
Instead, I recommend reading (or listening to) Kid Confidence by Eileen Kennedy-Moore. It's applicable to adults and to ones own self.
Here is a paraphrased excerpt:
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Address your fundamental needs for connection, competence, and choice. When these needs are met, you'll be less preoccupied with evaluating yourself and questioning your worth.
Connection: Build meaningful relationships with family and friends. This is how you'll feel known, accepted, and valued by others. Also, spending time with people you care about will give you more interesting things to think about than your own self-worth.
Competence: Gain real skills so you can do things that matter to you. To feel competent you have to have genuine competence. Learn how to learn, so you can grown your own competence and unblock yourself when you are stuck.
Choice: Figure out what matters to you so you can make decisions that are in line with your values. Embrace opportunities to make your own meaningful choices.
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Based on personal experience, I believe this is the right framework for real self-improvement. Your inner critic is there for a reason. Respect it and become a person it can be proud of. Affirmations and other popular self-help techniques are mostly bullshit. Also, it's interesting to note that if you inverse the above advice, you basically have the classical framework for running a cult.
Maybe I've been fortunate that growing up, I've had stoic figures in my life and through their beliefs/actions solved problems through grit and hard work.
I struggle to understand if people live their lives by looking themselves in a mirror and saying positive mantras and hoping that one day they will see themselves this way. I thought this was just the lore of movies.
If a voice (myself or a anyone else) said "I love and accept myself, exactly as I am/I love my well lived-in body" and would suspect it was trying to trick me somehow/pulling my leg and I would laugh and tell it/them to F-off.
I think my critical voice has gone from inwards to outwards. It doesn't say "You suck and you're an imposter", because it's been distracted by the so many examples of other people being so much more incompetent and lacking basic critical thinking skills, that even if I'm a complete screw up, I'm not that bad. e.g. lack of basic financial understanding, solving problems, tribal voting.
I think I've come to realize if I want to fix certain things about me, that I've chosen (at this point in time) not to do it and to move on, but that I can revisit and try and fix it in the future.