Forging a Healing Alliance with the Inner Critic: The protective purpose of trauma-related parts

The inner critic gets a bad rap. Yes, we know negative self-talk is harmful and intrusive self-judgments can result in lifelong guilt, self-loathing, hopelessness, and shame. But the inner critic is also a useful adaptation in a dangerous world. Self-rejection and self-criticism are a way children maintain their attachment to abusive attachment figures.

So how do we work effectively with it in therapy, acknowledging its original purpose while undoing its destructive power? In this workshop, you’ll learn to help clients cultivate mindful awareness of the inner critic so they can overcome its familiar, trauma-related thought patterns. You’ll discover powerful strategies for challenging it as a truth teller and understanding it as an anxious, protective, trauma-related part. You’ll learn to help clients:

• Reframe the inner critic as a childhood protector using practical strategies from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, IFS, and TIST
• Recognize the signs of trauma-related parts and their internal conflicts
• Lessen the inner critic’s intimidating power while viewing it as a fellow victim of an abusive environment
• Transform a client’s relationship to their inner critic

Outline

 Adaptation to unsafe childhood environments

• Importance of childhood compliance and submission
• Shame as an adaptive response
• Self-blame facilitates submission and increases safety

Putting words to traumatic experience

• How cognitive schemas affect perception of self and other
• Believing negative thoughts increases safety at the cost of self-esteem
• Inner criticism’s effects on behavior and relationships

Challenging the inner critic

• Relating to the inner critic as a protector part
• Dis-identifying with self-blaming schemas
• Appreciating how it aided in survival

From compassion for the inner critic to self-compassion

• Noticing what worries the inner critic as a reflection of the traumatic past
• Befriending the inner critic as a young part
• Healing the inner critic with warmth and compassion
• Risks and limitations of this approach

Learning Objectives

•  Describe the adaptive value of self-criticism and self-shame (Terizzi & Shook, 2020)
• Identify behavioral effects of internal critical voices or thoughts (Volpato et al, 2022)
• Implement mindfulness-based interventions for noticing critical thoughts (Goldberg et al, 2022)
• Employ parts interventions for helping clients develop increased self-compassion (Neff, 2022; Lanius et al, 2020)