Psychologist Reveals How To Stop Criticising Yourself - Dr Julie Smith

Duration: 11:03 2028 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Dr Julie Smith addresses the prevalence of a harsh critical inner voice, noting that many individuals cling to this tendency because they mistakenly believe it serves as their primary source of drive and motivation for achievement. She explains that people often defend these self-critical thoughts even when they are causing damage or holding them back, failing to recognize that psychologically hammering themselves into the ground is counterproductive. To illustrate a healthier alternative, Smith draws an analogy between personal growth and elite sports; just as no high-level athlete would choose their own abusive parent or former bully as a coach, individuals should not allow such voices to guide their internal monologue. Instead, people need someone—or something—that delivers honest feedback with respect and genuinely wants them to succeed at their best. Smith shares her personal journey of realizing that while she once believed castigating herself encouraged performance, this approach was ultimately unhelpful despite potentially driving impressive outward results. She observes that many high performers are not motivated by a balanced desire for self-actualization but rather by a need for external validation or a fear-based drive to prove others wrong. This dynamic often leads individuals down the path of running away from something they fear rather than moving toward what they truly want, creating lives that may look successful externally but come at a significant internal cost. Smith highlights her own experience with CrossFit and extreme physical stress, where critical voices would emerge during intense workouts like riding an assault bike until heart rates reached 170 beats per minute, only to fade over time as she worked on deprogramming these habits. A crucial distinction in overcoming self-criticism is understanding the difference between a necessary hard voice for motivation and one rooted in contempt or shame. Smith recounts needing a powerful internal statement like "we are being strong here" during her health struggles last summer, emphasizing that while firmness was required to push through challenges, it must be devoid of digging at oneself with disdain. She warns against the false binary where people believe self-compassion is merely airy-fairy indulgence or that one can only rely on shame and fear as fuel for success. While these negative emotions might provide initial momentum in extreme situations like addiction recovery, relying solely on them creates a dependency that eventually leads to avoidance behaviors and escape methods rather than sustainable progress. The path forward involves recognizing the spectrum of internal tones available and making conscious choices about how one speaks to themselves based on their current needs without falling into rigid modes of operation. Smith uses the metaphor of a man with only one hammer, noting that if someone believes they can never be gentle or supportive because shame has worked in the past, they limit their own potential for growth. True self-improvement requires honesty about whether actions align with personal values while maintaining respect and avoiding recoil into shame when falling short. Ultimately, Smith concludes that even if a critical voice helped initiate change, it is essential to seek other resources and tools to sustain long-term success, ensuring that the internal dialogue supports rather than sabotages one's ability to achieve their best self without sacrificing enjoyment or well-being.

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what's your advice to people that have got a critical inner voice do you know what in in my years of uh sort of doing therapy with people I've come across so many people who are highly self-critical painfully so and yet hold on to it for dear life because they think that that's their source of drive and motivation and productivity and uh achievement and so they'll defend it like it's doing something for them um and until they learn that actually it's probably doing damage or it's holding them back and um because often they they'll they'll come with a some other problem and won't necessarily recognize that it's being perpetuated by that that tendency to um not only be self-critical but just you know psychologically hammering yourself into the ground when things go wrong or when you're not perfect and that sort of thing um but I always like talking to people about the idea of okay we all want to do well in life right we want to you know be at our best and but if you take that idea and you take I don't know Elite athletes there is no Elite athlete out there that um chooses not to have a coach or support around them to do their best right they recognize that that's helpful but they also don't choose their high school bully to come and Coach them and and come along to them with come along to competitions with them or uh they'll choose someone that they trust someone that is honest with them but delivers that Honesty with respect and someone who genuinely wants them to be at their best and Achieve and so if you take that idea of a sports coach and everything that they have to embody to be decent at that job to get the most out of someone why wouldn't you want to also do that for yourself in your own head um you know the the differences um between you know that kind of high school bully sound or you know the um you know abusive parent or whoever that voice is in your mind that is never going to get um the kind of outcome that you would get from you know a really good coach or someone who genuinely wants the best for you it's a great realization it's a really lovely realization you know I would certainly uh put myself into the category of person who believed that is castigating in a voice was uh encouraging his performance for a long time kind of got myself to at least now realizing it's probably not helping it's certainly not making me better but then it there's an even more sort of difficult question which is okay it's not even useful dot dot dot and it's still there like right okay so it's no longer performing the function that I thought it was but you've got this you know lifetime of habit of that just being the default that you you go to remember I used to do this thing when uh again CrossFit world uh it's interesting that I use CrossFit a lot of the time when I'm talking about kind of like the induction to personal growth because they those both those things happened at the same time okay um so I kind of anchor a lot of the things that I was doing then to the training modality that I did uh and if I was doing a workout on an assault bike my heart rate was really really high it's 170 or whatever I've got the taste of metal in the back of my throat uh I'm aare 170 is not that high for some people but it was high for me uh working away the assault bag and these sort of during that extreme stress like acute stress uh this sort of weird texture would appear this sort of landscape or whatever in my mind and it was always critical voices it was always and I have had it a couple of other times when I'm under periods of extreme stress the uh less gracious parts of my in a monologue come up uh and yeah yeah I wonder it certainly got infinitely better but there's still work to be done did it help you at the time to perform yeah I think so I mean look in my experience most high performers are not driven by a perfectly balanced desire to enact their logos and actualize themselves they are looking for validation from the world they are looking for Acceptance in a way that they never got it as a child they're looking to prove the chip on their shoulder or the bully's wrong or whatever it might be a lot of people are driven by running away from something they fear not running towards something that they want and uh it allows people to create very very impressive lives but in the only way that everybody else can judge it which is outwardly yeah and you know I know that this is one of your uh pet uh obsessions too which is the price that successful people pay to be the person that you admire it's probably been the most interesting question that that I've considered over the last few years and and you speak to a lot of people that are very successful and you look at the price that they pay and you go I didn't know if this is worth it like you have this Cathedral of of accolades and success reputation and and other people admiring you and so on but look at what you've had to do to get there and again there are no Solutions only Trad offs um I'm I'm currently sort of really really trying to work about what would this be like if it was more fun what would this be like if I sacrificed maybe even you know 2% or 5% of the gripping and the cloying and the sort of like control in the real world to maybe unlock 50% more enjoyment internally uh and I don't even know if that's a trade that needs to be made it might be a sort of a false equivalent or whatever but uh I've made it I've made a ton of progress so for the the people who've got um an endemic uh critical in a voice I think uh certainly there is at least a little bit that can be done to deprogram that how much whether you can get to the stage where it's you know the the perfect high school coach that you never had uh I'm not sure but uh yeah I'm moving in the right direction yeah and I think um a lot of people get the impression that if you're not sort of verbally hammering yourself the alternative is some kind of Airy fairy um you know you're lovely as you are and that kind of thing that you just you can't believe in and just feels I and and there is a lot in between isn't there so you know when I talked about the kind of fear chapter and and that sort of inner voice that I needed when I was going through all my health stuff in the summer um I needed a hard hard voice uh we are we are not victims here we are being strong here we are doing this and and and it was very um sort of powerful it needed to be a powerful approach and needed that I think what wasn't there was the contempt was the you know digging at yourself so I think um what stops a lot of people from trying to kind of challenge how they speak to themselves is that they think the air Fairy stuff is um the only self-indulgence is the only alternative and it's not not you know actually self-compassion has to be honest all the time and if you're not um living in line with your own values or you're not making yourself proud you have to be honest with yourself about that but in a way that's also respectful um and that doesn't make you recoil in shame and then unable to learn from it so there's this kind of whole spectrum and variability and choice about what that tone is like I think as well it's very much a horses for courses thing that maybe at the beginning of your journey if look if you are 450 you kind of getting towards the stage where you just need to use whatever you can and if shame is the most Salient uh sort of tool that can get you from there down to a more healthy body weight or you know pick whatever it is if you're on the verge of a drug addiction or whatever like you just get whatever fuel you can grab a hold of most easily but after a while you have to think right okay I've got myself into some degree of momentum here is the tool that got me here the one that's going to get me there and is this really like have I worked this hard to achieve all of these things to still call myself a piece of if I fall short it's like really that's what you're doing that's the that's the fuel that you're relying on like a a guy with a hammer you go okay there's only one use that I have for this I only have one mode of in a monologue I'm never going to be gentle with myself I'm never going going to be caring I'm never going to be reassuring I'm never going to be supportive it's like no no no no I'm just going to whip myself into submission and it's always that's that's it and and those sorts of responses are often going to increase the urges to escape and avoid which aren't going to lead to success anyway so you know even if um you feel like shame or fear or something like that has worked to get you set on a better path um it's not sustainable because it's more likely to lead to uh the need to use those Escape methods and um later on so yes it's recognizing that even if it's been useful it's really helpful to find other resources as well in other news this episode is brought to you by element for the last 3 years I've started every morning 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