How to recognize and overcome your Inner Critic and other elements of creative Resistance.
We recently wrote about Resistance, an insidious thing that prevents us from doing our creative Work, achieving our artistic goals, and realizing our full potential. On its own, Resistance is nebulous and ever-changing — just when we think we've got it figured out, it changes. To work with it, rather than play infinite whack-a-mole, we need to bring it out of the shadows and understand how it shows up uniquely for us. So what is that thing, exactly, and what can we do about it?
Depending on the individual, Resistance may be more accurately defined as some version or combination of several phenomena:
The Many Masks of Resistance
Inner Critic
The big one. The Inner Critic is often the mouthpiece of Resistance, an internal voice that senselessly demeans an individual and their work. Counterintuitively, the more important an endeavor is to us, the louder the Inner Critic’s voice becomes. If you’ve experienced self-doubt or negative self-talk while creating your art, trying to finish a project, or debating whether to put it out into the world, you’ve come into contact with the Inner Critic.
The Inner Critic can sound like a critical caregiver in tone, but not in content. Carl Jung observed that this voice is common in most well-adjusted adults, but described it as “notoriously irritating and refractory.” It tries to help us, but in a distorted or maladaptive way, reinforcing feelings of shame, guilt, and inadequacy.
We tolerate narratives from our Inner Critic that would seem absurd coming from an external party. As psychoanalyst Adam Philips explains:
“Were we to meet this figure socially, this accusatory character, this internal critic, this unrelenting fault-finder, we would think there was something wrong with him. He would just be boring and cruel. We might think that something terrible had happened to him, that he was living in the aftermath, in the fallout, of some catastrophe.”
The inner critic is at work when your internal dialogue is abundant with phrases like shouldn’t, couldn’t, can’t, won’t, always, never, or need to. Many visualize their inner critic as a sort of gremlin, demon, or some mutated version of a real person in their own life.
Inner Censor
You might imagine the Inner Censor either as a unique voice, or one stream of your Inner Critic’s dialogue. This Inner Censor is your internal editor gone awry, a great, oppressive filter that stifles our authentic voice.
While editing is critical to almost any creative endeavor, censorship is the antithesis of creativity. Editing involves reviewing work for the purposes of improving quality and coherence. Censoring, on the other hand, involves suppressing or prohibiting certain elements of our work because they could be, in some way, unacceptable.
Could is the operative word here. The Inner Censor catastrophizes, overemphasizing undesired outcomes no matter how miniscule their probability.
The Inner Censor stifles our ideas and self-expression out of fear — fear of judgment, failure, disrupting the status quo, revealing our truest self. While this might ostensibly keep us safe, it holds us back from expressing our full creative potential and doing truly great work.
Inner Judge
Like the Inner Critic, the Inner Judge is a self-evaluating voice. In some cases, the Inner Judge is constructive, helping us make sound decisions or learning from missteps. But more often than not, the Inner Judge is a little too judgmental for our own good. The more passionate we are about our artistic medium, the more judgmental we tend to be of our own work. In truth, however, this is likely because we have some inherent good taste as it relates to our creative medium of choice - the same good taste that compelled us to give it a try for ourselves in the first place.
Internal Saboteur
The Internal Saboteur is Resistance in action. It’s a part of our psyche that actively keeps us from our work, frustrates us every step of the way, and impedes our potential. The Internal Saboteur is especially treacherous because it’s largely unconscious, and thus hard to spot, and uses underhanded, inconspicuous means that are uniquely tailored to our vulnerabilities and tendencies. This includes activities that seem helpful on the surface - like going down research rabbit holes at the expense of actually writing, or focusing too much on finding the perfect gear - to outright procrastination or talking ourselves out of executing a great idea.
Self-Limiting Beliefs
Self-Limiting Beliefs fuel Resistance and our critical inner voices. These restrictive, obstructing internal scripts - for example, the notion that we are not good enough, not skilled or capable enough, undeserving of recognition or success, doomed to failure, that the world conspires against us - are often ingrained in us early in our lives.
But our psyche also harbors Self-Actualizing and Self-Affirming Beliefs — positive, empowering convictions that spur us on, push us in the right direction, and keep us going. Like yin and yang, these voices must be appropriately balanced, but far too often the volume knobs are dialed up to the wrong levels.
What to Do About Resistance
Now that we’ve defined what Resistance is in more detail, we can begin to explore how it uniquely shows up for us, and decide what to do about it.
Unmasking Resistance
The first step is to unmask your unique version of Resistance and the Inner Critic, to cast a spotlight on it and its underhanded ways. Make it a character. Give it a name.
Virginia Woolf imagined Resistance as a committee of invisible voices, including “The Spirit of the Age,” a regulatory and censoring ideological force, and “The Angel in the House,” a decidedly Victorian female voice insistent on being meek and placating. I think of it like a nagging little demon perched upon one shoulder, whispering sweet discouragement when my stamina wanes. An instructor of mine said she named her Inner Critic "Gertrude." I know of others who imagine it as a treacherous little goblin, gremlin, or troll.
Be mindful of when Resistance and your Inner Critic appear. What are those situations, times, people, or triggers? This helps you prepare for their onset and implement strategies to deal with them.
💭Reflection Questions:
What does your Inner Critic look and sound like? What is its name? What triggers or situations amplify its voice? Extra credit question: What is it trying to protect you from?
Resist or Enlist?
Many subscribe to the belief that Resistance, in all its masks, is an enemy to be ignored, dismissed, challenged, or banished. Some insist on resisting Resistance, to “feel the fear and do it anyway,” noticing your Inner Critic or Inner Judge at work but moving forward anyway. Others insist that it can be silenced or “banished.”
Stephen Pressfield advises us to “overcome” or “beat” Resistance by “Turning Pro:” adopt the mindset that you are a professional in your craft and behave accordingly, for example by showing up consistently to do your Work, developing disciplined habits and working routines, and committing to persevering through challenges and Resistance’s opposition.
Fighting Resistance can also be as simple as identifying it, and consciously choosing to turn down the volume dial — it isn’t gone, but it shrinks from an all-consuming torrent of criticism to a distant murmur of doubt.
Battling Resistance is the most straightforward approach, and every creative person is wise to have a few arrows in their quiver. It requires a certain amount of psychological discipline, which is a prerequisite for doing great work. As they say, if it was easy, everybody would do it.
Other schools of thought recommend reversing this approach: treating Resistance as a potential ally to be recruited to your side. Accept that Resistance and the Inner Critic live within you, that there is nothing inherently wrong or unusual about them, and that they will not disappear. Recognize them as entities attempting to help or protect you and make the decision to change how you engage with and react to them. Evaluate their sentiments objectively, and make a conscious choice to reframe these narratives, to mine them for any inherent value, or to validate the core concern or worry. For example, when your Inner Censor forces you to imagine some worst case scenario, try to imagine an equally unlikely best case scenario. This CBT-based approach is called Cognitive Restructuring, and causes your mind to settle on a happy medium between the best and worst case scenarios, and move forward unencumbered.
📝 Journaling Prompt:
I was once tasked with writing a letter to my Inner Critic, and while I was initially skeptical, it turned out to be a powerful and cathartic exercise. I invite you to do the same — write a brief letter to your inner critic letting them know you’d like to redesign your relationship. Acknowledge them. Recall when they first emerged in your consciousness. Name or describe them. Explain how they have been impacting you. Define the relationship you would like to have with them going forward.
A Third Strategy
While you work with Resistance and your Inner Critic directly, don’t forget that you also have positive, constructive internal voices you can enlist for help and encouragement. Whatever you might call these - Self-Affirming or Self-Actualizing Beliefs, your Inner Guide, Coach, Hero, or Cheerleader - far too often, especially for creatives and artists, these voices are quiet or conspicuously absent.
Just like we are wise to get acquainted with our Inner Critic and our own unique brand of Resistance, we should work to bring these positive voices into the spotlight. Make a conscious decision to bring them to life, to ask what they think, to dial up their volume knob as needed.
💭 Reflection Questions:
What does your Inner Guide look and sound like?
What is its name?
What is it trying to move you toward?
Imagine a volume dial from 1-10. How loud is its voice when you're engaged in creative work?
Do the same for your Inner Critic. How loud is their voice?
The Creative Journey
Your best approach largely depends on how Resistance and the Inner Critic show up uniquely for you, their nature and intensity within you. When they are milder, they can more easily be dismissed, challenged, or overcome. If they are particularly stubborn or intense, it may be more beneficial to enlist them, to attune to and valorize their worries and concerns.
In both cases, it is critical to channel your positive internal voices and helpers. Contrary to popular belief, this will not weaken you or blunt your “edge.” Being a tortured artist is not necessary to produce great work. It only inhibits your creative potential.
Whatever you choose to do, don’t expect an easy or overnight resolution. This struggle is a well-recognized part of the artist’s journey. Show yourself patience and grace, lean on your Inner Guide and Self-Affirming Beliefs, and remember that when Resistance and the Inner Critic show up in your creative endeavors, it is a sign that you are on the right path.
P.S. — Want to learn more about the creative journey? Interested in tools and practices to improve your artistic work, create more consistently, and accelerate the progress of your creative endeavors? Enter your email below to subscribe to the Call the Muse Newsletter: