December 3, 2022 • 22 mins
OUTWEIGH: Self-Love Coach, Aubree Henderson is our expert today! She talks with Amy about befriending your inner critic...recognizing and more deeply understanding your inner critic voice, where it comes from, and how to engage with it more compassionately.
About Aubree:
Aubree Henderson is a self-love coach, author, and pleasure activist. Aubree works with clients and students to increase their self-confidence, improve their relationships, and love themselves more deeply. Her coaching specialties include boundaries, body image, relationships, sexuality, and self-confidence. Aubree holds a Masters Degree in Counseling & Human Development, is a Certified Professional Life Coach, and is currently pursuing certification in Sex, Love, & Relationship Coaching with the VITA Institute. She is the author of Breaking Up With People-Pleasing. You can learn more about Aubree and her work on social (@ahhhhbree on all platforms) or at aubreehenderson.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body outly outway everything that I'm
made do, won't spend my life trying to change. I'm
learning to love who I am again. I'm strong, I
feel free and know who every part of me it
is beautiful and then will always out way if you
(00:24):
feel it with joy in the here, she'll love to
the boom there. Let's say good day and did you
and die out? Happy Saturday. Outweigh fam amy here and
my guest today is Aubrey Henderson, who is a self
love coach and author and pleasure activist. So, Aubrey, welcome
(00:46):
to Outweigh. Thank you for having me. We're gonna talk
today about befriending your inner critic, and this is something
that well, I feel like we all could benefit from,
whether you're exploring whether or not you have needing disorder
or disordered patterns with food or body image issues Like
I can think of ways, certainly when I was in
(01:08):
the throes of my eating disorder that my inner critic
was very, very very loud. But it shows up in
other ways too, even when I'm at work, like oh
so stupid, why did I just do that? Or why
can't you know? So it doesn't. It's not just specific
to outweigh. So I really feel like whatever you do
share today, people may be able to take these tools
and just plug them into different areas of their life
(01:30):
where they need to be more compassionate and kind. Yeah. Absolutely,
I feel like this is something that people experience their
inner critic in so many different environments. Like you said,
it comes out anywhere, really that we feel vulnerable or
insecure in any way, that inner critic is going to
jump in there. So do you ever work with people
that don't even really recognize that the inner critic is
(01:52):
actually a problem Because I could see where so much
of my life it was always there for me, so
it's like my little companion. So I actually didn't see
it as a problem. Absolutely, And it's funny. This is
this kind of ties into how I found myself working
as a self love coach and focusing in this area specifically.
Is because when I started as a coach, I actually
(02:14):
was working with people around like organization and goal setting
in their lives, like very much not focused in on
the like inner world of emotion at all. It was
just very much like, let me help you to organize
your life in ways that feel good and take steps
towards your goals and accountability, And through that, I was
seeing that the common theme really with everybody was there
(02:34):
is this inner voice underneath that when we're trying to
pursue something that's important to us, when we are feeling
kind of vulnerable and putting ourselves out there in any way,
which comes up when we're pursuing goals, It comes up
when we're trying to get organized and trying to move
forward on things that people were like, why am I
struggling so much? Why is this so hard? And often
it is that inner critic voice that's creeping in there,
(02:56):
that is where that negative self talk is coming from.
And I think for so many people, we've lived with
it for so long, and I would include myself and
that somebody who considers myself a recovering perfectionist. Just in
so many ways, that inner critic was just always there,
and so to notice it and sort of pay attention
to it and draw it out can really be mind
(03:16):
blowing for people, because we get so used to it
being there that the idea that it could be another
way is just kind of foreign to us. Unpacking stuff
like this is longer than what we have here in
the episode today, but we'll kind of get the cliffs
notes version of what you like to encourage people to
do to start recognizing that voice and then flipping the script. Absolutely,
(03:38):
and I think really a lot of it is exactly
what you just said. It's recognizing first that that inner
critic is there. And so if you're somebody who struggles
with a low sense of self esteem or low self
worth in any way, or struggles with loving yourself, and
that's where a lot of people come to me and
they're just like, I have issues with my self esteem.
I don't feel great about myself. It's first really tuning
(03:59):
in to what are those thoughts that you're having about yourself? Right?
What is that? And some people it's like, I know
what my inner critics sounds like, I know what she's
saying to me. Here are the thoughts that I'm having.
And for some people, they really have to pause and
sit and be still and listen and tune into what
that inner critic is saying, what the thoughts are. And
I actually encourage people when they're first getting acclimated to
(04:21):
this to write those thoughts down. They're not usually nice
thoughts that we're writing down, But there's something powerful in
channeling it onto paper and looking at the words that
you are saying to yourself. It's like having a tape
playing in the background, and until we pause and really
listen to and look at what it's saying, it's just
we're kind of accepting that it's there, but instead translating
(04:42):
that onto paper and writing out, well, what are these
thoughts that I'm having? What is this inner critics saying
and actually writing it out and looking at it can
just be a powerful exercise to kind of get you
started at realizing, oh wow, this is what I'm saying
to myself on a continuous basis. It can kind of
be a little bit shocking to see. But from there
that is where we can actually script something different. And so,
(05:04):
for example, if you're inner critic is saying like, I'm
such a failure, right, for example, I'm I'm a failure,
then then that can come up when you make a
mistake at work. That can come up if you're a
person who's in recovery and has a relapse or has
an experience that you're not feeling good about, and there
can be that inner voice of I'm a failure. Then
if we know that's the thought we're having. We say, okay,
there's that inner critic again. How can we reframe this?
(05:26):
It's literally rewriting that thought, so coming up with what
is the alternative to that thought. I could look at
this as Okay, I'm a failure. Or I could say,
you know what, I'm trying and I'm going to make
mistakes and that's normal. Or I have compassion for myself
when I make mistakes. Right, there is that shift so
that every time you're having that thought and you recognize it,
you have something to grab onto to replace it with,
(05:47):
to say, oh, nope, I'm having the thought that I'm
a failure, but actually I know that I can have
compassion for myself when I make mistakes. So it's actually
about literally rescripting that and replacing that thought as you're
having it. My friend Ali Fallon actually wrote a book
called The Power of Writing It Down, and she she believes,
you know, everybody has a story, and there's so much
(06:08):
power in putting a pin to paper, and so I
love that activity so much because yes, you're taking it
from your brain to the paper and then your eyeballs
are forced to look at it, and then you have
the next step in this. You know, I'm calling it activity,
But this tool or this um what you can do
to help get yourself out of this of rewriting it.
(06:30):
I feel like though sometimes people might get, you know,
stuck on well, I don't know really what to write.
I know you give one example there for that, But
what do you do if you don't When you've been
stuck with the script for so long in your head
and that's what's looped, it might be really, really really
hard to come up with your new script. Yes, absolutely,
that's a great question. And I think we can look
(06:52):
at two different ways. Right. One of these is for me,
if if you're ever having trouble coming up with a
self compassionate thought, look to the people close to you
who are encouraging to you. And most of us have
at least someone in our lives who has offered us encouragement,
who has said kind words to us. And if we
can't generate the words, think about, well, what would this
person who loves me say to this thought or what
(07:12):
would they offer to me? Right, And you can pull
kind of language from there if you're struggling to kind
of come up with that yourself. But what this makes
me think of is another piece of how we think
about our inner critic, which is that I think so
many of us think about this inner critic voice and
we're like, I just want to turn the volume off
on this. I just want to mute it. I want
to get rid of it. I don't want to have
(07:32):
this part of me because it's bad, it feels bad.
And when I work with clients, I actually really like
to help them to build compassion for what that inner
critic part is trying to do. And so the way
I do that is really looking at, Okay, what is
the thought, what is the fear that's coming up? So
the idea of, you know, if we're using the example
of I'm such a failure, thinking about what that part
(07:55):
of you that is saying, you know, you're a failure,
there's something wrong with you. What is part trying to
do right? And it's doing it in a backwards way,
but it's trying to protect you from something. It's trying
to stop you from putting yourself out there again. It's
trying to stop you from taking a risk. It's trying
to avoid any scenario where you could be disappointed or
(08:16):
sad or hurt or upset. Right, So this is a
part of yourself that, again in a way that is
now harmful and no longer adaptive, is trying to protect you.
And often this is something that in our lives before
has protected us, right, we have for many of us,
I consider myself to be somebody who was an overachiever
growing up in a lot of different ways, and so
for me, being successful was the way that I got
(08:39):
love and the way that I got affection and attention,
and so it was very adaptive for me to have
that inner critic that's like, you're not good enough, it's
never good enough, keeping better, keep doing this, keep doing that,
because it's that part of us that wants us to
access love and attention and affection and safety. And then
in adulthood we find ourselves saying this feels crappy, like
(08:59):
this feels off full, and it's no longer helping me.
So we have to shift how we look at that
narrative and how we relate to that part of ourselves.
And so we can look at that part and say, listen,
thank you, I see that you tried to help me here.
You're trying to warn me about a risk that I'm
going to take. You're worried about what if we make
ourselves vulnerable and we're rejected. I see that, and also
(09:23):
like that commentary isn't helpful. I think of an inner
critic like a kid, right, I'm a parent. My kids
often say things that are not helpful. Right. They offer opinions,
they offer thoughts, they say I don't want to do
this thing. They say this sucks and I'm mad at you, right,
And I can hear them, and I'm not going to
say I'm banishing you away. I'm not going to say
get out of here. I'm not gonna say I want
(09:44):
to get rid of you. I'm gonna say, Okay, thank you,
thank you for offering that. But I'm driving the bus now,
I'm the grown up, and so we're gonna go my way,
and so I hear what you're saying and we're just
going to leave that there. Right. It's having a more
neutral to almost even compassionate or orientation toward that inner
critic voice and saying, Okay, see where this is coming from.
(10:04):
I can see sort of the threads of how this
has developed over the course of my life. But now
I'm going to choose something different. I love painting that
picture of you know, you taking over the driver's seats,
but still welcoming all the thoughts and the things to
sit in the car with you. I guess if you will,
but they're just not going to drive. It's actually fascinating
(10:27):
sometimes how our brain tries to just protect us in
all kinds of ways, which I feel like when I
was deep into my eating disorder, or if you have
another type of addiction, or I've you know, walked through
alcoholism with loved ones. It's wild because it's so destructive,
yet it's also brilliant because it's what's you're doing to
(10:47):
survive and trying to protect you from something, whether it's
feelings like it's numbing out that was the your brains
or your body's solution to a problem. But then at
some point you realize, Okay, this is no longer serving
me and I need to to switch this up. And
so that's what we have the opportunity to do with
the inner critic. I feel like the inner critic do
(11:15):
we learn it from somewhere or is it how does
it just come up? Because I feel like other behaviors
we see play out, we maybe watch others, but this
is stuff inside of our head. And a lot of
us started hearing these voices or this voice or this
inner critic when we were quite young. So I guess
it's just our in our brains, is like some of
us are wired as a way to just protect us. Yeah,
(11:35):
And it's it's one of those things that's a little
bit different for everybody. It's a combination of things. So
when we when you talk to like an individual person
about their inner critic, you might, you know, all often
ask clients like, what does the voice sound like that
you're hearing? Right? For some people it's like, oh, it's
my voice. For some people it's oh, it's my mom's voice,
it's my dad's voice. Right, So for all of us
(11:56):
it develops a little bit differently. But it's the part
of us that says, hey that this is what you
need to do to earn love, This is what you
need to do to earn And that's really I mean,
I think that's what it all boils down to. All
of it really is how we how we grew up
and learned to earn love and to feel worthy of love.
And so when that inner critic voice is coming up,
(12:16):
sometimes it's just ideas that we've internalized about ourselves, whether
it's from caregivers, whether it's you know, looking around and
you know, developing ideas about body image that come from media,
that come from our family culture, that come from all
kinds of things. It's influenced by just the kind of
cultural marinade that we sort of exist in, right, And
(12:37):
so for everybody, you know, it's a little different. It
might be more of an influence of your parents or
your caregivers if they were particularly critical or pushed you
really hard, or had phrases that you know, they said
often that really burrowed in for you. For some people
it's peers. For some people it's more things they see
in media. It just it. But it all kind of
(12:58):
plays a role into basically this part of you that develops,
like I said, as a as an adaptive coping mechanism.
It's this part of you that's saying, like, hey, to
be safe, we need to remember this. And the way
that we get to that quickly is not to you know,
have that whole sentence of for you to feel safe
and loved, this is what you should try to do.
(13:18):
It's like you're a failure. Don't be a failure. Or
you know your body is wrong, don't have your body
be this way whatever that looks like, right, And so yeah,
I think it comes from a lot of different factors,
but often it stems from childhood, right. It a lot
of times when I work with clients, we can trace
it back to a pretty specific time in childhood where
(13:39):
it's like, okay, here is where I learned that I
got attention from my parents if I was getting aiss
in school, and so achieving academically became the thing that
I worked toward. And if I wasn't doing that, that
inner critic voice comes up to kind of push me
to be doing that right. And that can be true
for a million different things. My sister has been working
(14:00):
through and she's spoken publicly about it, so it's not
like I'm talking about her. But you mentioned perfectionism earlier,
and she has been able to stem that back to
when she was thirteen and our dad left and she thought, well,
as long as I seem as though everything is perfect
and I have everything tidy and in its place and
I'm put together, he'll want to come back. And she's
(14:22):
seen how that now in her you know, mid forties,
has played out. Her entire life and shown up in
different ways, and now she's ready to shed that and
no longer wants to try to be appear perfect all
the time because it's exhausting. So it really can show
up in all kinds of ways. And you know, I
(14:43):
think about me being a mom and having a twelve
year old and a fifteen year old, fifteen year old girl,
twelve year old son, and I think that the writing
activity you shared might be something good I could do
with them, and maybe we could even do together. I
and said something the other day about when he looks
(15:03):
in the mirror, he feels ugly, and he brought it
up at school with his teacher, and his teacher reached
out to me, and then we were working on it.
And so I'm thinking about how I wonder what would
be something good that I could do with him, because
I know we have a lot of parents that are
listening to so you know, it's one thing dealing with
thoughts in our own brain, right, but when you're a
(15:24):
mom or a dad and you've got kids that are
saying negative things about themselves, because there's something that's powerful
for parents to do with their kids. I love this question,
and I um I have an eleven year old son
and we have I have eleven year old son, eight
year old daughter, and we you know, talk about a
lot of these things with them as well, and I
think that bringing it into writing for kids can be
(15:46):
really powerful. I also think for kids drawing out them
talking about it. I think hearing a thought like that
of like your child expressing that they feel ugly, A
lot of parents are scared by that and are like, no, no,
you're not ugly, and we leave it at that, and
we don't want to talk about it. It feels scary
to draw it out. And I think the best thing
you can do with kids is really create space to say,
(16:09):
I want to talk about this with you, like I'm here.
You can tell me it's okay, to name that, we
can unpack that, we can explore where that comes from.
But to just be in a space where their feelings
are okay, to be something that's expressed right, that you
are not afraid of their feelings and their emotions and
them expressing that to you and just recognizing that that, yeah,
(16:33):
like kids are going to have moments of insecurity. I
mean that the age that your son is right now
is one where like we start comparing ourselves to pears
in a big way. There's all kinds of factors at
play there, and so I think having a space where
you can process that and where you're encouraging them to
open up and share that with you and to make
that a conversation rather than I think often we have
(16:54):
these thoughts and we say them. And I think for myself,
you know, as a child, naming thoughts of feeling like
I have to be perfect, and my mom would of
course say like, no, you don't, you don't have to
be perfect, like it's fine, But that doesn't make the
thought go away. That's not drawing out the experience, that's
not helping me understand where might that be coming from.
And so I think the best thing you can do
as a parent is really just to hold space for it,
(17:16):
to say thank you so much for being willing to
talk to me about this, or to say, hey, your
teacher shared this with me, and I really want to
understand more, right, I really want to hear more from
you about this and what you're feeling because it matters
to me. I love that and the good thing about
us or you encouraging us as parents to do that
(17:36):
now with our children is it's like, oh, my parents
didn't do that for me, because I don't think they
knew they didn't have that they like you said, they
were just kind of like, oh no, you know I
A narrative for me when I was a kid is
that I wasn't smart, and that's stuck with me even now.
I still struggle with. Like I said, an example is
that would be at work and be like, oh, you're
so stupid, and I'm feeding into it. I'm like, oh, yeah,
(17:58):
my teacher in high school was right, I'm not smart,
and I think my parents are just like no, no,
you're smart. But then there was no real work with it.
And if you're hearing this now and a light bulb
is going off, like yeah, we have the opportunity to
not only work on our own inner critic voice, but
we can start giving our kids the tools so that
they're not I'm forty one now and trying to you know,
(18:21):
actively work on this stuff. Like maybe they'll have the
tools to work on it in these early years to
where they can have a healthy relationship with their their
inner critic. And I love the way you have said it.
Befriending your inner critic and not pushing it away, but saying, Okay,
I'm acknowledging you're you, you're here, but you're not going
(18:42):
to control me, and you're not going to be in
the driver's seat. Absolutely, And I think it's the like
you don't you don't scare me kind of part of that, right,
And even maybe initially it does scare you, and that's
also okay, But getting to the place where you're saying,
I see that you're here, and I'm just going to
be present with you the same way you would be
with your child, right, And I think I love that
you use that example of doing this with kids because
(19:03):
I also encourage people to really have that same compassion
for themselves. Right to look at your inner critic the
same way you look at your child's inner critic, with
curiosity and with openness. Right, instead of saying, oh, these
are bad thoughts, I want them to go away. I
don't like that this is here. Let's shoot it to
the side where it festers and grows too. Instead say okay,
let's bring this into the light. Let's look at what
(19:24):
we're working with here, and that way we can build
a sense of of compassion for ourselves and then we
also model that if there are kids in our lives too,
and curiosity is so key. I'm glad you've said that
word because that's been a huge part of my healing journey,
is being curious about all the things that are coming up.
And you mentioned to even having kids draw things out,
(19:48):
But I think there's there could be some power in
that as as adults, to tapping into our younger selves
and maybe doing an activity that seems like, oh, that's
for kids, but it probably would be very therapeutic to
process some of your inner critic in a childlike way. Yeah,
because that voice is often coming from a childlike part
(20:08):
was infused during childhood. So often the way we can
heal this stuff is to tap into that inner child
mentality and explore there and have that sort of compassion
for that part of ourselves and engage with it through play. Yeah. Awesome. Well,
if people want to learn more from you, Aubrey, your
website is your name, Aubrey Henderson dot com. Seems pretty
(20:29):
pretty easy to remember. Aubrey Henderson dot com. Against self love, coach, author,
pleasure activists, all the things. I know you specialize in
setting boundaries. So those boundaries, boundaries scare me. But that's okay.
I welcome the fear. That's right, I will recommit. I
sit with it. Why did they scare me? Body image, relationships, sexuality,
(20:52):
all the things self confidence? So if you know people
want to learn more, they can check out your website.
But also on Instagram you are Bree. So how many
ages are in that off? A b r e Yah?
Yeah b r e. So because I figured just Aubrey
spelled like you spell, it was probably taken. So I
(21:14):
love that you got creative in your Aubree and your
Aubrey on all platforms. So thank you so much for
taking the time to just chat with us about our
inner critics and giving us the tools to at least
acknowledge and then you know how to flip the script.
And I also love, love love that you said if
(21:35):
you're struggling with what to come up for your new script,
hopefully you have someone in your life that you can ask.
Because that's also something that I'll do sometimes with myself,
is if I hear myself say something about myself, I'll
say what I say that to my my fifteen year
old daughter, no, And if I heard her talking like that,
I would be like no, don't talk about yourself that way.
(21:58):
And so thank you for the writing exercise, and you know,
the suggestion to try to ask others around you or
if you have a therapist or someone like that, but
really if you have like a sibling or a BFF
or someone in your family that knows you, well, yeah, absolutely,
thank you so much for having me. It's been great, Yeah, awesome.
Thank you, Aubrey
I won't let my body outly outway everything that I'm
made do, won't spend my life trying to change. I'm
learning to love who I am again. I'm strong, I
feel free and know who every part of me it
is beautiful and then will always out way if you
(00:24):
feel it with joy in the here, she'll love to
the boom there. Let's say good day and did you
and die out? Happy Saturday. Outweigh fam amy here and
my guest today is Aubrey Henderson, who is a self
love coach and author and pleasure activist. So, Aubrey, welcome
(00:46):
to Outweigh. Thank you for having me. We're gonna talk
today about befriending your inner critic, and this is something
that well, I feel like we all could benefit from,
whether you're exploring whether or not you have needing disorder
or disordered patterns with food or body image issues Like
I can think of ways, certainly when I was in
(01:08):
the throes of my eating disorder that my inner critic
was very, very very loud. But it shows up in
other ways too, even when I'm at work, like oh
so stupid, why did I just do that? Or why
can't you know? So it doesn't. It's not just specific
to outweigh. So I really feel like whatever you do
share today, people may be able to take these tools
and just plug them into different areas of their life
(01:30):
where they need to be more compassionate and kind. Yeah. Absolutely,
I feel like this is something that people experience their
inner critic in so many different environments. Like you said,
it comes out anywhere, really that we feel vulnerable or
insecure in any way, that inner critic is going to
jump in there. So do you ever work with people
that don't even really recognize that the inner critic is
(01:52):
actually a problem Because I could see where so much
of my life it was always there for me, so
it's like my little companion. So I actually didn't see
it as a problem. Absolutely, And it's funny. This is
this kind of ties into how I found myself working
as a self love coach and focusing in this area specifically.
Is because when I started as a coach, I actually
(02:14):
was working with people around like organization and goal setting
in their lives, like very much not focused in on
the like inner world of emotion at all. It was
just very much like, let me help you to organize
your life in ways that feel good and take steps
towards your goals and accountability, And through that, I was
seeing that the common theme really with everybody was there
(02:34):
is this inner voice underneath that when we're trying to
pursue something that's important to us, when we are feeling
kind of vulnerable and putting ourselves out there in any way,
which comes up when we're pursuing goals, It comes up
when we're trying to get organized and trying to move
forward on things that people were like, why am I
struggling so much? Why is this so hard? And often
it is that inner critic voice that's creeping in there,
(02:56):
that is where that negative self talk is coming from.
And I think for so many people, we've lived with
it for so long, and I would include myself and
that somebody who considers myself a recovering perfectionist. Just in
so many ways, that inner critic was just always there,
and so to notice it and sort of pay attention
to it and draw it out can really be mind
(03:16):
blowing for people, because we get so used to it
being there that the idea that it could be another
way is just kind of foreign to us. Unpacking stuff
like this is longer than what we have here in
the episode today, but we'll kind of get the cliffs
notes version of what you like to encourage people to
do to start recognizing that voice and then flipping the script. Absolutely,
(03:38):
and I think really a lot of it is exactly
what you just said. It's recognizing first that that inner
critic is there. And so if you're somebody who struggles
with a low sense of self esteem or low self
worth in any way, or struggles with loving yourself, and
that's where a lot of people come to me and
they're just like, I have issues with my self esteem.
I don't feel great about myself. It's first really tuning
(03:59):
in to what are those thoughts that you're having about yourself? Right?
What is that? And some people it's like, I know
what my inner critics sounds like, I know what she's
saying to me. Here are the thoughts that I'm having.
And for some people, they really have to pause and
sit and be still and listen and tune into what
that inner critic is saying, what the thoughts are. And
I actually encourage people when they're first getting acclimated to
(04:21):
this to write those thoughts down. They're not usually nice
thoughts that we're writing down, But there's something powerful in
channeling it onto paper and looking at the words that
you are saying to yourself. It's like having a tape
playing in the background, and until we pause and really
listen to and look at what it's saying, it's just
we're kind of accepting that it's there, but instead translating
(04:42):
that onto paper and writing out, well, what are these
thoughts that I'm having? What is this inner critics saying
and actually writing it out and looking at it can
just be a powerful exercise to kind of get you
started at realizing, oh wow, this is what I'm saying
to myself on a continuous basis. It can kind of
be a little bit shocking to see. But from there
that is where we can actually script something different. And so,
(05:04):
for example, if you're inner critic is saying like, I'm
such a failure, right, for example, I'm I'm a failure,
then then that can come up when you make a
mistake at work. That can come up if you're a
person who's in recovery and has a relapse or has
an experience that you're not feeling good about, and there
can be that inner voice of I'm a failure. Then
if we know that's the thought we're having. We say, okay,
there's that inner critic again. How can we reframe this?
(05:26):
It's literally rewriting that thought, so coming up with what
is the alternative to that thought. I could look at
this as Okay, I'm a failure. Or I could say,
you know what, I'm trying and I'm going to make
mistakes and that's normal. Or I have compassion for myself
when I make mistakes. Right, there is that shift so
that every time you're having that thought and you recognize it,
you have something to grab onto to replace it with,
(05:47):
to say, oh, nope, I'm having the thought that I'm
a failure, but actually I know that I can have
compassion for myself when I make mistakes. So it's actually
about literally rescripting that and replacing that thought as you're
having it. My friend Ali Fallon actually wrote a book
called The Power of Writing It Down, and she she believes,
you know, everybody has a story, and there's so much
(06:08):
power in putting a pin to paper, and so I
love that activity so much because yes, you're taking it
from your brain to the paper and then your eyeballs
are forced to look at it, and then you have
the next step in this. You know, I'm calling it activity,
But this tool or this um what you can do
to help get yourself out of this of rewriting it.
(06:30):
I feel like though sometimes people might get, you know,
stuck on well, I don't know really what to write.
I know you give one example there for that, But
what do you do if you don't When you've been
stuck with the script for so long in your head
and that's what's looped, it might be really, really really
hard to come up with your new script. Yes, absolutely,
that's a great question. And I think we can look
(06:52):
at two different ways. Right. One of these is for me,
if if you're ever having trouble coming up with a
self compassionate thought, look to the people close to you
who are encouraging to you. And most of us have
at least someone in our lives who has offered us encouragement,
who has said kind words to us. And if we
can't generate the words, think about, well, what would this
person who loves me say to this thought or what
(07:12):
would they offer to me? Right, And you can pull
kind of language from there if you're struggling to kind
of come up with that yourself. But what this makes
me think of is another piece of how we think
about our inner critic, which is that I think so
many of us think about this inner critic voice and
we're like, I just want to turn the volume off
on this. I just want to mute it. I want
to get rid of it. I don't want to have
(07:32):
this part of me because it's bad, it feels bad.
And when I work with clients, I actually really like
to help them to build compassion for what that inner
critic part is trying to do. And so the way
I do that is really looking at, Okay, what is
the thought, what is the fear that's coming up? So
the idea of, you know, if we're using the example
of I'm such a failure, thinking about what that part
(07:55):
of you that is saying, you know, you're a failure,
there's something wrong with you. What is part trying to
do right? And it's doing it in a backwards way,
but it's trying to protect you from something. It's trying
to stop you from putting yourself out there again. It's
trying to stop you from taking a risk. It's trying
to avoid any scenario where you could be disappointed or
(08:16):
sad or hurt or upset. Right, So this is a
part of yourself that, again in a way that is
now harmful and no longer adaptive, is trying to protect you.
And often this is something that in our lives before
has protected us, right, we have for many of us,
I consider myself to be somebody who was an overachiever
growing up in a lot of different ways, and so
for me, being successful was the way that I got
(08:39):
love and the way that I got affection and attention,
and so it was very adaptive for me to have
that inner critic that's like, you're not good enough, it's
never good enough, keeping better, keep doing this, keep doing that,
because it's that part of us that wants us to
access love and attention and affection and safety. And then
in adulthood we find ourselves saying this feels crappy, like
(08:59):
this feels off full, and it's no longer helping me.
So we have to shift how we look at that
narrative and how we relate to that part of ourselves.
And so we can look at that part and say, listen,
thank you, I see that you tried to help me here.
You're trying to warn me about a risk that I'm
going to take. You're worried about what if we make
ourselves vulnerable and we're rejected. I see that, and also
(09:23):
like that commentary isn't helpful. I think of an inner
critic like a kid, right, I'm a parent. My kids
often say things that are not helpful. Right. They offer opinions,
they offer thoughts, they say I don't want to do
this thing. They say this sucks and I'm mad at you, right,
And I can hear them, and I'm not going to
say I'm banishing you away. I'm not going to say
get out of here. I'm not gonna say I want
(09:44):
to get rid of you. I'm gonna say, Okay, thank you,
thank you for offering that. But I'm driving the bus now,
I'm the grown up, and so we're gonna go my way,
and so I hear what you're saying and we're just
going to leave that there. Right. It's having a more
neutral to almost even compassionate or orientation toward that inner
critic voice and saying, Okay, see where this is coming from.
(10:04):
I can see sort of the threads of how this
has developed over the course of my life. But now
I'm going to choose something different. I love painting that
picture of you know, you taking over the driver's seats,
but still welcoming all the thoughts and the things to
sit in the car with you. I guess if you will,
but they're just not going to drive. It's actually fascinating
(10:27):
sometimes how our brain tries to just protect us in
all kinds of ways, which I feel like when I
was deep into my eating disorder, or if you have
another type of addiction, or I've you know, walked through
alcoholism with loved ones. It's wild because it's so destructive,
yet it's also brilliant because it's what's you're doing to
(10:47):
survive and trying to protect you from something, whether it's
feelings like it's numbing out that was the your brains
or your body's solution to a problem. But then at
some point you realize, Okay, this is no longer serving
me and I need to to switch this up. And
so that's what we have the opportunity to do with
the inner critic. I feel like the inner critic do
(11:15):
we learn it from somewhere or is it how does
it just come up? Because I feel like other behaviors
we see play out, we maybe watch others, but this
is stuff inside of our head. And a lot of
us started hearing these voices or this voice or this
inner critic when we were quite young. So I guess
it's just our in our brains, is like some of
us are wired as a way to just protect us. Yeah,
(11:35):
And it's it's one of those things that's a little
bit different for everybody. It's a combination of things. So
when we when you talk to like an individual person
about their inner critic, you might, you know, all often
ask clients like, what does the voice sound like that
you're hearing? Right? For some people it's like, oh, it's
my voice. For some people it's oh, it's my mom's voice,
it's my dad's voice. Right, So for all of us
(11:56):
it develops a little bit differently. But it's the part
of us that says, hey that this is what you
need to do to earn love, This is what you
need to do to earn And that's really I mean,
I think that's what it all boils down to. All
of it really is how we how we grew up
and learned to earn love and to feel worthy of love.
And so when that inner critic voice is coming up,
(12:16):
sometimes it's just ideas that we've internalized about ourselves, whether
it's from caregivers, whether it's you know, looking around and
you know, developing ideas about body image that come from media,
that come from our family culture, that come from all
kinds of things. It's influenced by just the kind of
cultural marinade that we sort of exist in, right, And
(12:37):
so for everybody, you know, it's a little different. It
might be more of an influence of your parents or
your caregivers if they were particularly critical or pushed you
really hard, or had phrases that you know, they said
often that really burrowed in for you. For some people
it's peers. For some people it's more things they see
in media. It just it. But it all kind of
(12:58):
plays a role into basically this part of you that develops,
like I said, as a as an adaptive coping mechanism.
It's this part of you that's saying, like, hey, to
be safe, we need to remember this. And the way
that we get to that quickly is not to you know,
have that whole sentence of for you to feel safe
and loved, this is what you should try to do.
(13:18):
It's like you're a failure. Don't be a failure. Or
you know your body is wrong, don't have your body
be this way whatever that looks like, right, And so yeah,
I think it comes from a lot of different factors,
but often it stems from childhood, right. It a lot
of times when I work with clients, we can trace
it back to a pretty specific time in childhood where
(13:39):
it's like, okay, here is where I learned that I
got attention from my parents if I was getting aiss
in school, and so achieving academically became the thing that
I worked toward. And if I wasn't doing that, that
inner critic voice comes up to kind of push me
to be doing that right. And that can be true
for a million different things. My sister has been working
(14:00):
through and she's spoken publicly about it, so it's not
like I'm talking about her. But you mentioned perfectionism earlier,
and she has been able to stem that back to
when she was thirteen and our dad left and she thought, well,
as long as I seem as though everything is perfect
and I have everything tidy and in its place and
I'm put together, he'll want to come back. And she's
(14:22):
seen how that now in her you know, mid forties,
has played out. Her entire life and shown up in
different ways, and now she's ready to shed that and
no longer wants to try to be appear perfect all
the time because it's exhausting. So it really can show
up in all kinds of ways. And you know, I
(14:43):
think about me being a mom and having a twelve
year old and a fifteen year old, fifteen year old girl,
twelve year old son, and I think that the writing
activity you shared might be something good I could do
with them, and maybe we could even do together. I
and said something the other day about when he looks
(15:03):
in the mirror, he feels ugly, and he brought it
up at school with his teacher, and his teacher reached
out to me, and then we were working on it.
And so I'm thinking about how I wonder what would
be something good that I could do with him, because
I know we have a lot of parents that are
listening to so you know, it's one thing dealing with
thoughts in our own brain, right, but when you're a
(15:24):
mom or a dad and you've got kids that are
saying negative things about themselves, because there's something that's powerful
for parents to do with their kids. I love this question,
and I um I have an eleven year old son
and we have I have eleven year old son, eight
year old daughter, and we you know, talk about a
lot of these things with them as well, and I
think that bringing it into writing for kids can be
(15:46):
really powerful. I also think for kids drawing out them
talking about it. I think hearing a thought like that
of like your child expressing that they feel ugly, A
lot of parents are scared by that and are like, no, no,
you're not ugly, and we leave it at that, and
we don't want to talk about it. It feels scary
to draw it out. And I think the best thing
you can do with kids is really create space to say,
(16:09):
I want to talk about this with you, like I'm here.
You can tell me it's okay, to name that, we
can unpack that, we can explore where that comes from.
But to just be in a space where their feelings
are okay, to be something that's expressed right, that you
are not afraid of their feelings and their emotions and
them expressing that to you and just recognizing that that, yeah,
(16:33):
like kids are going to have moments of insecurity. I
mean that the age that your son is right now
is one where like we start comparing ourselves to pears
in a big way. There's all kinds of factors at
play there, and so I think having a space where
you can process that and where you're encouraging them to
open up and share that with you and to make
that a conversation rather than I think often we have
(16:54):
these thoughts and we say them. And I think for myself,
you know, as a child, naming thoughts of feeling like
I have to be perfect, and my mom would of
course say like, no, you don't, you don't have to
be perfect, like it's fine, But that doesn't make the
thought go away. That's not drawing out the experience, that's
not helping me understand where might that be coming from.
And so I think the best thing you can do
as a parent is really just to hold space for it,
(17:16):
to say thank you so much for being willing to
talk to me about this, or to say, hey, your
teacher shared this with me, and I really want to
understand more, right, I really want to hear more from
you about this and what you're feeling because it matters
to me. I love that and the good thing about
us or you encouraging us as parents to do that
(17:36):
now with our children is it's like, oh, my parents
didn't do that for me, because I don't think they
knew they didn't have that they like you said, they
were just kind of like, oh no, you know I
A narrative for me when I was a kid is
that I wasn't smart, and that's stuck with me even now.
I still struggle with. Like I said, an example is
that would be at work and be like, oh, you're
so stupid, and I'm feeding into it. I'm like, oh, yeah,
(17:58):
my teacher in high school was right, I'm not smart,
and I think my parents are just like no, no,
you're smart. But then there was no real work with it.
And if you're hearing this now and a light bulb
is going off, like yeah, we have the opportunity to
not only work on our own inner critic voice, but
we can start giving our kids the tools so that
they're not I'm forty one now and trying to you know,
(18:21):
actively work on this stuff. Like maybe they'll have the
tools to work on it in these early years to
where they can have a healthy relationship with their their
inner critic. And I love the way you have said it.
Befriending your inner critic and not pushing it away, but saying, Okay,
I'm acknowledging you're you, you're here, but you're not going
(18:42):
to control me, and you're not going to be in
the driver's seat. Absolutely, And I think it's the like
you don't you don't scare me kind of part of that, right,
And even maybe initially it does scare you, and that's
also okay, But getting to the place where you're saying,
I see that you're here, and I'm just going to
be present with you the same way you would be
with your child, right, And I think I love that
you use that example of doing this with kids because
(19:03):
I also encourage people to really have that same compassion
for themselves. Right to look at your inner critic the
same way you look at your child's inner critic, with
curiosity and with openness. Right, instead of saying, oh, these
are bad thoughts, I want them to go away. I
don't like that this is here. Let's shoot it to
the side where it festers and grows too. Instead say okay,
let's bring this into the light. Let's look at what
(19:24):
we're working with here, and that way we can build
a sense of of compassion for ourselves and then we
also model that if there are kids in our lives too,
and curiosity is so key. I'm glad you've said that
word because that's been a huge part of my healing journey,
is being curious about all the things that are coming up.
And you mentioned to even having kids draw things out,
(19:48):
But I think there's there could be some power in
that as as adults, to tapping into our younger selves
and maybe doing an activity that seems like, oh, that's
for kids, but it probably would be very therapeutic to
process some of your inner critic in a childlike way. Yeah,
because that voice is often coming from a childlike part
(20:08):
was infused during childhood. So often the way we can
heal this stuff is to tap into that inner child
mentality and explore there and have that sort of compassion
for that part of ourselves and engage with it through play. Yeah. Awesome. Well,
if people want to learn more from you, Aubrey, your
website is your name, Aubrey Henderson dot com. Seems pretty
(20:29):
pretty easy to remember. Aubrey Henderson dot com. Against self love, coach, author,
pleasure activists, all the things. I know you specialize in
setting boundaries. So those boundaries, boundaries scare me. But that's okay.
I welcome the fear. That's right, I will recommit. I
sit with it. Why did they scare me? Body image, relationships, sexuality,
(20:52):
all the things self confidence? So if you know people
want to learn more, they can check out your website.
But also on Instagram you are Bree. So how many
ages are in that off? A b r e Yah?
Yeah b r e. So because I figured just Aubrey
spelled like you spell, it was probably taken. So I
(21:14):
love that you got creative in your Aubree and your
Aubrey on all platforms. So thank you so much for
taking the time to just chat with us about our
inner critics and giving us the tools to at least
acknowledge and then you know how to flip the script.
And I also love, love love that you said if
(21:35):
you're struggling with what to come up for your new script,
hopefully you have someone in your life that you can ask.
Because that's also something that I'll do sometimes with myself,
is if I hear myself say something about myself, I'll
say what I say that to my my fifteen year
old daughter, no, And if I heard her talking like that,
I would be like no, don't talk about yourself that way.
(21:58):
And so thank you for the writing exercise, and you know,
the suggestion to try to ask others around you or
if you have a therapist or someone like that, but
really if you have like a sibling or a BFF
or someone in your family that knows you, well, yeah, absolutely,
thank you so much for having me. It's been great, Yeah, awesome.
Thank you, Aubrey
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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