The Inner Critic vs. Your True Voice — And How Mindful Acceptance Tells Them Apart

💭 Go deeper: We talk more about this in episode #274 of the Joy Lab Podcast

Aimee (co-host of the Joy Lab podcast) was ready for her fellowship interview. She knew behavior change theory inside and out. She was, as she puts it, on point. And then the interviewer asked whether she'd buy a house in Boston.

Confidence: gone. And for the next thirty minutes she talked about housing, nonstop, trying to make the uncomfortable feelings go away through sheer volume of words. They didn't go away. They got worse. The fellowship did not come through.

This is what happens when we try to avoid uncomfortable feelings rather than accept them. And it's really [really, really] common. So common there's a name for it: experiential avoidance.

Experiential avoidance is the effort we use to suppress or push away uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, and sensations in order to feel safer in the short term. It's protective, and it makes sense that we do it. The nervous system can't always distinguish between the fear of public speaking and the fear of actual survival. It's an efficiency strategy that then just rings the same alarm bells. So we avoid. We don't apply for the job. We don't have the conversation. We don't try the thing.

The problem is that avoidance has a paradoxical effect: it amplifies the thing we're afraid of. What we avoid gets bigger and scarier. Our world gets smaller. And anxiety increases rather than decreases, because we've also reinforced the belief that we can't handle the situation.

The antidote, and the first skill at the heart of our Confidence series, is mindful acceptance. Importantly, acceptance is not resignation: "I'm anxious, so I guess I won't try." It's not agreement: "My anxiety is right — I can't do this." Acceptance is something much more active: "I notice that I'm feeling anxious. There is doubt present. These are uncomfortable sensations. That's where I'm starting from, and I'm going to take action anyway."

The fear is a passenger on the bus. But you are the driver.

The episode also names the harsh inner critic. This is the voice that sounds like it might be useful self-assessment but is usually something absorbed from a critical adult long ago and pressed play on ever since. The inner critic attacks, uses fear and shame to motivate, and deals in absolutes ("you are a complete failure; you'll never be able to do this"). Your true voice is gentler and more nuanced: "This is hard. I'm learning. I'm not there yet." Once you can tell the difference, something shifts. You don't have to fight the critic. You don't have to believe it. You just have to notice it — the way you might notice a neighbor's dog barking — and move forward anyway.

We'll continue to work with these thoughts and build confidence in episode 275 of the Joy Lab podcast.