Vol. 42 – 3 Questions to Disarm Your Inner Critic
If you have not checked out the 3 simple steps to deflating your inner critic from this month’s deep dive lesson yet, be sure to go check it out.
Now, if you’re lucky enough, you might find that sometimes just Step 2: specificity alone can deflate your social anxiety balloon animal to a manageable size.
But often, we might need to go one step further to help it let out more air.
And the key is not positive thinking, but clear thinking.
Once you’ve shrunk the inner critic by naming its worst-case scenario and following the first two steps, it’s time to reason with it—like a lawyer.
As a lawyer, we’d do two things here:
#1 Decatastrophizing
Our brain catastrophizes. It jumps to the worst possible outcome and convinces us it’s inevitable. That’s evolutionary wiring—better safe than sorry.
But when it comes to social anxiety, the odds of what fear would happen are almost always lower than our critics claim.
#2 Resourcing
Our inner critic has a way of making us feel incapable and helpless.
But feelings don’t equal reality. The truth is: you’ve survived every single hardship and challenge that’s come your way so far. And chances are, you can handle whatever comes next.
That leads us to 3 simple questions to help you think clearly, to decatastrophize, and to resource,
