Your Pre-Menstrual Gift: Introducing The Inner Critic!

If you hadn’t already realised this, let me break it to you gently…

…the inner critic - that voice in your head that belittles, shames, berates, mocks and generally makes you feel rubbish about yourself - is a PART OF YOU.

Which is kind of depressing - it means he or she will never fully go away.

But it’s also quite empowering.

Because it means you can work with him or her: both in order to harness their wisdom (there is always some kind of golden nugget there, deeply hidden behind the judgement), as well as to understand which aspects of your past still need processing.

Just because the inner critic is a part of you however, doesn’t mean it’s the whole of you.

That part is often an internalised voice from the past (a figure of authority when you were a child, adolescent or young adult), which means you can work to create distance from it by establishing healthy boundaries, just as you would with a real-life critic.

Sometimes it’s challenging to work out whose voice you may have internalised.

Other times, it’s obvious that it’s a primary caregiver, whose indirect judgements of others and subtle but constant second-guessing of you, instilled a self-limiting belief that whatever you do is not enough, and needs to be perfect in order for you to have any hopes of receiving the validation and attention your inner child craves.

Sometimes the same voice takes on different angles, creating a host of sub critics (each omniscient experts in their chosen field of: appearance, success, parenting, or relationships), all of them whistling to the tune of the overarching master critic whose only purpose it seems is to bring you down.

But the inner critic’s ultimate goal isn’t to destroy you; it’s actually to big you up.

And so, he or she should be seen as a catalyst for change in your life, of whatever isn’t serving you.

Which is why there is actually a ‘season’ when he or she seems at its loudest (probably because this coincides with a time that you are at your most sensitive): and this is the phase just before your period.

This is when you want to employ all of your own critical faculties to tame him or her, (even though this is the time at which you might feel the most vulnerable and therefore more likely to believe everything you are being told).

Instead, remind yourself that the ‘autumn’ season (coming before the ‘winter’ of your bleed) is a time for letting go. And for making adjustments to your lifestyle during this phase, in order to meet your needs more fully (or at all).

Autumn is your monthly reminder to recalibrate your place in the world: to drop what feels draining, to ramp up what feels nourishing and to be as kind, compassionate and understanding as you can be towards what you are coping with and feeling challenged by.

This means the inner critic’s ultimate purpose is to prompt you to put yourself first!

By putting you down, he or she is encouraging you to find the inner strength and resources to retaliate - to protect your boundaries, prioritise your needs and advocate for yourself, for the way you want to show up and for the space you want to take up - in yet more powerful ways.

In other words, your inner critic is the
pre-menstrual gift that keeps on giving.

So you have a monthly opportunity to get to grips with how not to shun it, how not to believe it and how to learn from it instead - aren’t we lucky?

(Image by Christian Shloe)