The Inner Critic

Everyone deals with the inner critic. We may have grown up with a negative and critical family culture and as children we established what we though of ourselves and other people. We may therefore have life beliefs like, “I can’t do anything right.” This belief is way down deep determining what we think of ourselves and our abilities. We take it as if it is absolute truth. It is a self-sabotaging belief or a self-fulfilling prophesy. As well if we have a strong inner critic crowded with many distorted and over generalized beliefs, we tend to be also critical of others. These root beliefs from the inner critic are very hard to break.

Of course, Satan will try to play off this inner critic and enhance these distorted life principles that we have adopted for our life. Children don’t have the full picture and even without a critical family can develop distorted beliefs because they expect life and people to respond a certain way and they do not, so we reach some false or distorted conclusions. For instance, someone in a very spoiled environment might reach the conclusion that you have to manipulate everyone to get what you want. People are unique and even in the best environment people develop distorted and false life principles.

To deal with the inner critic first we must realize the false or distorted approaches to our self or others. First, we identify them and then we correct them every time they come up in our thinking. We correct them not just with positive thinking but we truth thinking as revealed in God’s Word. We also pray for God’s help in this matter.

I have listed to an interview by Steven Cuss who has written the books: Handling Leadership Anxiety: Theirs and Yours, and The Expectation Gap. He also has a website: stevecusswords.com. He deals with the issue of the inner critic and anxiety.

Man has a spiritual dimension, a psychological dimension a social dimension and a physical dimension. We must know how to hold these altogether even though the spiritual take permanence. We must in wisdom learn to hold these in proper balance and perspective.

This is what the Bible says and can be applied to the inner critic but also has a wider application. “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled” (1 Corinthians 10:4-6)

Is it a warfare? Yes, it is. It is a battle we must fight. (1 Timothy 6:2) It is the good fight against how the inner critic may hold us captive or hold us back and how Satan plays off this distortion and other factors to bring us into bondage and to not walk in the fulness that God has for us.

Our wrong thinking of ourselves must be corrected and only you with God’s help can do it. Our wrong thinking about God must be corrected and is where being a student of God’s word and those who learn to put all of God’s revealed word together is important. We are ready to punish all of our wrong thinking and bring it into obedience to the truth and to God. We punish it in a good way with God’s truth in Jesus Christ and God’s word the Bible as well as the Holy spirit. We fight this battle in cooperation with God, but we must fight.

It is not an easy battle but well worth the fight. We are not only spiritual warriors but also psychological warriors and we want to bring everything into subjection to Christ, who is the fullness of life, now and to eternity. (Ephesians 3:19) It is a fight we can win in Christ Jesus our Lord.