I twist and turn in my seat. It's like nails on a chalk board or something cold crawling up my back. My thoughts quickly create a huge battle inside my own head and before long I am reaching for sugar. Before now I have actually eaten stale biscuits just to put something in my body to numb out what's happening. We all know what it's like to stand in that painful and chaotic space with your own inner critic. For so many years I mistook my inner critic for my inner voice. I thought the constant criticism was there to help me do better and I so desperately wanted to be better because the underlying feeling that ran roughshot over my life was that I was not enough. I believed that because I heard voices, because I was artistic, because I was gay, because I wasn't “handsome” enough, because I couldn't fit in with the world around me that I was deeply flawed. I believed that I was a failure and there is no greater poison to put in the mouth of a man. This cocktail of inner conflict was what sent my life so out of spin for so long. I truly believed that I wasn't worth much, so much so that my inner critic became normalised. It was just part of my every day. It opened the door to depression, a desperate need for validation and a lack of boundaries that would eventually put my very life in danger.
I've seen that inner critic completely decimate people's lives. After all it's the conversations we have with ourselves that inform us of our choices. It took years, patience and a support system for me to peel back the layers and undo the damage I did to myself during that time. Every now and again I still find an old habit born from that space. But the more work I did. The more I learned to be gentle with myself. The step by step, minute by minute process that truly opened my heart for healing eventually did what a lifestyle like that is capable of doing. It helped me to begin loving myself. It's in that very space, the exact moment you begin to love yourself that your inner critic fights the hardest. It's because it's beginning to lose power. When I first started to love who I was I would get physically sick all the time which, as a healthy person is not common for me. My energy system was completely realigning, it finally had the energetic focus it needed to dump toxins which is exactly what consistent negative emotion is. My body was always so heavy, I would struggle to get out of bed most mornings. Soon I realised that my inner critic was not an enemy out to destroy me but in fact it was the most frightened part of my self and I had put that part of myself in the space of complete ownership.
But a new me was being born. I started to find things that made me happy and then joyful, then euphoric. I wake these days with a smile on my face not because of what I have but because of the energy that it is born from. In it's own way your inner critic is trying it's best to save you. The problem is it's trying to save you from everything. Literally everything. We've all met those people who would find fault with an angel. They are still ruled by the fear of the inner critic. Be mindful of your own. We all have one. It's existence is purely habitual. It's trying to keep you safe. Sometimes you just have to let it know that you can do that job all by yourself for a while. Don't fight the inner critic, it just brings it's friends along. Love it as a part of who you are and as a stepping stone for you bringing more joy, more light and more love into your life. I am so grateful for my inner critic, even for the times when it took me to dark places because it was catalyst for me to learn that I am not what I think. I am a part of, a participant in my own experience on this planet but I am also so much more. My inner critic forced me to examine my mind in clinical detail and in the middle of all that noise I found who I really was.
Thank you,
Big Love,
Ryan James x
www.facebook.com/psychicswansea