Therapy for Self-Criticism: When Your Inner Critic Becomes Your Boss

The harshest voices often live inside us, therapy teaches us to meet them with kindness.

There’s a moment in therapy I’ve come to recognise. A client, usually high-achieving and outwardly composed, begins to speak about how they treat themselves internally. The language is harsh, punishing, exacting. I should have known better. I always mess this up. I don’t deserve a break. I’m useless.

They say these things with such casual cruelty, as though it’s simply factual. And when I ask, gently, whose voice that is, there’s often a pause. Sometimes a tear. Sometimes confusion. Because they hadn’t realised, they were being spoken to by an internalised boss. Not one they chose, but one they absorbed.

Naming the Pattern: The Inner Critic as Internalised Authority

The inner critic is not just a quirk of personality. It’s an internal structure formed in response to early relational dynamics. In psychoanalytic terms, it is often an internalised object, a representation of authority, care, or control that becomes lodged in the psyche.

For many, this voice was born in environments where love was conditional, praise rare, or standards impossibly high. The child, eager for connection and approval, learns to pre-empt external criticism by turning it inward. If I attack myself first, maybe they won’t. If I keep myself in line, maybe I’ll stay safe.

Over time, this self-attack becomes habitual. It masquerades as discipline. It drives performance. It whispers that anything less than perfection is failure. And because it has helped the person survive or succeed, they mistake it for truth.

The Defence Beneath the Criticism

But here’s the paradox: the inner critic is often a defence. Not against laziness or mediocrity, but against deeper emotional risks,  the risk of shame, rejection, vulnerability. It is a form of control in a world that once felt unsafe.

When clients begin to see this, something powerful happens. They realise that the part of them that criticises isn’t trying to destroy them. It’s trying, in its misguided way, to protect them.

This doesn’t make the critic right. But it makes it understandable. And that understanding becomes the first crack in its authority.

Reclaiming Inner Authority

Therapy for self-criticism helps us separate from the critic. Not by fighting it, but by relating to it differently. We begin to notice its voice. We learn to question its logic. We develop a new internal voice, one rooted not in fear, but in care.

This new voice doesn’t excuse harmful patterns. But it speaks with compassion. It says things like, You made a mistake, and that’s okay. You were tired. You were scared. You are still worthy.

Over time, the inner world begins to shift. The critic softens. The client learns that self-compassion is not indulgence, it’s maturity. It’s the courage to be on your own side.

Closing Reflection

If your inner critic sounds like a relentless boss, always demanding, never satisfied, you’re not alone. That voice was likely built to protect you. But you don’t have to keep it in charge.

Therapy offers a space to meet the critic with curiosity, not fear. And to build an inner world where your worth is not up for negotiation.

Because the truth is: you were never meant to live under constant evaluation. You were meant to live, to grow, to feel, to rest.

You were meant to be human. Not perfect.