**The Inner Critic: What It Is & How It Alerts Us To Shame-Bound Needs โ€” Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/inner-critic-shame-bound-needs/ Heidi Priebe explains the inner critic in complex PTSD and toxic shame, why it intensifies during struggle, and how to repurpose it toward authenticity and constructive feedback. ## Key Takeaways - The inner critic is a protective part of the mind that tries to make us acceptable, but its instructions are often based on shame. - Repurposing the inner critic means redirecting it toward authenticity and meaningful goals instead of perfection. - Unmet needs for care should be acknowledged and met with compassion rather than criticized. - Constructive criticism focuses on growing one's true self, not hiding it. ## What the video covers - The inner critic is the part of the mind that constantly monitors how we appear to others and gives negative feedback about how to seem more perfect. - Everyone has an inner critic to some extent, but in complex PTSD and toxic shame it becomes highly destructive. - The inner critic believes that love and acceptance must be earned through perfection, which is wrong: deep connection comes from sharing vulnerabilities. - Priebe noticed her inner critic intensified during tough times, revealing its underlying aim of making her appear perfect so she would deserve care. - Many people with CPTSD split into a true self and a false self in childhood, so criticism received was often destructive rather than constructive. - The process is repurposing the inner critic: giving it new instructions to hold us accountable to authenticity and meaningful goals rather than perfection. - Constructive criticism means feedback on how to operate more authentically from our core self. - Step one is noticing critical thoughts without accepting them as truth; then sitting with them to identify the underlying need or feeling. - Assess whether the critic's voice resembles a shaming early caregiver, and differentiate from those internalized ideals. - Strategies include affirming that having needs is okay, and 'keeping the case open' on unmet needs, such as co-regulation, until they can be fulfilled. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction to the Inner Critic 2. 01:43 The Inner Critic in Toxic Shame and CPTSD 3. 03:20 Personal Story: Noticing the Inner Critic During Struggle 4. 05:06 Repurposing the Inner Critic's Role 5. 06:53 Constructive Criticism vs. Shame-Based Criticism 6. 09:00 Working With Critical Thoughts in Real Time 7. 13:20 Identifying the Source of Critical Voices 8. 16:40 Meeting Unmet Needs for Care and Connection 9. 21:40 Closing Reflections Answers ## Questions about this video What is the inner critic according to Heidi Priebe? The inner critic is the part of the mind that constantly monitors how we come across to others and offers negative feedback on how to appear more perfect. Priebe explains it is especially destructive in complex PTSD and toxic shame, but everyone has one to some degree. Why does the inner critic get louder during hard times? Priebe realized her inner critic intensified whenever she was struggling because it believed she could only receive care if she was perfect. It was trying to make her look flawless so she would deserve support when her body needed it most. How can someone start repurposing their inner critic? Priebe suggests first noticing critical thoughts without accepting them as truth, then identifying the underlying need or feeling. Over time, you give the critic new instructions to hold you accountable to authenticity and meaningful goals rather than perfection. ## Full Transcript โ€” Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A hey guys I'm Heidi PRI welcome back to my Channel or welcome if you're new here today on this channel we're going to be talking about the inner critic so the inner critic is a term that you usually hear in connection with complex PTSD or 00:16 Speaker A toxic shame and it refers to the part of our minds that give us this kind of onslaught of negative or critical thoughts about ourselves and you don't have to have complex PTSD or toxic shame to have an inner critic everyone one has 00:31 Speaker A this to an extent and that's actually something we're going to talk about in this video different manifestations of the inner critic and how some of them can actually be quite helpful and some of them are quite destructive and today 00:43 Speaker A the reason we're talking about this through the lens of cptsd and toxic shame is because that tends to be the most destructive form of inner critic when we have toxic shame there is a tiny voice inside of our heads that 00:58 Speaker A relentlessly lets us know that who we are as people is shameful and bad and wrong and that if anyone really saw who we were at our core they wouldn't want anything to do with us inside the mind of the toxically shamed individual the 01:14 Speaker A inner critic is the part of your mind that is constantly monitoring the way that you are coming off to other people and it's giving you feedback on how you can appear to be more perfect because your inner critic has internalized based 01:28 Speaker A on your early environment that the the way to get love and acceptance or at the least the way to not get brutally rejected is to make yourself seem as Flawless as possible and the inner critic constantly keeps track of all of 01:43 Speaker A the ways in which you are not yet perfect and it lets you know what those are in hopes that you will listen to its feedback and get good enough to deserve human connection now of course the inner critic is wrong about what it is telling 01:58 Speaker A you human connection does not require you to be perfect and in fact the most deep and resilient forms of human connection actually come through sharing our vulnerabilities and our struggles with people but this is not something that comes naturally to you if you have 02:17 Speaker A toxic shame or cptsd and so before you can get to that place where you're in touch with your own vulnerabilities and able to connect with other people on them we first need to talk about how to work with that 02:29 Speaker A critic and how to start repurposing that inner critic so that they are working for you and helping the more authentic parts of you get what they want out of your life as opposed to chronically trying to push those parts away and 02:43 Speaker A focus only on your image so when I started learning about complex PTSD I remember reading about the inner critic and going well yeah I have that everyone has that right everyone has a little voice inside their head that criticizes 02:56 Speaker A them all the time and I kind of put the concept aside and didn't think too much about it it and then it wasn't until many years later when I'd done a lot of healing work that I kind of returned to 03:06 Speaker A this term because something I started noticing the healthier I got was that whenever I would go through tough times in my life so when something challenging would happened to me when I was going through pain or grief I would get 03:20 Speaker A intensely self-critical seemingly out of nowhere I would be doing perfectly fine and feeling relatively emotionally stable but then for whatever reason any any time I was really struggling I would become obsessed with being more and more perfect when I kind of returned to this 03:38 Speaker A term inner critic and went yeah my inner critic comes super online for some reason when I am struggling in my life that feels kind of backwards and this was the point when it really clicked in for me I have this belief inside of my 03:54 Speaker A body and mind that I can only get help care or connection from other people if I am absolutely perfect this part of me is not actually trying to make my life better per se what it's trying to do is 04:09 Speaker A make me look perfect to the outside world because it believes that if I am acting perfect I deserve care and right now because I'm struggling my body knows I need a lot of care and so what we're going to explore in this video is two 04:26 Speaker A things one we're going to talk about how to work with that short-term term experience of needing care and connection because we're struggling and our inner critic coming online telling us you can only get that once you're perfect so we're going to talk about how 04:40 Speaker A to start breaking some of the inner critics rules when and where we can and we're also going to talk about how to sit down with that inner critic and have a conversation with it about which long-term goals we want it to be holding 04:55 Speaker A us to because the inner critic is simply the part of our minds that is trying to hold us to the things that we have decided are important to us as strange as it sounds it's a part of us that 05:05 Speaker A really loves us and is trying to see us succeed and so over time in the long term as we work with the inner critic what we want to make sure we're doing is giving it better instructions about what 05:18 Speaker A we want it to hold us accountable to so instead of holding ourselves accountable to Perfection we can start holding ourselves accountable to things like authenticity or whatever we have decided is a truly meaningful goal for us in life that genuinely makes our lives feel 05:36 Speaker A better this is kind of the process of repurposing the inner critics role in our lives we have hired the right person for the job we have just given them the wrong instructions now if you have complex PTSD and or toxic shame it's 05:51 Speaker A likely that you don't have much of a concept of constructive criticism you might think that all criticism is inherently either worthless or absolutely shameful to the core and the reason you might think that is because when you are very young you learn to 06:09 Speaker A split yourself off into your true self so the part of you that holds your real feelings and vulnerabilities and your false self the self that you show to the world and because that's the part of yourself that is most often out in the 06:23 Speaker A world interacting with other people and getting feedback you probably haven't gotten a lot of feedback in your life that actually feels meaningful to you at the core because the core of who you are is hidden from the world so it's not 06:35 Speaker A possible for anybody to give you valuable feedback on that in your early environment you were encouraged to and rewarded when you behaved perfectly and rejected or punished when you let your true Messier more raw feelings out and so most of the criticism you received 06:53 Speaker A early on in life probably was truly not constructive it was destructive to your core author autic Cel because it was implicitly telling you things like hide who you are and work really hard on developing an image that is not you so 07:09 Speaker A criticism might feel inherently threatening to your body when you start thinking about it because you assume that you're getting told how to improve your fake image and hide the real stuff away and so what we're going to be 07:22 Speaker A working on here is getting familiar with the term constructive criticism and what it actually means when we have constructive criticism what that means is that we're receiving feedback on how to be more of our authentic selves and how we can do a better job at operating 07:39 Speaker A from the core of ourselves which is the part of you that you might currently think people want to see the least of but when we learn to repurpose that inner critic to actually help us get more of what we want in life the new 07:53 Speaker A instructions we're going to be giving them our instructions on helping us stay more authentic and helping us cope more and more of that part of ourselves that we have hidden away into existence and showing it to the rest of the world in a 08:07 Speaker A way that does not overload us with shame and when we do this we avoid that downward spiral because when we're struggling and we're needing help and care and support and the advice that we are giving ourselves is detach from your 08:21 Speaker A feelings and become more and more perfect as far as the outside world is concerned that's going to start zapping our energy and causing more and more disregulation as we work over time to suppress our feelings when our feelings 08:35 Speaker A need the most care and attention and so a constructive inner critic is like a parent who has taken the time to really get to know who you authentically are and can give you really loving and thoughtful advice about what actions you 08:52 Speaker A might want to take in order to get more of what you authentically want out of your life and to express yourself more confid confidently and freely in the world so a healthy inner critic like a healthy inner parent keeps you 09:07 Speaker A accountable to the things that feel healthy and growing for you at your core and they also help you stay connected to your strengths when the conditions of your life get challenging and turbulent so a healthy inner critic is not keeping 09:22 Speaker A your nose to the grindstone because they want you to look perfect they are lovingly sitting with you as you uphold your commitments during challenging times because those things feel like resource points so once again a healthy inner critic is like a secure parent who 09:40 Speaker A loves you enough to give you meaningful structure in your life based on the things you and your authentic self and your authentic feelings have decided are right for you so how do we get to that place the first step in this process is 09:55 Speaker A noticing when our inner critic is online because for most of us we don't think of it in these terms right we don't think oh my inner critic is showing up we think why do I look so ugly nobody is 10:06 Speaker A ever going to love me I need to go on a diet and get a skincare routine we think I don't make enough money nobody is ever going to take me seriously in the world I need to find 10 different Paths of 10:15 Speaker A income sources tomorrow right we're not thinking of this in terms of I'm having critical thoughts we're just taking the critical thoughts as truth without questioning them and so that is Step One is when we have those thoughts can we 10:30 Speaker A try to observe them and notice when we're feeling particularly stressed or self-critical my inner critic is online right now they're online because they think that they are helping me right now and it can actually be helpful in this 10:43 Speaker A case to follow the inner critics line of thought just a little bit so to ask the inner critic if I did everything you said where do you think that would take me and you might kind of get an idea if 10:55 Speaker A you just follow that line of thinking if I got super fit and hot what would happen well then maybe I think I would feel connected to people I would finally open up my energy and be willing to welcome in love because I 11:10 Speaker A would consider myself finally good enough to do that or let's say I started making tons of money then I would be able to hold myself with confidence and pride in the world because I would finally be the kind of person who 11:24 Speaker A deserved respect and when you can get to that place that place where you're touching into the feeling that you believe you will get if you follow the inner critics rules perfectly now you're aware of what feeling you need in the 11:39 Speaker A present right forget all the in between stuff I now know either I'm craving love intimacy and connection or confidence pride and the ability to respect myself that's good information to have it tells us information about what is currently 11:57 Speaker A missing for us psychologically that's really important for keeping us in Balance so this is about sitting with those critical thoughts without letting them sink in and just noticing what feeling they are trying to lead you towards in the future and the immediate 12:15 Speaker A thought that follows that might be well I'm not allowed to need that I'm not good enough to need that I can't have permission to need that that's how the inner critic speaks to us but the ironic part is that the need is already there 12:28 Speaker A that is how humans work we don't work to get ourselves to a certain place and then our needs come online though that's how it feels when you have complex PTSD that you deserve to have needs once you get to a certain level of accomplishment 12:41 Speaker A we just have needs no matter who we are or where we're at in life having needs is normal and I just want to take a moment to really let that sink in in these moments when you're inner critic 12:54 Speaker A is spiraling out of control and telling you that you don't deserve to have needs remember you can't control it if you feel like you need something you need it you don't need to get yourself to a place to deserve that need you just have 13:09 Speaker A it because you are human and it really doesn't hurt to remind yourself of that as often as you can needs just naturally arise as the product of having a human body so that's step one noticing when the inner critic is online and if we can 13:26 Speaker A trying to get at what our need is step two this is something we want to start drawing some awareness to noticing who our inner critic sounds like so does this voice sound like your authentic self telling you what you really want 13:41 Speaker A and feeding back to you strategies to get it or does it sound more like one of your parents or someone else in your early life who is very critical of you do they tend to be shaming you and 13:54 Speaker A pushing you in the direction of doing things that honestly on a very authentic level you just don't want to do or don't care about so is your inner critic really oriented towards the things you think you should want or do with your 14:08 Speaker A life versus are they pointing you in directions that actually feel really fruitful and meaningful and this can take some time to root out so don't worry if you're kind of confused or muddled around that it will become clearer the more you practice working 14:21 Speaker A with the inner critic but the important part here is to just notice whose voice is that really in your head is it yours or is it a combination of authority figures you've interacted with over the years who actually didn't know the 14:36 Speaker A authentic you very well because if that's the case it's highly likely that they're not going to be giving you advice that's going to make your life actually feel more meaningful and grounded in the long term they're going to be giving you advice that only serves 14:50 Speaker A to help you improve your image to the outside world the reason it's really important and fruitful to think about who your inner critic sounds like is because that often points you in the direction of which people in your life 15:03 Speaker A living or dead you might need to do some work around kind of cutting psychological cords with or emotional cords with so if your inner critic sounds a lot like your father or an early teacher that you had in life maybe 15:17 Speaker A that's someone who you really need to do some work around differentiating yourself from and coming to understand that you don't need to live up to their ideals in order to be okay and that's its own process that we're 15:31 Speaker A not going to go too far into today I just wanted to point out that this can give us valuable information about who we're still kind of emotionally and psychologically in mesh with and what we want to start thinking about is what 15:44 Speaker A would it sound like if that inner critic instead of sounding like an early authority figure sounded more like our higher selves so a version of ourselves that we had a lot of respect for who was integrated who cared about our feelings 16:00 Speaker A and who actually wanted the best for us the secret version of ourselves that we keep hidden from the world what would it sound like to have our inner critic rooting for that person and that's what we want to start keeping in our 16:13 Speaker A awareness as we go through the next steps so when we're in that place of noticing that our inner critic has come online and we have that awareness around it the next thing we want to do is divide our kind of thinking around it in 16:26 Speaker A two ways so one we want to look at what what are my short-term needs that my inner critic has come online in response to so what need do I have that my inner critic is misguidedly trying to make me 16:40 Speaker A worthy of having and getting fulfilled that need points to something important that we want to tend to and we also want to start thinking about in the long term which goals would actually feel really meaningful for me to work towards from 16:54 Speaker A an authentic place in me or what things actually help me through the challenging seasons of life and those are the directions we want to start feeding to our inner critic to give it better advice about how to coach us when we're 17:09 Speaker A down and we need some extra coaching so for example at this point in my life when I'm feeling down or really struggling and my inner critic comes online though I do sometimes still struggle with it giving me kind of 17:22 Speaker A advice in the direction of perfection more often than not what my inner critic is being strict with me about is you need to go engage with your community when you are struggling you need to not isolate yourself you need to keep 17:36 Speaker A yourself connected to the projects in your life that you feel passionate about and that keep you connected to the world outside of your own mind so my inner critic has internalized the things that it has learned are genuinely important 17:50 Speaker A to me as an authentic human being and it's coaching me in the direction of keeping in connection with those things when I find myself struggling in life so we're now developing more awareness about both our short and long-term needs 18:05 Speaker A and what we're going to focus on in the short term is finding ways to get those needs met without dying of Shame and in the long term we're going to be thinking about how we can get those needs met in 18:16 Speaker A a more consistent way so that we don't end up in these places where we have heavily neglected what matters to us and then finding ourselves in crisis over it so the next step in this process is looking at our short-term needs so that 18:30 Speaker A need for care and connection or that need for confidence and respect for ourselves the first thing we want to do is contextualize for ourselves the fact that it's okay to have needs and I know we already touched on that but this 18:44 Speaker A Bears repeating because this can be so hard to get through to ourselves when we have toxic shame or cptsd it is very normal to have needs everybody has them and in fact if it feels like you have more needs than average person that 19:00 Speaker A might be true because you have cptsd or toxic shame and that is an inherently disregulated experience so if you feel like you struggle more than the average person that might be true but it's not because you're weak or shameful or wrong 19:17 Speaker A it's because you have drama and if anything you deserve more care and support than the average person because you're in more pain and so again we just really want to put put some attention on normalizing the fact that we have pain 19:33 Speaker A or feelings or needs for ourselves and then we want to look at are there ways for me to get this need met in the near future without absolutely dying of Shame and that part's really important we don't want to 19:47 Speaker A overload ourselves here it might feel really hard for you to ask for help around things so it's okay if you can't do it yet but if you can it's important to give yourself permission to spend some time and energy and 20:02 Speaker A resource on getting that need met so maybe you're really struggling in your work and you're too ashamed to talk to anybody about it and you just can't seem to work through that shame trigger yet is it possible for you to hire someone 20:16 Speaker A online to talk to you about your work challenges for an hour would that feel less shameful or if you can't seem to find a way to get that need met for co-regulation or support or whatever it is you can simp put a pin in it and let 20:31 Speaker A yourself know it's good that I have an awareness of this need even if I don't know how to solve it yet and you can kind of keep the case File open as you go through life can you start noticing 20:42 Speaker A opportunities to get that need met more consistently so I remember when I was doing a lot of healing work around this stuff kind of a problem I was tracking was that I didn't have a lot of friendships where I felt like I was 20:54 Speaker A being my authentic self I was really really good at making friends from my kind of social social Mass but I really only had one friend at a certain point who I could truly be myself with and then anytime I needed co-regulation but 21:08 Speaker A that person wasn't available I would find myself feeling kind of depressed and I just pinned that as a problem for about a year and I started working intentionally on slowly building out my social network and investing more and 21:21 Speaker A more in friendships where I felt like I could bring my authentic self to the table and at various points I checked back in when I would hit that point where I needed that co-regulation or support and I would ask myself how am I 21:34 Speaker A doing in the department of expanding my social network and every time I checked in I had a little bit more co-regulation available to me outside of that friendship until I got to a point where I was almost never in a place where I 21:48 Speaker A needed co-regulation and couldn't find it at least within the next couple of days but when I first checked in on that need I had no way to fulfill it so this is the art of keeping the case open once 22:01 Speaker A we recognize what our needs are and being willing to slowly build a network over time that will help us get that need met more consistently so that the next time we find ourselves stuck around it we have somewhere to go and this 22:15 Speaker A bleeds into the last point which is helping the inner critic work better for us long term so the frame shift that's really helped me here is instead of thinking about what do I need to keep myself disciplined around so what do I 22:29 Speaker A need to just kind of force myself to do whether I want to or not because that's usually a framework that I'm operating from when I'm geared towards perfectionism as opposed to authentic self-development instead I want to start thinking about what do I love so much 22:45 Speaker A that I want to stay devoted to it even when it's hard so taking care of my mental and physical health is something I care about enough to stay devoted to it even during the rough periods so that's something I can start tasking 23:01 Speaker A my inner critic with when I'm struggling in life can you start being strict with me about making sure that I am tending to my emotional mental and physical health I need to be strict with myself about that if I'm feeling depressed I 23:16 Speaker A need to be strict with myself about seeing friends three to four times a week if I'm feeling unhealthy and lethargic and low energy I need to be strict with myself about eating well and getting enough sleep if I'm feeling 23:31 Speaker A cynical and depressed can I spend some time sitting down with myself and figuring out what's going on in my emotional world that might need some loving care and attention is there something I might need to grieve so over 23:45 Speaker A time the more aware of our own needs we become and the less we shame ourselves for having those needs the more we can give that information to that inner critic who we are repurposing to be more of a wise and caring inner parent and 24:01 Speaker A start being held accountable to the things that we actually want from our lives things like a healthy thriving community of people who genuinely know us for who we are and who support us in becoming more ourselves work that we actually feel 24:18 Speaker A really connected to and devoted to that makes a bad day better not worse routines and habits and ways of structuring our life that actually Keeps Us feeling emotionally satisfied rather than drained and depleted and I do have a video on that about how to Foster more 24:38 Speaker A meaningful discipline in your life that's probably a really nice compliment to this one so I will drop it in the description of this video and you might want to check that one out next but for now I think that's all I have to say for 24:51 Speaker A today on the inner critic and how to work with and repurpose that part of your mind that is observing yourself and giving you feedack back in order to make that feedback more meaningful and to help yourself actually start to flourish 25:06 Speaker A through hard times rather than disconnecting from yourself further and further the harder your life gets as always if you have any questions comments things that have been coming up for you as you've gone through this video please do leave them in the 25:21 Speaker A comment section below I love you guys I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other and I will see you back here again really soon [Music] Topics: inner critic complex PTSD toxic shame self-criticism authenticity constructive criticism inner child emotional regulation self-compassion vulnerability Study this video - [Flashcards from this video](https://sozai.app/tools/flashcard-maker/?from=transcript&id=89455) - [Quiz on this video](https://sozai.app/tools/quiz-generator/?from=transcript&id=89455) - [Crossword from this video](https://sozai.app/tools/crossword-maker/?from=transcript&id=89455) - [Word search from this video](https://sozai.app/tools/word-search-maker/?from=transcript&id=89455) - [Study guide from this video](https://sozai.app/tools/study-guide-maker/?from=transcript&id=89455) Free, made by AI from this transcript. 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