The Inner Critic May Not Be the Villain You Thought It Was

When I first heard the idea that the Inner Critic might be trying to protect us, I completely rejected it.

After all, I had spent years working with clients’ Inner Critics in therapy, not to mention being very familiar with my own. The idea that something so harsh, punitive, shaming, and at times outright cruel could possibly be trying to help felt absurd to me.

Many therapy approaches have traditionally conceptualised the Critic as something maladaptive that needs to be confronted, challenged, limited, or reduced. Critics are often understood as internalised voices shaped by our experiences with parents, teachers, peers, culture, religion, or other authority figures. In some therapy rooms, this can involve therapists actively fighting the Critic through experiential techniques such as chairwork, setting firm limits on it, or attempting to weaken its influence over time.

And sometimes, that approach genuinely helped.

But I also started noticing something that did not sit comfortably with me. In some cases, fighting the Critic seemed to bring only temporary relief. A client might feel better in the session, but by the following week the Critic would often return just as strong, if not stronger. Sometimes clients would even say that when the Critic was aggressively confronted in therapy, it felt as though they themselves had been attacked or shamed.

Over time, I became more curious about whether something else might be happening underneath these critical parts of people.

What if, despite the harm they caused, some Critics were actually trying to protect us in the only way they knew how?

That question changed the way I started working.

Instead of immediately trying to silence or eliminate the Critic, I began approaching it with more curiosity. One of the most helpful questions I started asking was:

“What are you afraid would happen if you stopped doing this?”

The answers were often deeply revealing.

Many Critics feared humiliation, rejection, failure, abandonment, vulnerability, or being judged by others. Some believed that criticising the person first would stop other people from doing it later. Some wanted to prevent the person from becoming “too much,” selfish, weak, emotional, lazy, or visible because at some point in life those things had genuinely felt unsafe.

Other Critics desperately tried to stop people from repeating the behaviours of abusive or neglectful caregivers. Some pushed people relentlessly toward achievement or perfection because they believed mistakes would lead to shame, rejection, or loss of belonging.

The Critic’s strategies were often painful and damaging. But underneath those strategies, there was frequently fear.

Fear that without the Critic, something terrible would happen.

This does not mean the Critic is healthy, kind, or ultimately effective. Nor does it mean we should simply accept relentless self criticism or minimise the pain it causes. Understanding a part’s intention is not the same as endorsing its behaviour.

But sometimes, when we stop viewing the Critic purely as an enemy and become curious about its function, something important shifts.

The relationship changes.

Instead of becoming trapped in an exhausting internal war, people often begin developing a different kind of relationship with the Critic. One that includes more awareness, compassion, boundaries, and understanding. In many cases, Critics soften not because they were destroyed, but because they no longer need to work so desperately to keep us safe.

What I have come to believe is that many Critics are not trying to ruin our lives.

Often, they are trying to protect vulnerable parts of us from pain, shame, rejection, or helplessness using strategies that may once have been necessary, but no longer serve us well now.

And perhaps healing is not always about winning the fight against the Critic.

Sometimes, it may begin with understanding why it showed up in the first place.

This article reflects evolving ideas from a range of therapeutic approaches including Schema Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Compassion Focused Therapy, Chairwork, and trauma-informed approaches.