Field Notes from My Writing Desk…to Yours

Quiet the Inner Critic with an Inner Champion

During the next weeks, I’ll be sharing with you some of the teachings that I have found most helpful in my five-day Haven Writing Retreats in Montana, and in my online writing sanctuary, Haven Nest. (Membership will open again in November!) I’ll be focusing on the essential topics that every writer I know struggles with, including myself: the Inner Critic, Writing in Wellness, and Writing in Community

When it comes to your creative self-expression, maybe you’ve heard these thoughts in your mind, or even heard them come out of your mouth:

“I’m stuck.” 

“Why does what I have to say even matter?”

“Someone else already wrote it better than I ever could.”  

“Who do I think I am? Nobody asked me to write.”  

“I don’t have letters after my name about this topic I’m so interested in. I’m not an expert.”

“My writing is self-indulgent drivel at best.” 

 “What I have to say is not good enough.”  

 “I had a teacher in middle-school who told me I wasn’t creative. And I believed her.”

“I don’t have a voice. Not an important or interesting one, anyway.”

All of this guts me. And…I relate with it. I bet you do, too.

I don’t know one writer, published, or otherwise, who doesn’t have an inner critic. Some have learned to gentle this usually cruel voice. Others haven’t. Others are so used to this inner terrorism, that they march to its demands and threats. And still others have become numb to its abuse and just take it, blow by blow.

I used to fight this voice. Hard. I called her my Evil Twin Sister. I fought her by becoming aware of how she treated me. By tuning into her and yelling back at her. I was in a war. I wrote a whole memoir about it. My mission: to exile her. 

It didn’t work. 

So I took a different approach. I realized that she was me. I realized that, even though she was a result of different people and institutions in my life, I still invited her into the prime real estate of my mind. I still co-created with her, even in warring with her. And I realized in all of that new awareness of her voice, all of that fighting with her, that she was not unlike a small child who is throwing a fit, or having a night haunt, as a reaction to being scared. And the more scared she was, the meaner she was. I knew that if I was going to tame her, and even get rid of her, I needed to find empathy for her. The way I would for a child having a bad dream. I began to treat her like a scared child who is flailing about in fear, disorientation, and even unresolved anger.

I started to cultivate an Inner Champion who could hear past the meanness and into the fear. I used my mothering skills. “Dearheart, you’re just scared. Let’s walk you back to bed. I’ll sit here with you and rub your back until you go to sleep.” 

It worked.

I soon learned that I could even be playful with her. I could react to her cruelty and fear by being playful, the way you play with a scared child. I raised two children in grizzly bear and mountain lion territory. I told a lot of playful, but still hopefully helpful, stories when we’d hike through the woods of Montana, to divert and distract their fear so that they could enjoy the experience. The forest floor, the rivers and lakes, the wildflowers, the bugs and butterflies and birds and creature world, the soaring peaks. I still held the bear mace and carried the water and granola bars, and the apple that all mothers carry somewhere just in case. But I did so with playfulness. It’s the way I finally tamed my Inner Critic. The Inner Critic just needed a new story. 

So I gave her a playful name: the Inner Critter. The more playful I got, the more I felt her putting down her sword. It doesn’t work to fight when no one’s fighting back. She was tired of being so scared and mean. She wanted a new way of being. And she actually wanted to help me. Gradually I realized that I could transform her into an Inner Champion by modeling love and empathy and playfulness to her. Not Pollyanna. Still honest. Still acknowledging her fear but instead trying to help her flip her thinking. She could lead with kindness. Courage. Love. Support. Like I had mothered.

It worked even better. 

But even so, she would still have dark nights of the soul. When that happened, I spoke to her with love the way I’d taught her to speak to me. I spoke to her as the Inner Champion. And so now it was a conversation of love versus war. I gave up on banishing her, and instead, transformed her.

I’m not always good at it. I have a book coming out in April, and she’s woken up from that nap, very scared, because once you put your writing out there, it’s no longer yours. People will take it personally, good or otherwise. After publishing two books, and many essays, I am well-aware that I’ll need my Inner Champion to be my guide. She’ll tell me things like: 

• “What someone says about your book is none of your business.” 

• “You did your very best with the writing of that book.” 

• “Trust that it has its own salve. It’ll find its way to the people who need it.”

• “It’s no longer in your control.”

I’ll need to link arms with her and let her lead me into that forest in kindness. And play.

Here's one of the best phrases she has spoken to me and I use it a lot personally and in my writing retreats:

You don’t have to write “good.” You just have to write “true.”

She’s playing with me, speaking to “good” as “bad” grammar, but also to “good” as in A+ perfect. Instead, my Inner Champion invites me to bring my flaws, my inconvenient truths, my embarrassing questions to the essence of what I write.

Here are some questions and concepts to write into, to help you cultivate a healthy relationship with how you speak to yourself in your own mind. I hope they help:

• Have you started and stopped your writing life? Do you feel bad about it? Do you want to feel better? Start by being kind to yourself about it. Cultivate an Inner Champion vs. an Inner Critic, which I call the Inner Critter. Be playful. Be gentle. Be curious. Be in wonder. How do you practice self-kindness in your writing life?

• Let your Inner Champion speak to you the way you would speak to a child you love and want the very best for, in empathy and kindness. Mine begins with, “Dearheart…” because it reminds me of the way my grandmother spoke to me. What would your Inner Champion call you?
  

• I don’t believe in Writer’s Block or even in the state of “stuck.” I believe in Low Tide. And that the writing is working in you all the time if you let it give itself to you. Low Tide brings with it treasure, often lost. New awareness. Can you flip your thinking in the realm of stuckness and replace it with thoughts of Low Tide possibility?

Remember: The Inner Critter is just a scared child who knows exactly what to say to break our heart. It’s time to put her down for a much-needed nap so that you can play!

Next Week, I’ll be sharing insights and practices on Instagram and Facebook about Writing in Wellness. I’m hearing from a lot of writers in pain—physical, emotional, spiritual —and this topic means a lot to me. Remember: You don’t have to take this writing path alone! 

Truly,

Laura

Pre-order my forthcoming book, The Wild Why: Stories and Teachings to Uncover Your Wonder