Remedy 05 · The Apothecary

I'm hard on myself.

For the voice that never gives you the benefit of the doubt.

Everyone else gets your patience. You get a running commentary. The voice sounds like high standards, and it sounds like it is on your side, which is how it has gone unchallenged this long. These practices meet it without arguing with it.

How this shows up

You do nine things well and one thing badly, and the one thing is what you take home. The nine barely register.

A friend tells you they made the same mistake, and you mean every word of the kindness you offer them. You would never speak to yourself that way, and it does not strike you as strange.

Someone pays you a compliment and you are already explaining why it isn't quite deserved before they have finished the sentence.

You lie awake replaying something you said years ago. Nobody else in that conversation has thought about it since.

What it's signalling

The inner critic almost always began as protection. Somewhere it learned that if it got to you first, nobody else could. Being hard on yourself felt safer than being caught out, and for a while it may even have worked.

It has kept running long after the danger passed, and it does not answer to argument. You cannot reason it into silence, and telling yourself to stop being so critical is the same voice in a new costume. What helps is getting curious about it: where it lands in the body, what it actually believes, and how it sounds when you speak to yourself the way you speak to someone you love.

Three remedies

When the voice is loudest

Compassion for Yourself

Loving-kindness turned in the least familiar direction. Most people offer this outward without effort and find it strangely hard to receive.

  1. Sit comfortably and bring to mind someone you love easily. A friend, a child, an animal.
  2. Offer them a few simple lines silently: may you be well, may you be at ease, may you be kind to yourself.
  3. Notice what that feels like in the chest. Warmth, usually, or something loosening.
  4. Turn the same lines toward yourself, using your own name. May I be well. May I be at ease.
  5. Expect resistance. Something may say you have not earned it. Note that, and say the line again anyway.
  6. Finish with one more round for the person you started with, so the practice ends somewhere easy.
The full practice →
When you cannot find the words

Where the Criticism Lands

The critic is not only a voice. It shows up as a tightening somewhere, and the body often knows what is happening before the sentence has finished forming.

  1. Close your eyes and let the critical thought be there. Do not try to stop it.
  2. Ask where it lands. Throat, chest, stomach and jaw are the common answers.
  3. Put your attention directly into that place. Not around it. In it.
  4. Describe the sensation in plain terms: tight, hot, heavy, hollow.
  5. Stay for ten breaths without trying to change anything. Watch what it does on its own.
  6. Notice whether the voice is quieter now. Very often it is, and nothing was argued.
The full practice →
When you want to look at it directly

The Belief Underneath

Under the criticism there is usually one short sentence you have believed for a long time. Getting it into words is most of the work.

  1. Write down the criticism exactly as it arrived, in its own words.
  2. Ask what it would mean about you if it were true. Write that down too.
  3. Keep asking until you reach a plain sentence. I am not enough. I let people down. I have to be useful to be wanted.
  4. Sit with that sentence for a few breaths. Do not argue with it yet.
  5. Ask a smaller question: is this true in every case, or is it true about one afternoon?
  6. Ask who taught you the sentence. It is almost never something you arrived at alone.
  7. Leave it there. This is not a practice you finish, it is one you keep returning to.
The full practice →

Sit with Aparna

If this is more than a hard day

Lemon Dojo teaches meditation. It is not therapy, medical care, or a crisis service, and a practice is not the right tool for an emergency. If you are struggling to keep yourself safe, please reach a person today rather than a page.

Other remedies in The Apothecary

I feel disconnected Loving-kindness · Body awareness I want to go deeper Vipassana · Mantra · Inquiry All remedies Back to The Dojo