Your inner critic may promise to help you do better, but what if it’s keeping you stuck in shame and insecurity instead?
In this poignant episode of our groundbreaking series, Uncovering Your Hidden Motives, Austin Conner, LPC, sits down with fellow pastor Addison Hawkins to explore where our inner critic comes from, what it’s trying to accomplish, and why its approach often does more harm than good.
You’ll discover how to distinguish the Holy Spirit’s conviction from the inner critic’s condemnation—an important distinction that can help you respond to your shortcomings with honesty and grace instead of shame and self-punishment.
You’ll also learn how to recognize the patterns of self-criticism in your own life, identify the situations that trigger that critical voice, and understand what it may be trying to protect you from. Finally, you’ll explore how past wounds and painful memories can shape the way you talk to yourself today, and how that critical voice can affect your relationships, priorities, and sense of worth.
They’ll leave you with several practical steps you can take, including journaling, reflection, and seeking help from a safe person who can hear your story as you follow the memories and emotions underneath that critical voice. Listen in to start untangling those old patterns and connecting with the truth that you are deeply loved by God.
Highlights from this Conversation
Austin: Today we’re going to be examining the roots of self-criticism with a fellow pastor and friend of mine, Addison Hawkins. Welcome to the podcast! Addison, tell our listeners just a little bit about who you are and what your role is at The Crossing.
Addison: Thanks, Austin. I really appreciate being here. I’m a current director of Crossing 20s, which is our ministry to young adults at The Crossing in Columbia. I’ve been working at The Crossing for just over seven years total. Previously, my family and I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I worked as a pastor and church planter.
Austin: I got to know you when we were in college and then we worked for the college ministry together. You went to seminary in St. Louis and then got some real-world experience.
Addison: I look back and think about all the incredible chances and opportunities I had to pastor different churches of different sizes and different demographics, inner city St. Louis, and then the suburbs of Grand Rapids. It really is fun to think about what God’s done and where he’s led us. I’ve learned a lot.
Along the way, I got married to my wonderful wife, Lynnette, and we have three kids, 11, 9, and 5. They’re a ton of fun. Of course, all these things are relevant because that’s where a lot of my inner self-critic comes from. I’m a recovering people pleaser.
Austin: Today we’re going to talk about our inner critic. Sometimes our inner critic is loud. Sometimes it’s quiet and more subtle. Some inner critics talk nonstop. And others come online only in certain situations and scenarios. This inner voice can get us stuck and tangled up in the present. It leaves us heavy and confused and insecure and paralyzed. Addison, what does your inner critic sound like?
Addison: I realize that the inner critic has been around a lot in my life. Remember how I said I’m a recovering people pleaser? My critical voice wants to condemn me. It tells me I’m not enough without other people’s approval. There are times I want to fit in. Other times I want to be noticed. I want to say things that impress. Or I want to hide. This manifests in every area of my life: sports, relationships, ministry, all the things.
Austin: I think everyone can relate to that. You’ve got certain moments and dynamics and events in your life where your inner critic comes along and tries to navigate it for you. The way to get untangled is sit down and assess and examine and dare I say, listen to that inner critic.
Today, what we’re going to do is we’re going to examine your inner critic in the present, and then we’re going to go back to the past to try and discern where and how your inner critic learned its tactics and got its voice.
Before we get to that, I want to ask you a pastoral question. How can somebody discern the difference between our problematic inner critic and God’s guidance and direction through our inner thought life?
Addison: That’s an incredible question and certainly something that I have wrestled with my entire life. I think what you’re talking about is the difference between how we discern what the Spirit is doing in our lives versus what the inner voice is yelling and screaming at us.
One of the Spirit’s roles in our life as a follower of Jesus is to convict us of our sin, to hold up that proverbial mirror and show us that we have a need for Jesus and to move us closer and closer to him. It’s not just to show us our sin and then tell us how bad we are. In fact, it’s to show us that we’re deeply loved despite the sin that we have.
The inner critic wants to do the opposite. It wants to condemn. It wants to move us further and further into hiding. It wants us to feel shame. And it wants us to say that we’re not enough.
Austin: We can see that going back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve felt ashamed and hid. Condemnation is the enemy’s native language. It’s not the Spirit’s language. When you feel condemned, that’s not the Spirit. Remember what is said in Romans 8:1, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Addison: Someone once put it like this: Conviction says, “You did wrong, come home.” The critic says, “You are wrong, stay away.”
Austin: That’s a great way to put it, really helpful and clear. Now let’s jump in and look at things like what your inner critic does; what it’s saying to you; times you might hear it; and the internal and external impact it has. As we talk about this, we’re not looking for “right” answers, we’re looking for “real” answers.
What Does Your Inner Critic Do?
Addison: I think the best way for me to process some of this is to think about what the inner critic has done in my own life and the way that it’s revealed itself and then make a couple of general statements that hopefully can be applicable to those listening.
I said I was a people pleaser. And so my inner critic rears its head as a chastising, performance-oriented voice that pushes me to change based shame, guilt, and feelings of not measuring up. It evaluates, it moves towards performance, it moves me to shame, to guilt, and to hiding.
Why does my inner critic do those things? It’s because the critic evaluates who I am. It judges my personhood. It’s primarily attacking me at my core of my identity. It’s a subtle but important difference to what we were talking about the way the Spirit moves in our lives.
What Is Your Inner Critic Saying to You?
Addison: The things the inner critic says change over time with different life situations, jobs, relationships. I definitely hear different things as a man, father, and husband, than my wife does.
In your 20s, the critic says you’re behind. You are in the midst of thinking about career, relationships, milestones. A lot of your life is lived online. You measure yourself against that curated highlight reel that we see all over social media. You’ve got the mental health vocabulary, but many still feel stuck right where they are.
Then you move into your 30s and 40s, which I’m bumping up against as a 39-year-old, and you feel like you should have it figured out by now. It shifts towards parenting and career trajectory, marriage and money. In your 50s and up, you start to look back and think about legacy, regret, and relevance.
Try to notice what your critic is commenting on right now. Because we’re talking about the present. The critic is saying something to you right now. Try and figure out what that is. If you’re a journaler, write down some of those thoughts. Go on a walk. Find a place where you can really reflect on what your critic might be saying to you in this season of your life.
When Is Your Inner Critic Talking to You?
Austin: This question might be a little trickier to answer. For me, I’ve noticed that I hear the inner critic when I’m surrounded by people whose opinions I really value and respect. It tells me, Don’t say anything stupid. Don’t look like an idiot.
Addison: The inner critic can show up during different stages, whether you’re dating, engaged, married, or just starting to think about the life ahead of you. For parents, you may start to beat yourself up as your kids get older and maybe walk away from their faith. If you know what kinds of things the inner critic can say at different stages of life, you can be somewhat prepared for it.
The voice of the inner critic may get louder when you are tired, stressed, about to take a risk, or in downtime when things are quiet—like when you’re awake at 4am.
When the Inner Critic Shows Up
Under High Stress or Fatigue: When your mental and physical energy runs low, your brain’s threat defense system activates, and the critic steps in to scan for dangers or perceived failures.
Before Taking Risks or Facing Change: When you step out of your comfort zone, try something new, or speak up, the voice often warns you that you are not good enough or that you will fail.
In Social Comparisons: When scrolling through social media or looking at peers, the critic highlights your perceived shortcomings or tells you that others are more confident and successful.
At Quiet Moments (Like Bedtime): When distractions fade and you finally try to rest, the lack of other sensory input lets unresolved thoughts, replayed conversations, and self-blame rise to the surface.
Across Daily Roles: It frequently chimes in while you are working on the job, parenting, maintaining friendships, or evaluating your own performance.
Key Signs It Is Your Inner Critic
It uses absolute words like “always” or “never”.
It attacks who you are (”You are bad”) rather than what you did (”That went badly”).
It sounds like an internalized echo of a parent, teacher, or authority figure from your past rather than your own supportive adult thoughts.
Why Is Your Inner Critic Operating this Way?
Addison: Our inner critic wants us to be deemed worthy, good enough. It’s got good intentions, but the way it’s trying to help us is problematic. Our inner critic wants us to have a passing grade, to be successful, to be seen as valuable and credible by the people around us.
But often the way it tries to help us meet those goals is by bullying us in the hopes that we might learn from our mistakes and be successful next time. Yet God wants us to take our self-perception from the Bible. So consider these biblical passages and the reality that they paint for us.
Genesis 3: 7-10 describes the response that Adam and Eve had to their sin. They hid and covered themselves. This is the original curated life. Hide and only present the good stuff. Yet God comes to us and speaks truth. He says, Don’t hide, come to me because you’re my child. I will be with you. You are loved. You are mine.
Paul talking in Galatians 1, says, “Am I now trying to persuade people or God, or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” And Matthew 11:28-30 is a wonderful passage with the contrast between those who are burdened and those who bear Jesus’s light yoke. Jesus says, “Come to me, all of you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
What Is the Impact of the Inner Critic?
Austin: Sometimes you don’t realize just how deeply this inner voice affects you. The more that you can start listening and paying attention and taking its misguided but well-intentioned motives seriously, the inner voice will start taking advice and feedback from you. Addison, tell us about the internal impacts and then I’ll talk more about the external impacts.
Addison: For me, I feel both guilt and shame. Guilt says I did something bad, and shame says I am bad. Remember, that message is coming at my personhood. I have to remember that the critic is specializing in shame. That’s what it wants me to feel. And it’s usually past wounds that cause me to feel this guilt and shame.
Because I’m afraid of other people seeing the real me, I present a false reality instead of living within the truth that I’m a glorious ruin, meaning like I’m bought with a price. I am a ruin in the sense that I have sin. I am broken. I am needy, but I’m glorious in the sense that God has said I am his. Usually we deal with these insecurities by trying to feel both smaller and bigger. Yet both are attempts to escape the critic’s verdict.
Austin: Many of these internal impacts bleed into our external world. For example, in materialism. We want to have the perfect house, perfect car. In order to achieve these goals, we sacrifice our time, money, and relationships. We don’t prioritize God and his word.
Whether you know it or not, your inner critic has a really good memory. It remembers all of the times that you didn’t perform, that you said the wrong thing. The inner critic is usually showing itself based on some sort of situation that happened in your past. It doesn’t forget. It doesn’t even age. You’re still a little kid, feeling embarrassed or inadequate or even unloved.
Getting to the bottom of this requires following two big breadcrumbs: the memories and the emotions. It may mean that you work with a therapist to go back to embarrassing moments, traumatic moments, and talk through them. Addison, where are you in this process?
Addison: I’m still figuring it out, but it started with me asking, “Why am I always faced with these same emotions in these moments?” I recognized a pattern in my life and I’m like, okay, wait, this isn’t right. I don’t need to feel this way because there’s an objective truth that I hear from Jesus, which is that I’m loved, I’m seen, and I’m cared for.
What I ended up doing was just picking back up the old pen and paper and journaling. One of the first things I do in the morning is reflect on the previous day. Whatever God is doing while I sleep is really helpful because I wake up the next morning with more clarity. The next thing I did was get help. Even though I’m a pastor, I needed to sit with someone who could hear my story and help in a loving way.
Austin: That’s fantastic advice. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, Addison. For our listeners, stay tuned, but because next week we’re going to give you some tangible ways to manage the roots of self-criticism, and to calm your inner critic. See you then.