My Inner Critic Is Bullying Me

It turns out the biggest bully I’ve ever had to deal with lives inside my skull. No, not a tumor or some alien parasite that whispers stock tips, but that voice. You know the one. The constant commentator perched somewhere behind your eyeballs like a bad sports announcer. My inner critic. And let me tell you, mine is an Olympic-level trash talker.

It never shuts up. When I wake up in the morning, it’s right there, pointing out how stiff I look trying to roll out of bed. “You’re creaking like a haunted rocking chair, old man.” When I brush my teeth, or rather, my brand-new, supposedly permanent implants, it comments on how fake they feel. “Nice chompers, pal. You paid a fortune for those, and they still feel like you’re chewing gravel.” When I put on a shirt, it snorts and says, “That color makes you look like you’re two weeks into the embalming process.”

Imagine being trapped in a room with Don Rickles on a five-day cocaine bender, except Don Rickles is your own brain and you can’t leave. That’s life with an inner critic.

And it’s not just me. We all have that bastard whispering in the back of our minds. Some folks keep theirs chained up better than others. Me? Mine’s got a master key and a loudspeaker.

The critic at work

At work it gets louder. I’ll spend half a day putting together a report, polishing the graphs, lining up the columns, double-checking the formulas. The thing looks beautiful. Then the critic chimes in: “Yeah, nice job nerd, you just made a colorful BI report nobody’s going to read. All that effort, and they’re going to scroll past it like it’s a Terms of Service.”

Send an email? The critic snickers. “You used the wrong greeting. Nobody says ‘Good afternoon’ anymore. You might as well have written ‘Hear ye, hear ye’ like some town crier.”

Give a presentation? Forget it. The critic points out every stammer, every filler word, every nervous glance. “Wow, you said ‘um’ twelve times in one sentence. The people in the back thought you were buffering.”

The critic in the gym

I drag myself to the gym, hoping to sweat it out, but my critic follows me like a personal trainer I can’t fire. I’ll get under the barbell, load it up with a reasonable weight, and there it is: “You call that heavy? My grandmother’s urn weighed more than that.” I’ll try a plank, shaking by the thirty-second mark, and the critic’s in my ear: “Is this a workout or an exorcism?”

Meanwhile, the twenty-year-olds around me are tossing weights like they’re made of Styrofoam. My critic loves them. “See that kid? He’s benching your bodyweight while texting. You’re just lying there looking like roadkill in compression shorts.”

The critic in the mirror

The mirror is its favorite battlefield. I’m brushing my hair, what’s left of it, and the critic pipes up: “Trying to cover that bald spot? It’s not working. You look like a scarecrow who lost a fight with a lawnmower.”

And don’t get me started on the scale. Step on it, the critic gasps like a Victorian woman fainting. “Two pounds up? Oh my God, how will you ever squeeze into that casket when the time comes?”

The critic on social media

Even online, I can’t escape. I’ll write something thoughtful, maybe even funny, and post it. Then the critic: “Nice. Eight likes. Your dog’s photo got more than that and he doesn’t even know how to spell.”

I’ll see some guy my age on Instagram doing yoga on a cliff at sunrise, smiling like he has no blood pressure issues, and my critic says, “Look at him. He’s zen. You just threw out your back reaching for the remote.”

Why it works

Here’s the thing. The critic is persuasive because it’s not wrong all the time. That’s what makes it dangerous. It mixes truth with insults like some sadistic bartender serving whiskey with a splash of bleach. Sure, I am older, slower, softer around the edges. Yes, my best days of hair are behind me. And fine, I’ll admit it, my plank does look like a demon being evicted.

But the critic exaggerates. It turns facts into final judgments. It says, “You screwed up this one thing, therefore you are a screw-up.” It loves absolutes. Never. Always. Everyone. No one. The critic has the vocabulary of a dictator.

The funny part

I’ve started thinking of my critic like an old buddy I never asked to hang out with. Picture a guy in a dirty bathrobe sitting on my couch, eating my chips, and narrating my life. That’s him. “Another cup of coffee? Great idea, champ, maybe this one will finally make you interesting.” “Going to the bathroom again? Wow, your prostate has a busier schedule than you do.”

Sometimes I want to answer back out loud just to freak him out. “Hey critic, shut up, you’re not paying rent.” But then people would think I’ve graduated from eccentric to unstable, and let’s be honest, my critic would love that. “Talking to yourself now? Perfect. Next step is yelling at pigeons in the park.”

The coping tactics

I’ve tried some tricks. I’ll imagine the critic’s voice as a cartoon character. Mickey Mouse telling me I’m useless is more funny than hurtful. Or I’ll shrink it down to sound like a kid. Hard to take seriously when it squeaks, “You’ll never finish that project, mister.” Sometimes I give it a name. Calling it “Steve” helps. “Shut up, Steve. Nobody cares.”

Other days I lean into it, treating it like a roast. If the critic says, “You look like you crawled out of a dumpster,” I’ll add, “Yeah, but at least it was the recycling bin, classy trash.” That way I get the last punchline.

The hard truth

But here’s the part I can’t joke away. Sometimes, the critic doesn’t sound funny. Sometimes it doesn’t sound like Don Rickles or Mickey Mouse. Sometimes it sounds exactly like me. And when it does, that’s the problem. Because when you hear something in your own voice, long enough, you start to believe it.

That’s how bullies work. They repeat the same garbage until you internalize it. Except this bully doesn’t go home at the end of the day. This one lives in your head, sleeps in your bed, eats your food.

The truth is, my inner critic isn’t protecting me. It isn’t motivating me. It isn’t keeping me humble. It’s bullying me. And when you let that bully run the show, you don’t need enemies. You’ll sabotage yourself just fine.

Here’s the gut punch. If someone else said the things my inner critic says, I’d cut them out of my life in a heartbeat. I’d tell them to get lost, block their number, maybe even knock them on their ass if they really pushed it. But because it’s me, I let it slide. I let it linger. I mistake cruelty for honesty.

And that’s the biggest lie the critic tells: that it’s just “telling the truth.” No. Truth doesn’t break you down. Truth doesn’t call you names. Truth doesn’t strip away your dignity. Truth is neutral. It just is. The critic is not truth. It’s fear wearing a mask.

So maybe the job isn’t to kill the critic. Maybe it’s to stop mistaking it for truth. To recognize the difference between reality and ridicule. To stop giving the mic to the bully in my brain.

Because the hardest truth is this: if you don’t stand up to your inner critic, you end up living your whole damn life as your own bully’s punching bag. And life is too short to spend it heckled from the cheap seats inside your own head.