At times, we do hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. We do interpret thoughts differently.

I don’t think you can just add positive thoughts to replace the negative inner critic, sometimes we are consciously not aware how deep these thoughts goes, you can’t just do some positive coverups, it’s like a band aid on an infected wound, temporary no new germs but the infection is still there. Short term you can, but in the long term it will come back. I think you have allow your feelings and figure what that’s really the issue. All those I suck, I am horrible, I can’t do this is often a cover of some much deeper issues, I don’t think a quick fix just with positive thought will help long term. It’s a slow process where you slowly allow yourself to release the feelings, these thought will come up, but the more you learn to accept and release them you will finally reach a point where you are in control of them and they will be gone. I like to ask myself indirect question to my soul with “I wonder why/if” these indirect questions to my self often leads me to the real issues, it’s amazing if we listen to ourself how much we ourselves are able to fix or figure out. Once I really know what the issue is then my process of accepting and releasing become a walk in the park.

Be wary of having emotional goals for yourself. If I reach this then I will be a better person, then I will be happy. These emotional goals is what triggers you strong self critics if you don’t reach them. Not only did you fail you goal but also all the emotions you attached to them will come back at you ten folds. Lets say you goal: if I can only loose this weights everything will be different and I will be a happy person, well you did not loose the weight and now because you put all those emotional expectations with the weight loss the negative self judgement/critics come back full speed. You are a failure if I only I had lost the weight I would have been happy.
In any situation I always think what is the worst that can happen..Jf you don’t reach your goal sometimes when you answer that question you end up laughing as it seems so ridiculous. That is why just observing you feelings in a non judgmental way is the best way for you to be able to work on whats really going on in your mind. It is possible, but you have to practice it over and over, and slowly you self criticism will diminish. Within reason embrace your self criticism and look at it that it’s sign you have to work on something.

I you ever read about high end athletes this is something they work on all the time, there is no quick fix. It’s a process but you will need to search different self help tools try them and just stick with one your instinct feels is right. In the end you want to reach a point where you are your own therapist. But it requires practicing.

I have been very lucky never to have had very strong inner negative self doubts/critics, honestly I don’t worry about things that are out of my control, I might have very overall goal in life but there is no guarantee I will be able to reach them, and that’s ok. My son on the other hand has especially tremendous self doubt/critics, both in life and when he plays tennis, tennis is very hard inner game which really is the biggest obstacle to be really successful.

What looks like the closest what I have always used myself is the sedona method and what has helped my son a lot, it’s an easy tool to understand and they let you get the main idea of the program for free. It’s a great little simple tool. Besides once you sign up you get free email that covers different areas. But is just one of many. Another great book I have read is Tim Gallwey who has written a whole series of inner game books.

Marina

The false self, in Donald Winnicott’s developmental schema, refers to certain types of false personalities that develop as the result of early and repeated environmental failure, with the result that the true self-potential is not realized, but hidden. This idea appears in many papers and is fully presented in “The theory of infant-parent relationship” (Winnicott, 1965c).