inner critic

How To Get A Toxic Mother Out Of Your Nervous System

When we are children our survival depends on having support from our biological caregivers, principally our mother. If she rejects us, we die. Since our very life depends on her support, this gives us a tremendous desire for approval from our mother that goes deep into our nervous system.

If our mother was emotionally mature, mentally developed and physically competent at facing the challenges of her own life, her relationship with our father and of raising us, her reciprocal feelings of love towards us motivates her to meet our basic needs. Our nervous system calms down over time as we learn to regulate our emotions via the empathic bond that we share with our mothers, and to a lesser extent with our fathers, siblings and other significant older people in our infant lives.

Over time as we begin to individuate from our mothers, particularly during adolescence, our need for love, support and approval from her diminishes as we learn how to form healthy relationships with other people and to meet our own survival needs. Once our survival is no longer dependent on our mother and we are free to pursue our own goals, even ones that she may not approve of. This is part of the process of growing from a dependent boy into a [intlink id=”33″ type=”page”]confident, independent man[/intlink].

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Deal With Generalized Anxiety

Anxiety sucks, especially when we don’t know what’s causing it and what to do about it. When we feel anxious all the time for no obvious reason, it’s called generalized anxiety. However there are often things we can do to reduce, eliminate or manage generalized anxiety so that it doesn’t ruin our life.

There are many reasons why we may feel anxious. Solving this problem can sometimes involve trying a number of different approaches until we find one or more that work for us. Based on my experience of what works for me and my clients when feeling anxious, here are some strategies to try: (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Silence Your Inner Critic

G’day, guys. Today you’re going to learn about how to quieten your inner critic. So your inner critic is that voice in your head that tells you that you’re stupid or that you’re wrong or that you’re not allowed to do things that you want to do or generally makes your life kind of miserable by putting the boot in and ripping into you at any opportunity.

If you’re anything like me, you have, or maybe had in the past, a very strong inner critic that is the result of a lot of criticism that you may have received when you were a kid or as an adolescent or even growing up and as an adult. Criticism even as an adult can still sting.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

The Voice In Our Heads That Creates Self-Doubt

I have a little voice in my head that’s capable of creating almost unlimited amounts of self-doubt. Actually it’s not so little. It’s the voice that shouts “It’s not going to work!” when I try something new that’s really important to me, “You’re going to screw it up!” when I’m playing music for other people, or “She won’t want to talk to you!” when I see a woman I find really attractive. And fuck it’s been pissing me off lately.

After years of personal development, workshops, counseling courses, life coach training courses, and just plain good old procrastination, I’ve finally decided to offer one-on-one coaching to other men via Skype. I am way qualified for this by now; most of my life coach friends have far less training and counseling experience than I do, yet they started coaching ages ago. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be doing the same.

Listening to Our Inner Critic can lead to Self-Doubt

Well, there is according to my inner critic. No sooner have I hit the “order” button on the business cards calling myself a Confidence Coach than that shitty little voice in my head says: “Nobody’s going to pay you to coach them!… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago