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“The inner critic is not an enemy. The inner critic has good intentions. The inner critic is a benevolent protector,” says Greg Schmaus, holistic health practitioner and integrative mental health coach, on this episode of Mental Health in a Modern World. After personally overcoming severe anxiety and OCD, Greg Schmaus has dedicated the last decade to guiding thousands through healing by combining lifestyle coaching, psycho-emotional work, mindfulness, and archetypal practices.

Today, Greg Schmaus breaks down the origins of the inner critic, revealing how this often-misunderstood internal voice is not something we’re born with, but a protector part we inherit in response to early criticism or shame—usually from parents or authority figures. He exposes the limitations and potential harm of common self-help advice that urges us to “eliminate” or “replace” the inner critic with positive thinking, arguing instead for a revolutionary approach: befriending and understanding the inner critic’s protective role.

In this episode, Greg Schmaus shares a powerful meditative practice to relate to your inner critic with compassion, explains the neuroscience and psychology behind parts work, and explores how modern life’s overwhelming flow of information fuels cycles of not-enoughness and self-sabotage. You'll walk away with concrete tools to begin unblending from your inner critic and forging a healthier, more spacious relationship with yourself.

Tune in to Mental Health in a Modern World for a transformative perspective on the root cause of your inner dialogue—and discover how true healing begins by turning toward, not away from, your most critical parts.

5 Key Takeaways

Unlock new freedom from your inner critic—here are five powerful steps you can use starting today:

1. Recognize that your inner critic is a protector, not an enemy—approach it with curiosity instead of resistance.
2. Pause and practice "unblend and befriend": create space between yourself and the critical voice, then get to know its positive intentions.
3. Identify the core wound or belief your inner critic is trying to protect (such as shame, humiliation, or not-enoughness).
4. Write out your self-critical contract: clearly state the agreement, behavior, benefit, and cost driving your inner dialogue.
5. Balance your information consumption with mindful integration to prevent your inner critic from growing louder—apply what you learn rather than just accumulating more knowledge.

Start implementing one step today and witness the shift inside yourself—your healing begins with action.

Memorable Quotes

"The inner critic is not an enemy. The inner critic has good intentions. The inner critic is a benevolent protector."

"No child is ever born with an inner critic. All judgments and all criticisms are borrowed and inherited."

"In parts work, what's called unblend and befriend. Unblend means we separate ourselves from the part; befriending means it's not the enemy—it's a part that we see in a benevolent way."

Resources Mentioned

Family Constellation Work (as taught by Sarah Peyton) - https://sarahpeyton.com/

Connect with Greg

Website - https://www.healing4d.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/4d_healing/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@gregschmaus

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-schmaus-22929589/

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The inner critic is not an enemy. The inner critic

has good intentions. The inner critic is a

benevolent protector. And the inner critic is

trying to protect you from some external

perpetrator that created a core wound

of shame, humiliation, embarrassment,

or a core belief. I'm not enough, I'm too much.

It's actually trying to protect a pain or a

core wound that lives inside of us from a long time ago.

In a world moving faster than our minds were designed to handle, mental

health is becoming one of the defining challenges of our time. Welcome to Mental

Health in a Modern World with holistic health practitioner Greg

Schmauss. After overcoming severe anxiety and OCD in his

own life, Greg dedicated the past decade to helping others heal

through a fully integrated approach to mental health. Combining lifestyle

coaching, psycho emotional healing, mindfulness, and

archetypal work. Over the years, he's facilitated thousands of

sessions guiding people back to peace, clarity, and a deeper

connection with themselves. Each week, Greg shares powerful solo

insights, conversations with leading voices in holistic healing, and

immersive live coaching sessions that take you inside the healing process

itself. He new episodes every Friday. Follow the show and start

reclaiming sovereignty over your mind in a modern world. Here's

Greg. Hi, this is Greg Schmauss and welcome back to Mental Health

in a Modern World. Today is a very important solo

episode and this is a topic I've wanted to cover for a while now.

So I'm very grateful to dive into this with you today, which

is healing the inner critic. And the inner critic is one

of the most common challenges that I see in my

one on one coaching practice and something that I would say pretty

much anyone that has had a childhood, has

had, you know, a life experience, a life journey, probably once

upon a time or consistently has struggled with an inner

critic. And there's many important reasons that we're going to

get into, but it's just such an essential topic because

one thing that I also find is in the self help and therapy world,

the inner critic is very misunderstood. And a lot of the inner critic

is demonized and is approached in a way that often

actually does more harm than good. And a lot of times can

even inflame the inner critic when we approach it in the wrong way.

So today my intention is to dive into what the inner critic

really is, why it's there, and how we can begin to

work with it in a way that actually begins to create more space,

turns the volume down, and allows us to move into a new

dimension within ourselves. So the inner critic, very simply

is an internal voice that judges or criticizes. So it's a voice

within ourselves that uses judgment and criticism for

various reasons, and we're going to get into what those reasons are.

Unfortunately, most self help sees the inner critic

as an enemy and tries to either get rid of it or.

Or replace it with positive thinking. And I am all for

positive thinking, but one of the things that happens is when you

always are trying to replace a negative with a positive, you

create more polarization. You create this inner

conflict between the dark and the light, between the good and the bad, between

the negative and the positive. And you create this pattern of

resistance, you know, this aversion to the negative and

attachment to the positive. And remember, there's an old saying, what you resist, persists.

So a lot of times, the thing we're actually fighting against, we're feeding more energy

into it, because whatever you push against always

pushes back. And so we're going to approach the inner critic

today from a very different perspective, one that creates a lot more

ease, one that is a lot more gentle, and one that is a lot

more benevolent for all parts within ourselves.

Now, it's important to remember that no child is ever

born with an inner critic. So we're actually going to start going

all the way back to the moment of birth. So no child

comes into this world with an inner critic,

consciously. No child is born into this world

and looks at themselves in the mirror and says, you look a little

chunky today. You know, you look a little off today, you

look a little overweight today. You know, no baby is ever looking

at itself through that lens. And so because no

children, no babies are ever born with an

inner critic, it means that all judgments and all

criticisms are borrowed. All judgments

and all criticisms are inherited, right? Nothing

is original within ourselves when it comes to judgment and

criticism. All judgments and all criticisms are

borrowed and inherited. That's an important fact to

really understand. And so with

that, all inner critics are born from

outer critics, right? We learn

and we develop an inner critic in response to

some outer critic that we felt judged,

criticized, or shamed by, right? So we have this

experience with an outer critic, which creates a core

wound. It could be the core wound of shame,

humiliation, embarrassment, or

we create beliefs that, I'm not enough, there's something

wrong with me, I'm not enough of this, I'm too much of that.

And so we have this experience, which is very often

more cases than not, starting with a parent,

a mother or father figure, or a primary caretaker, that we

experience some criticism from, some judgment from, and we experience

a Wound of shame, humiliation, embarrassment, disconnection.

A belief I'm not enough, I'm too much, I'm this, I'm that.

And so all inner critics are born

out of the experience of an outer critic, which is why

all criticism, all judgment, is borrowed and

inherited. Now, the inner critic, which is

born out of the experience of an outer critic,

is, in response, a protector, right? So the inner

critic is there to act as a protective shield

from the outer critic. And you might ask, well, how does

criticizing myself protect me from an external critic?

Here's an analogy. There's many ways in which it happens. If you

punched me in the left arm, it would hurt, might hurt pretty badly.

But if I punch myself repeatedly in the left arm,

constantly, day in and day out, to the point where I lose

feeling or sensation in my left arm, and then you go

and strike my left arm, I'm actually not going to feel it as

much. So because I inflict the same wound

upon myself, I actually create some

immunity to you wounding me. So the pain of the blow

of your criticism is actually lessened

when I actually judge or criticize or wound myself

in the same way. So one of the ways that we protect

ourselves from the external perpetrator is we

develop an internal perpetrator, and the inner

perpetrator is doing the same thing that the external

perpetrator did as a way of creating immunity

from the pain of the blow from outside. So that's number one, is the

inner critic is a protector who inflicts the

same wound as a way of creating immunity

from more wounding from the outside. The second

piece is the inner critic. As a result of

the shame, humiliation, embarrassment, and not enoughness

that we experience due to the outer critic, the

inner critic will become almost like a

motivator of I'm going to judge,

criticize, and shame you as a way of trying

to motivate you to be perfect and better enough

to make you invulnerable to other people's criticism. So

the inner critic becomes almost like the whip that is

whipping the horse or the animal to go faster, to

push harder, to do more, etc. Right?

So the inner critic becomes the whip, motivating you

to become better and better and better till eventually

you are invulnerable to criticism. Now, it's a losing

battle because that actually ends up doing more harm than good.

But you could see how the inner critic has different tactics

as a form of protection. The other piece

is the inner critic will often create

loyalty or alliance with the outer

critic as a means of Easing the pain. For

example, if I'm criticizing myself in a certain

way and then you criticize me in the same way, we're kind of

actually in agreement. So the inner critic is actually creating an

unconscious agreement with its perpetrators as a

way of creating some sort of loyalty or alliance. And

that also eases the pain. In addition to that,

a child's sense of self is totally dependent

initially on its experience of mom and dad,

right? So mom and dad are the reference point for

how the child comes to know itself, especially

as it's starting to grow and develop an identity.

So, for example, when a child sees mom or dad as upset,

the child immediately says, mom and dad are upset with me.

If the child sees mom or dad as angry, the child says,

mom and dad are angry with me. If the child is

experiencing mom or dad as judgmental, the child

immediately says, well, if mom and dad are judgmental, it means

that I must not be enough. So you see how the child

develops a story, a narrative, a

conclusion and an identity. Belief systems

based on how mom or dad experience the child.

Essentially, the child sees itself through

mom or dad's eyes. And a lot of times, if there was

judgment or criticism, we see ourselves

through the critical eye of mom or dad. And

that becomes a contract that we have

unconsciously to see ourselves through the eyes of

mom or dad. And so within these contracts,

this inner critic stays very alive in our unconscious.

The reason I want to lay all this out to start is so you

can really see that the inner critic is not an enemy.

The inner critic has good intentions.

The inner critic is a benevolent protector.

And the inner critic is trying to protect you from

some external perpetrator that created a

core wound of shame, humiliation,

embarrassment, or a core belief. I'm not enough,

I'm too much, et cetera. So the inner

critic is actually, paradoxically, even though it can

create pain, it's actually trying to protect

a pain or a core wound that lives inside of us from

a long time ago. Now, a lot of times

these core wounds happened when we were quite young,

maybe we were five years old, maybe we were six years old, maybe

we were seven years old, or even younger. And so the

inner critic, on a deeper level, because a lot of these

parts in the psyche, they're. They don't really exist in time the way

we do, especially when there's trauma, they get frozen in time.

The inner critic is very often protecting a five

year old part of us, a six year old part of us, a

seven year old part of us. And so this inner Critic you might

be 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years old, is

still trying to protect a five year old inside of you.

And so that inner voice that is actually driving most people's

behaviors day in and day out even, and especially

people that are very successful are very often driven

by their inner critics. Professional athletes and people that are

very successful in the business world, a lot of their success is

built upon their inner critic. It's built upon

their not enoughness. And so they have to overcompensate

by becoming so incredibly wealthy and successful to try and

make up for that not enoughness. But it never actually fills the void

because that five year old part still carries that core wound.

And so we can actually build a whole empire in business

and in, in the outer world based on the

motivation of our inner critic to try and prove that we are enough.

But unfortunately, inner work is the only way, it's the only path

for us to really heal that core wound. But you can see

that you might be 50, 60 years old

and the inner critic is still trying to protect a vulnerable,

shamed, humiliated 5 year old inside of you.

And so this is why when it comes to the inner critic, we don't want

to try and get rid of it, we don't want to demonize it, we don't

want to make it this negative enemy inside of us. And we don't want

to just try and replace it with positive thinking. We have to

really see the benevolence of it, the loyalty of it,

the goodness in it, and the role that it's really trying to play for you.

And we want to do what's called befriending. And so what I'm going to do

now is I'm going to guide you through a little practice, even just five minutes,

a little meditative practice where we can get to know our inner

critic. So if you're able to, if you're not

driving a car, operating heavy machinery,

just take a moment and go inward, take a moment and

go inside and close your eyes, take a breath or two from your belly.

And just get curious about this inner critic. And we're going to call this inner

critic a part and a protector part.

And see where you might find this inner critic, this

protector part, somewhere in or around your body

or mind. You might notice it in your

mind, you might find it in your body somewhere.

So just take a moment and find where

this inner critic is in

or around your body or mind.

And just trust wherever you're led.

If you're having trouble, just ask the inner Critter where it

resides inside of you and notice where your attention goes.

And then just beginning to focus your attention on it and

seeing what you notice about it.

How big or small is it,

how heavy or light is it,

How close or far do you feel from it,

How loud is it, volume wise from

1 to 10.

And anything else that you notice about the inner critic when you focus on

it.

And notice how you feel towards it, do you feel

love, compassion, curiosity, connection,

calmness? Or do you feel any sort of judgment

or resistance to it, like you want it to go away or you don't like

it? And if it's anything other than love,

connection, curiosity, compassion, anything

other than what we would call self, energy,

higher self, ask those other parts to open

up space for you, to just give you a few minutes to really get

to know this part without resistance,

judgment or interference. And see if those

parts are willing to just give you a little space just to be with the

critic from a place of

self. And you'll feel them relax back so

you have more heart centered space for the critic.

And then ask the critic if there's anything it wants you to know about itself

or the role that it's playing for you.

And without trying to think about it, just allow yourself to receive whatever it

has to say, anything about the role that it's playing,

or anything it wants you to know about itself.

What's it trying to do for you?

How long has it been in this extreme role for?

How old were you when it started in this role?

How old does it think you are now?

What is it afraid would happen if it didn't criticize you

anymore? What is it afraid would

happen if it didn't play this role for you anymore?

And is there a core wound that this critic is trying

to protect?

And once you've gotten to know this critic a little bit and the role that

it's playing for you, just thank it for its benevolence,

for its protection, and for what

it's tried to do, even though it's challenging sometimes.

And see how the critic receives that acknowledgment as

you befriend it.

And just ask it what it might need in order

to open up more space in you, to quiet

down the criticism or to shift into a new role of

relating, a new way of relating. Is that, is there anything the critic might need

in order to make a transition? Or does it still feel like it needs

to be this harsh or this extreme? Just see what it says,

Then just thank it for sharing with you

and that you'll follow up with it and continue

building this relationship.

And then whenever you feel ready, just bringing yourself

back and opening up the eyes.

So as you can see, this critic is

not bad. This critic is not wrong. This critic is not an

enemy. It's a benevolent protector

that's protecting a core wound, an unhealed

emotion, or an exiled part

that is still carrying a lot of pain or trauma.

And so the first thing we want to do is in parts, work what's

called unblend and befriend. Unblend means we

separate ourselves from the part. So it's you self

part here. If you're just

listening to the audio, I was using my hands to demonstrate

the unblending process. And then once we unblend, we befriend.

Befriending means it's not the enemy. It's, it's some. It's.

It's a part that we see in a benevolent way. It's a

part that we see the good intentions that it has, and it's a part that

we make friends with it, right? So

it's no longer an enemy that we're in resistance to or in

conflict with. And so once we do this,

we realize that these parts have contracts. These

parts have contracts that they carry from a very young age, going back a

long, long ways. And contract work is work

that I learned from one of my mentors, Sarah Paton, who

does a lot of family constellation work,

resonant healing work, and is also a

neuroscientist and, and unconscious Contracts

are agreements that we make within ourselves and

with others. And an agreement would sound something like this.

A contract would sound something like this. I, Greg,

solemnly swear to my essential self

that I will judge and criticize myself in order to

motivate myself to be good enough, in which

I'm invulnerable to other people's criticism no matter the

cost to myself or I, Greg, solemnly swear to

my essential self that I will judge and criticize myself in order to

protect myself from my judgmental or

critical parent, no matter the cost to myself.

So you can see in this contract, it's worded very

specifically. I, Greg, solemnly swear to my essential

self. That means I am making an agreement with myself

that I will judge and criticize myself. So there's a,

a behavior there, right? I will judge and criticize,

criticize myself in order to protect

myself from my critical parent in order to become

invulnerable to criticism. So there's the benefit, no

matter the cost to myself. There's the cost. So in every contract,

there's four ingredients. There's an agreement,

a behavior, a benefit, and a cost.

And it's really, really powerful to write out and state

the contract of any critical or

sabotaging behavior that you might struggle with.

Because by naming the contract, you can see that,

number one, it's an agreement. Number two, there's a

behavior. Number three, there's always a benefit to the

behavior. And number four, there's always a cost to it.

And so within these contracts, we identify those four

ingredients. The agreement, the behavior,

the benefit, and the cost. And the truth

is, if we weren't benefiting from

any sabotaging behavior, we wouldn't do it.

Whether it's the inner critic, self judgment,

patterns of addiction, or other patterns of self sabotage,

we always benefit from behaviors, even if

they seem negative in orientation. So we

identify the agreement, the behavior,

the benefit, and the cost. And by identifying

the benefit, we identify the unmet need

that is getting met through the behavior. And we also

identify the core wound that that is being protected

as a result of the behavior. And so that gives us almost

like this breadcrumb trail if we know where we need to go to do some

deeper healing or some deeper exploration. And

then once we've done that, then we can release the

contract, the agreement, or the vow. Right? So what I

would invite you to do as a follow up and as an integration

from this episode is spend a little time

unblending and befriending your inner critic, just like we did in

that short meditation practice. And then also see if

you can write out a contract which would say, I then

state your name solemnly swear to my essential self

that I will state the behavior, judge, or criticize myself

in order to. What is the benefit that you're getting by doing it? Or

what is the protector trying to achieve? In order to protect the

core wound of shame and humiliation? In order to protect

myself from outer critics, in order to be good enough to be

invulnerable to criticism, no matter the cost to myself.

And see if you can work with the part unblend

and befriend and state the contract and see what

that does for you. See if that opens up some space for you

to begin to relate to the critic in a new way. And just by

relating to it in a new way, it will create some shifts

inside of you. It will turn the volume down. It will create less polarization,

less inner conflict, and will allow a little bit

more of a sense of wholeness and spaciousness

within you. The other piece I just want to touch on is

our modern world. Remember the show's mental health in a modern world.

Our modern world is filled with

information. And the rate of information

consumption is greater than it's ever been in human history.

The average person today consumes more information in one day

than our ancestors did in a whole lifetime, which is very scary.

Now, the rate of information consumption

is outpacing the rate of integration,

which means the rate that you consume information is a lot faster

than the rate that you're integrating, embodying, or

applying the information right? So the rate of

consumption is faster than the rate of integration

or application or embodiment. It's kind

of like eating or consuming more food than your

digestive system can digest, metabolize,

assimilate, and eliminate. And what happens when you

consume more information that you're

more information than you're able to integrate

is you create this sense of, I know better, but I'm

not doing better. That creates an inner critic.

So the other piece I want to share with you is be very careful

with over consuming more information

than you can effectively apply,

integrate, and embody, because that will create more

of an inner critic, more of a shame cycle,

and will actually become a perpetuating pattern of self

sabotage. So the inner critic and the saboteur

archetype always go together and they feed each other. Most

people think that they criticize themselves because they sabotage.

A lot of times people sabotage themselves to give

themselves more things to criticize. So it creates

what's called a negative feedback loop. So my invitation to you,

other than really understanding the origins of it,

unblending from it, befriending it, and identifying

the Contract, is be very mindful of the information

consumption and the rate of consumption versus

the rate of integration, application, and

embodiment. And the last thing is remember,

whenever you're seeing yourself through the eyes

of criticism, you're seeing yourself through

the critical eye of someone else. You're seeing

yourself through the eyes of your critical mother, your

critical father, your critical priest, your

critical rabbi, your critical teacher, your critical coach.

And so remember that whenever there's an inner

critic, there's always an external critic. And the

inner critic is the protector against the external

critic. So we unblend, we befriend,

we identify the contract, and we open up space

to begin to see ourselves with fresh eyes.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you liked it,

please subscribe. Please share it with anyone that you feel

would benefit from this content, which is most people. So

please share this episode. I want to spread the love and share

this content with people that really need it. Because I

truly believe that at this time in human history,

you know, mental health in a modern world is really the

absolute essential because the stakes are quite high right now, the

rates of mental illness are quite high, and we kind

of need all hands on deck to share the love, to

spread the healing, and to be an example

of mental health in a modern world. If you enjoyed

this episode and you'd like to take a deeper dive, my online

program, Healing the Mind A Journey to Wholeness is a great 21 day

program. It's my flagship mental health program that takes a fully

holistic and integrative approach to mental health. So if you're

interested in that, you can go to

healing4d.comhtm

and use the code podcast at checkout to save 20% off.

I also have my online program Healing youg Core Archetypes, a Journey

of Empowerment which goes into the seven core archetypes

that are at the root of the healing journey. And Healing the Inner Critic

is a huge piece of those seven archetypes. And

so we go into the saboteur, the victim, the prostitute, the child, the

mother, the father, the imago de all of these relate to the

inner critic. So if you want to take a deep dive into some archetypal

healing, you can go to healing40.com

forward/hca for healing your core archetypes HCA

and also use the code podcast to save 20% off.

If you're interested in some one on one coaching, you can go to my website

healing40.com you can reach out to me directly and if you

just want to set up a coaching session with me to get started, you can

go to calendly.com

healing4d and you can set up a session with me there.

And I look forward to sharing more with you in next week's episode.

Have a beautiful week and I will talk to you soon. Bye bye.