The Inner Critic: Why We Devalue Ourselves and Others

After a presentation, Olena receives a message from a colleague: “You explained the difficult part really well.” She starts typing “thank you,” deletes it, and writes, “It was nothing special. The material was already there.” An hour later she spots an error on one slide and spends the evening returning to it. The praise seems to have failed an inspection, while a single inaccuracy has been granted permission to speak for the entire piece of work.

The next day, a colleague gets promoted. Olena says he simply knows how to please management, and for a few minutes she genuinely feels better. She can put aside uncomfortable questions about wanting a promotion herself, being afraid to ask for more, and feeling hurt that her efforts went unnoticed. Yet when she considers proposing a new project, the familiar voice returns: “Who do you think you are? Anyone could do it better.”

Devaluation can bring brief relief. That is part of what makes it so easy to return to. The question is what it costs: what happens to wishes, relationships, and learning when dismissing things becomes a habitual way of bearing pain? The Critical Parent in transactional analysis offers a way to examine this habit. It is a psychological model of inner experience; a personal history needs attention to particular events. For a written reflection, an ordinary, moderately difficult incident is enough, without reconstructing traumatic experiences in detail.

“It is a small thing” can mean different things. After a minor mistake, those words sometimes help restore a sense of proportion. Said to someone about a loss, however, the same words can close a conversation in which they need attention and support. Their meaning becomes clearer from what remains possible afterwards: can the event still be discussed, its consequences acknowledged, and a response considered?

In devaluation, something important loses the right to carry weight. Effort becomes “nothing special,” wishes become “silly,” hurt becomes “oversensitivity,” and another person’s achievement becomes “pure luck.” Details that might change the conclusion are pushed aside. The answer is settled before the particular event has been examined.

Olena may indeed have used existing material. She also selected it, understood it, and explained it. Acknowledging both gives a more accurate account of the work. When all that remains is “I did nothing,” the assessment no longer helps identify what worked and what needs revising.

Transactional analysis describes Parent, Adult, and Child ego states. Parent responses can include support, rules, prohibitions, and learned judgments. The Critical Parent provides a useful image for noticing an inner tone that quickly decides how someone ought to be and what they should feel ashamed of. The International Transactional Analysis Association’s introduction outlines this model.

Having standards can take different forms. You can remind yourself of a deadline and check your work. You can also call yourself useless because another revision is needed. In the second case, the task acquires a companion: somehow enduring your own attack. That uses energy, attention, and time as well.

The tone may resemble familiar voices from the past. Present relationships can sustain it too: a manager who ridicules mistakes, an environment that values only flawless results, or comparisons that make your own life look like a failure. Both the learned habit and the conditions that keep confirming it deserve attention.

Someone is turned down for a job they badly wanted. Thinking “They are all idiots there” can briefly keep disappointment at a distance. After a breakup, “That relationship meant nothing” may cover longing and a need for closeness. Declaring a wish unimportant can make it less painful that the wish went unanswered.

Another response turns inward: “I ruined everything. It always happens with me.” The conclusion hurts, but can sometimes offer an explanation and a sense of control. If the cause lies entirely within me, perhaps I can become perfect and never experience rejection again. Other people’s decisions, chance, and the situation’s actual limitations then fall out of view.

Following traumatic experiences, minimising an event’s significance may also help someone survive what was too difficult to acknowledge at the time. It matters to understand which pain this response helped keep at a distance and what it is doing to life now. A person is entitled to name what happened gradually and seek support at their own pace.

When a relationship is declared unimportant, understanding what you wanted from it can disappear along with the pain. When someone else’s skill is explained entirely by their connections, it becomes harder to notice something you could learn. When every success of your own is accidental, it never becomes experience you can draw on before the next attempt.

Over time, the range of possibilities may narrow. A person stops showing their work to avoid criticism, asking for affection to avoid appearing needy, or taking up a subject because being a beginner feels shameful. From outside, this can resemble independence or high standards. In the life actually being lived, fewer situations remain in which it is possible to want something and tolerate an uncertain answer.

Relationships carry a cost too. Someone’s happiness is met with a corrective remark; a complaint receives a comparison with people who have it worse. Gradually, people stop bringing important things to this person. Someone accustomed to devaluing may be genuinely puzzled by their distance while overlooking their own contribution to it.

If Olena repeatedly calms herself by diminishing her colleague, she is using a familiar rule of judgment again: for things to feel better, someone must turn out not to be good enough. Next time, her own work may become the target. Permission to use a humiliating tone is already there, and the criteria can easily be applied to herself.

In that sense, we can speak of feeding the Critical Parent: giving its way of talking more room and authority. This describes a habit that is repeated and justified. It may become easier to reach for precisely when someone is most vulnerable—after a mistake, when tired, following rejection, or while needing help.

That leaves an important question unanswered by the advice to “devalue wisely.” What are we practising when we repeatedly turn to contempt for relief? We can limit contact with someone who causes harm, turn down work on unacceptable terms, and reconsider a setback’s significance while retaining the ability to acknowledge our pain and another person’s complexity.

After a breakup, someone might say, “That relationship mattered to me. I miss it, and there were things in it I am no longer willing to accept.” Both the loss and the decision have a place in this account. Longing ceases to be proof that returning is necessary, and leaving does not require declaring everything that happened meaningless.

After a job rejection, it is possible to return to available facts: someone else was chosen, the reasons are only partly known, and my experience has not disappeared. There are choices from there: ask for specific feedback, revise a portfolio, or look for a different opening. The event acquires limits within which action becomes possible.

The same applies to judging people. A colleague can have connections and do good work. A promotion can be unfair while my own work still needs to become more visible. Several facts can coexist. The more precisely they are named, the less a sweeping verdict is needed for protection.

Useful feedback leaves something identifiable to work on: “The conclusion needs a source,” or “We agreed on a different deadline.” You can check the facts, ask a question, agree, or disagree. A humiliating assessment expands to the whole person: “Are you capable of thinking at all?” It makes the next action harder to see while creating plenty of work trying to prove that you deserve to be there.

Even a valid point can be delivered with contempt. Two questions then need to be separated: what needs changing in the work, and how am I being spoken to? A possible reply is, “I will correct the error. Please discuss it without insulting me.” Taking responsibility for your part leaves room to object to how you are treated.

An affectionate name also needs context. It can express closeness or be used to put someone in a lower position. Tone, circumstances, the person’s preference, and whether a request for a different form of address is respected all matter. “Please call me Alexandra in work meetings” is sufficient; proving a hidden motive is unnecessary.

Sometimes people hold on to a harsh inner tone because they fear they will stop trying without it. Any attempt at kindness then feels like letting themselves off the hook. Yet responsibility requires being able to see an action, bear its consequences, and do something to put it right. Humiliation can fill that space with shame.

In four experiments, Juliana Breines and Serena Chen found that a more compassionate response to failure was associated with greater motivation to work on personal weaknesses; in one experiment, participants spent longer preparing for another test. Breines and Chen, 2012. This offers a reason to examine the familiar belief that improvement depends entirely on inner cruelty.

After a hurtful remark, self-support might sound like this: “I snapped and hurt someone. It is hard to acknowledge that. I can apologise, listen to their response, and consider how to stop earlier next time.” Both care for oneself and work still to be done remain present. The Centre for Clinical Interventions also offers practical resources on self-criticism and self-compassion.

Recall a recent moment when you thought about yourself or someone else, “Nothing special,” “They have only themselves to blame,” or “All this is silly.” Write down the actual phrase and what happened before it. Then return to the moment before those words arrived. What was painful to acknowledge? Perhaps you wanted praise, felt hurt by rejection, or were afraid to hope again.

Notice two different periods of time. Did those words bring immediate relief? What happened later: did a conversation end, a wish disappear from your plans, or a piece of work remain unseen? The personal cost of a response that felt protective in the first minute gradually becomes more visible.

Try describing the same event without passing judgment on a whole person. Name the event, your feeling, and one available action: “I wanted that position and I am disappointed. I want to find out which skills I need.” If the new phrase feels unnatural, a precise account of the facts is enough for now. Demanding that you immediately learn to support yourself correctly can easily become another occasion for self-criticism.

Olena can answer the next compliment with a simple “thank you,” without immediately explaining why her work is not good enough. Later, she can still check the slide and correct the error. She can begin a conversation about promotion with what she wants herself, rather than searching for proof that her colleague does not deserve it.

An inner tone changes through small moments like these. There needs to be room for what went well and what hurts, for seeing a mistake at its actual scale without granting it the right to define the whole person. That leaves more possibilities for working, disagreeing, saying no, and beginning again without adding self-inflicted humiliation to every difficulty.

The article on shame, anger, and the freedom to live continues this subject: how the experience of being judged affects closeness, learning, and the willingness to be seen.