If your mind is anything like my mind, some of the ways you judge yourself are very harsh. In fact, I don’t think I would ever dare with anyone else to use the expressions I used toward myself. We could spend much time discussing why that is. I could mention my learning, for example. If your schooling was anything like mine, the most prominent remarks when you got your homework back were in red pen pointing out where you’ve gone wrong. Being a good learner, I developed a pattern of setting an impossible expectation for myself (often to exceed expectations), and instead of seeing what I’ve accomplished, focus on where I’ve gone wrong. I could also turn to RFT for answers. Mmm… I can see how if success =100%, then 80% is 20% less, or in other words, it’s FAILURE. There are many other explanations, including seeing others’ outsides (cool-calm-collected) and comparing to my insides (a mess). Maybe my skewed attention to the negative where out of ten, the one conversation playing on my mind will be where I said something wrong. Here’s Dr Eric Morris’ view on the inner critic: