Your Inner Critic:

It’s Time to be
Re-introduced

Spend 8 weeks developing the lifelong tools to move from inner critic to inner-companion. Unravel feelings of unworthiness from who you are, cultivate compassion, and finally move forward with presence.

Your inner critic isn't your enemy and it isn’t all of you.

There are lots of reasons we end up with a stronger inner critic, and lots of things that influence that voice. You can develop a way forward that is no longer at odds with this part of you. This course focuses on getting to know who that voice is now, today, in your life — so that you can begin to relate to it, understand it’s purpose in your life, and stop allowing it to control your choices.

If you go on more guilt trips than actual trips… and…

  • Identify with negative self-statements as accurate reflections of you and identify with the ‘perfectionist’.

  • Find yourself procrastinating (even with things you like!); not finishing projects, delaying work, missing deadlines,

  • Have a long list of goals you set and gave up on…

  • Deal with episodes of anxiety that cripple you around the smallest of to-dos.

  • Have a hard time meditating, and instead feel restless and irritable when you try.

  • Are using addictions to self soothe, even though you know they aren’t the healthiest coping mechanisms.

Then it might be time to get to know your inner critic.

All ‘parts’ think they are helping

The raw emotions and thoughts that our inner critic brings can be overwhelming. But with the right guidance, these raw feelings can be transformed into a source of wisdom and insight. Imagine turning that critic into a guide, a voice that helps you navigate life's challenges with grace and confidence.

Together, let’s move beyond the cause.

This course isn’t only focused on the past or what shaped the critical inner voice…

The purpose of the program is to give you tools to transform what holds you back into the fuel to move you forward and get unstuck. Nurture a more trustworthy bond with yourself. And grow with more of you onboard.

You will learn how to integrate:

  • How to recognize your inner critic when it shows up in disguise.

  • How to respond to a call of distress rather than being swallowed by it.

  • The body as the site of transformation of your experience.

  • How to relate to the parts of you that don’t want to take action.

  • How to stay with and explore the somatic experience of shame or guilt or blame.

  • Find the feelings in your body that you struggle to identify.

  • Demystify persistent symptoms. Things like: muscle soreness, depression, migraines or other headaches, intestinal distress, the list goes on….

  • Begin to actually move on your goals and dreams. Complete things in your own way with all of you heard.

This is what you will learn week by week:

We will meet once per week on Mondays from 4:30-6pm EST. A recording will also be available if you cannot attend all 8 weeks live.

After each Live Session there will also be an optional weekly practice space directly after the main sessions.

Module 1

Discovering Your True Self:
Navigate Emotions with Clarity

Delve into understanding how language and physical sensations can help you connect with different parts of yourself, fostering a deeper self-awareness.

  • Dive deep into the intricate tapestry of your emotions and sensations. By understanding how language and physical sensations intertwine, you'll foster a deeper connection with various parts of yourself. This module will guide you in recognizing that painful feelings, whether emotional or physical, are just aspects of your vast self. By the end, you'll have tools to shift your relationship with these feelings, leading to a more harmonious inner world.

Module 2

Engaging with the Inner Voice:
Cultivating Inner Harmony

Learn to recognize and engage with your inner critic, fostering a compassionate dialogue with all your internal states.

  • Your inner critic is a part of you, and like every part, it seeks to be understood. In this module, you'll learn to recognize this voice and engage with it in a compassionate dialogue. By understanding its concerns and intentions, you'll cultivate a harmonious relationship with all your internal states, leading to a more balanced inner dialogue.

Module 3

Embracing the Criticized Self:
Strengthen the Part of You that Feels Judged

Focus on understanding and supporting the part of you that feels the weight of criticism, nurturing its healing.

  • Every time the inner critic speaks, there's a part of you that feels the weight of that criticism. This module focuses on understanding and supporting this part, offering it the care and attention it needs. By nurturing this aspect of yourself, you'll pave the way for healing and self-acceptance.

Module 4

Navigating the Landscape of Shame: Transforming Self-Blame into Self-Understanding

Explore the dynamics of shame and blame, understanding their manifestations in our body and thoughts.

  • Shame and blame are powerful emotions that can shape our self-perception. In this module, you'll explore their dynamics, understanding how they manifest in our body and thoughts. By recognizing their patterns, you'll transform self-blame into self-understanding, leading to a more compassionate relationship with yourself.

Module 5

Guided Actions: Understanding the Role of Inner Critics in Decision Making

Delve into how Inner Critics and feelings of shame can influence our actions and choices.

  • Our actions and choices are often influenced by various internal voices, including the inner critic. Delve into understanding how these voices, coupled with feelings of shame, can guide or deter our actions. By the end of this module, you'll have insights into making choices that resonate with your true self.

Module 6

Honoring Your Inner Protectors: Embracing Their Concerns for a Balanced Self

Dive into understanding these protective parts, acknowledging their concerns and fears.

  • Beneath their protective exterior, these parts hold genuine concerns and fears for your well-being. This module will guide you in understanding and honoring these protectors, acknowledging their intentions, and finding ways to integrate their wisdom into your life choices.

Module 7

Aligning with Inner Rebels: Harmonizing Conflicting Desires

Understand these rebels, their desires, and their fears, fostering an inner environment of understanding and alignment.

  • Rebels within us often hold strong desires and fears. They might resist certain goals or yearn for something entirely different. In this module, you'll learn to understand these rebels, fostering an environment where their voices are heard and acknowledged. By aligning with them, you'll find a harmonious path forward that considers all aspects of your desires.

Module 8

Journey to Wholeness: Integrating Your Inner Voices for a Unified Self

Focus on gently integrating these parts for a more holistic understanding of oneself.

  • Every voice within you holds a piece of the puzzle that is your true self. This concluding module focuses on gently integrating these voices, allowing them to come together in a harmonious chorus. By understanding and valuing each part, you'll journey towards a more holistic and unified understanding of yourself.

‘‘

Her knowledge is exquisite with the material.”

— Shideh Lennon, Ph.D., SEP, Faculty Member, SEI

This is a space for…

Compassionate self-relating

Open a Dialogue

Engage in compassionate relationship with your critic, understanding its fears and concerns. Relate to the call of distress rather than being swallowed by distress.

Nurture the Bond

Cultivate a harmonious relationship with your inner voice, so that you can integrate your critic into a supportive, life long guide.

Listen Deeply

Understand how to listen beyond words, and feel how your body is the site of transformation for your inner states. Recognize how your inner critic shows up and how it is experienced. Learn how to relate to the unwanted thing itself.

Reframe the Narrative

Recognize that while your inner critics intentions are noble, it needs a new relationship with you in order to soften. Learn from the parts of you that don’t want to take action so change can occur.

Bring your Parts into Focus. Embody a Deeper Truth.

Our bodies respond to our worlds in ways we don’t anticipate or want, and often in ways we feel threatened by. We end up feeling distrustful — instead of embodying the truth that our bodies are our biggest allies.

Meet Your Guide

I’m Maureen. With 30 years of experience as a Licensed Psychologist, I’ve helped countless individuals confront and befriend their inner critics.

Drawing from my expertise in Somatic Experiencing©, Inner Relationship Focusing, and Attachment/Relational work, I have crafted a unique blended approach that combines the best of these traditions.

In our 8 weeks together you will be learning on a grounded foundation of Somatic Experiencing© (SE) & Inner Relationship Focusing (IRF).

How so?

Somatic Experiencing©:

Every time the inner critic speaks, it's not just words in our mind, it's a visceral experience that resonates in our bodies.

Somatic Experiencing© (SE), developed by Dr. Peter Levine, delves deep into these bodily responses to stress and criticism. It recognizes that our body's reactions to the inner critic's harsh words can trap us in a cycle of fight, flight, or freeze responses.

SE offers tools to transform these trapped physiological responses, allowing us to feel more grounded and less reactive to the inner critic's jabs.

Inner Relationship Focusing:

And While SE addresses the body's response, Inner Relationship Focusing (IRF), zooms in on the emotional and cognitive aspects of the inner critic…

It teaches us to compassionately listen to this internal voice without judgment, understanding its origins and intentions. By focusing inward, we can discern the underlying emotions and beliefs that fuel the inner critic, transforming its criticisms into insights.

Basically SE gives your body the knowledge of your bodies’ process, and IRF gives you a way to have a relationship to that experience in a way that is authentic, secure, trusting and compassionate.

The body and mind and soul are all present in parts work.

If you’re operating from a state of control, it’s probably lacking soul. When you are able to reliably enter a different relationship to these states inside of you, all kinds of symptoms lessen and more of what’s soulful within you comes forward.

You can understand and integrate not just the emotional and psychological impact of your inner critic, but how it affects many debilitating psychical symptoms such as chronic disease, anxiety, & depression.

This life is yours.

Don’t allow a part of you to block the spacious awareness, purpose, authenticity, peace, joy, expansion, & love that all of you deserves.

Most of us have an inner critic that has been radically internalized

Your inner critic is a part of you. As in, a part you can get to know and develop a relationship with. When you learn to approach your inner critic this way, you’re no longer treating it like a mysterious being that acts without your say or consent. It's part of you that you can actually viscerally feel, emotionally feel, sense, and relate to. Dare I say… like a friend.

Join the watlist

The course includes:

  • 8 live sessions with demos

  • Access to the recordings

  • Option to attend practice sessions

  • A grounded practical way to work with SE and IRF to achieve change.

  • A community atmosphere to learn alongside.

  • Worksheets and exercises to guide your learning.

Pay In Full

$595

Payment Plan

$200

per month for 3 months

‘‘

It brought a lot more vitality to my own work.”

— Lisa Smith, LCSW, Clinical Social Worker

FAQ

  • One of the big benefits to doing this work in a group is that while you’re shifting your relationship to the inner voice, you’re also surrounding yourself with outer voices that are kinder, gentler, and more caring. One of course impacts the other.

  • Doing this course for yourself will most definitely translate into benefits for the people you serve. As a therapist, it will help you support your client in a more effective exploration of themselves, and their feelings and experiences.

    When we are able to help our clients reliably produce a different relationship to these self-states, symptoms lessen.

  • No, you do not need to have taken IRF courses to take this inner critics course. But for those of you who have taken it, this course will be an opportunity to deepen into a very useful application of what you learned during IRF trainings.

  • Yes! You will receive the foundational knowledge you need to move forward with confidence and understanding of this work even if this is your first dip.

  • Here is a good description of the difference from Anne Weiser Cornell: Internal Family Systems is an excellent method that has helped many people. Yes, there are similarities with Inner Relationship Focusing. And of course there are differences.

    At a superficial view, we see a lot of similarities. Both work with parts. Both work by enhancing a strong containing self that is not a part. Both see the inner critic as trying to protect, something to be befriended rather than gotten rid of.

    And there are differences, both in approach and in philosophy.

    Observing demonstrations of the two methods side by side, you will see the IFS practitioner asking questions. In Focusing, we do not ask questions, because we see questions as inviting quick responses rather than a slower mode of sensing. (We invite sensing rather than ask questions, which can lead to cognitive answers).

    You will see the IFS practitioner having the client ask parts to “step aside.” That’s a nice way to invite cooperation in the inner constellation. But in Focusing, we don’t move parts around like that. We place a great emphasis on the quality of relationship between Self-in-Presence and the part. Parts don’t have to step aside if the quality of relationship meets their needs.

    In IFS there is a releasing process called “unburdening.” In Focusing, we don’t do things “to” the process. Shifts happen because of… that’s right, the quality of relationship.

    At the theoretical level, IFS treats parts as entities that have ongoing existence. When their extreme roles release, they get new jobs. In Focusing, parts are temporary, even though they may last for years. When there is a shift, parts flow into the whole, like rivers into the ocean. There aren’t “really” parts.

    In focusing, there is the implicit dimension, the sense of “more” always ready to form. There is the felt sense, where what is unclear is exciting and points to further life. There is the “inner sense of rightness.”

    I’m very glad that both methods exist! There are many kinds of people, and people may prefer one or the other. And they can be combined! Best of both worlds.

  • Every critic, no matter how harsh, stems from a place of care. With patience and understanding, even the sternest voice can find peace.

The inner critic, if left un-heard…

…narrows your identity and undermines your multiplicities.

Setting out to create what you want is one thing.

Setting out to free up what’s there, that’s another.

What parts of you will you uncover and relate to within?