…g these times, when we are the most open and vulnerable, that the critical inner voice is especially active and aggressive. When it comes to attacking our sexuality, the critical inner voice knows no bounds. The attacks begin before the sexual encounter, continue during it and even persist afterward. The critical inner voice attacks both you and your partner. It focuses on every aspect of your sexual relationship: criticizing you and your partner’…
Learn More
…rmines and sabotages your efforts to have love in your life: your critical inner voice. It comes at you from all sides; it goes after you, it badmouths your partner, it slams your relationship, and it attacks love in general. We are mostly unaware of this internal enemy and the subversive operation that it runs just below our consciousness. But we get a glimpse of it when we have a thought like, “He won’t be interested in me. I’m not in his league…
Learn More
Where your critical inner voice comes from As small children, we are helpless and entirely dependent on adults for nurturance and to have our needs met. It is impossible for even the most loving parent to anticipate and respond to all of the needs of an infant, therefore every child suffers from some degree of frustration, deprivation and pain. At these times, children defend against the intense emotions that they are experiencing as unbearable b…
Learn More
…ho you are. One of the most effective ways to do this is to keep challenging your inner critic and exploring your own, real feelings about your sexuality. To hear more from Dr. Lisa Firestone on the critical inner voice and sexuality, join her for the Webinar, “Finding Healthy and Satisfying Sexuality.”…
Learn More
…Firestone, psychologist and author of Fear of Intimacy (also father to Dr. Lisa Firestone), has presented a case for why most people are, to varying degrees, afraid of closeness. “Most people say that they want love and positive acknowledgment, but relatively few people can tolerate real love and respect from another person, because it threatens their defenses’” said Dr. Firestone. “They tend to retreat, pass over it and sometimes react with actua…
Learn More
…inner voices and the defensive behaviors these voices regulate,” said Dr. Lisa Firestone in her book Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice. How does the critical inner voice try to undermine a relationship? Take look at the scene in Annie Hall where the main characters, Annie and Alvy, have just met and are having a glass of wine on the balcony of her apartment: ALVY: So, did you shoot the photographs in there or what? ANNIE: Yeah, yeah, I sorta dabb…
Learn More…of our own distorted self-perceptions. Step One: Identifying Our Critical Inner Voices In the blog “Evicting the Obnoxious Roommate Living in Your Head” I introduced the concept of the critical inner voice, an internalized critic that comments on our every action. These comments are not usually experienced as an actual voice speaking to us but rather as a thought process that casually yet ruthlessly puts us down and sabotages our successes. For e…
Learn More
…the degree to which we feel jealous and insecure in the present,” said Dr. Lisa Firestone, author of Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice. As she and her father Dr. Robert Firestone define it, the “critical inner voice” is a form of negative self-talk. It perpetuates destructive thoughts and feelings, driving us to compare, evaluate and judge ourselves (and often others) with great scrutiny. This is one reason why learning how to deal with jealousy i…
Learn More
…y and how to identify and overcome your critical inner voice. Learn more strategies for overcoming relationship anxiety in our Webinar with Dr. Lisa Firestone: Understanding and Overcoming Relationship Anxiety….
Learn More
…maintain a close relationship. Why Do Positive Feelings Trigger a Fear of Intimacy? It may be surprising to learn that the real resistance to intimacy often doesn’t come from the acts of our partners, but from a lurking enemy within us. The problem is that the positive way a lover sees us often conflicts with the negative ways we view ourselves. Sadly, we hold on to our negative self-attitudes and are resistant to being seen differently. Because…
Learn More