Most of us have an “inner critic”—that voice in our head that says we’re not good enough, smart enough, fit enough, successful enough, or whatever-your-version-of-enough is. For some of us, the inner critic is a full-time job. For others, it only shows up at 3 a.m., right before a big meeting or after a minor social slipup.

But what if the inner critic isn’t the enemy?

In my work as a therapist and Internal Family Systems practitioner, and in writing my new book Align Your Mind, I’ve become convinced the real problem isn’t that we have an inner critic—it’s that we don’t understand how to communicate with it. Instead of fighting with our critic, we can learn to work with it.

Rather than assuming “all critical inside voices are bad,” bringing mindful self-awareness to the inner critic dilemma is often a better starting place. Awareness of the inner critic is the first step in changing our relationship with it, a principle that holds true across a wide variety of therapeutic modalities. As a study published in Frontiers in Psychology notes, “Although the way awareness is facilitated differs between therapeutic approaches, awareness of thoughts and feelings as a premise of change resonates with thinking across different theoretical approaches, including cognitive therapy (Furlong and Oei, 2002), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (Teasdale et al., 2000), and the tradition of mindfulness and self-compassion (Neff, 2003a; Frewen et al., 2008; Birnie et al.,........

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