Author Archives: Vania

How to Have a Dialogue with Your Inner Critic

Posted on by
1

Have your ever noticed what you say to yourself after doing something wrong? Is it mean or extra critical? Is it offering advice without you asking for it? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have an inner critic at times. There are definitely ways to put the voice to rest, or at least have a more balanced conversation with it. Hare some some tips that work for me. And yes, i am my own client!

As much as i know that my inner critic is trying to help me, i also have learned that i can choose not to listen to you, and even tell it to go away. Just like learning any new language, being able to talk BACK to your inner critic takes practice. Here are some tips that can help you be fluent in this process.

1) Somatic Sense of Inner Critic
First, it’s important to recognize what your inner critic voice is. What do they say? What is their voice like? Do they blame your or push you down? How do they undermine you.

When your inner critic shows up, see where they live in your body – is it a loud dull pain in your chest, or a sharp scratch on your shoulders. A tool that can help is PATH – notice the pressure, air, tension, heat that may rise in your body. Where is it located? Spend some time noticing this. This mindfulness is a great tool to help you notice your inner critic more quickly. If you can locate the felt sense in your body, you can tend to it more quickly.

You can also do the great tool by Tara Brach called RAIN – recognize what is going on in the given moment allow the experience to be there, investigate with kindness and be open to Nurturing the new awareness with self-compassion. Click here for a lovely guided meditation that Tara has created using this tool.

Be really clear about when the inner critic shows up. They are not your only voice so notice if there is a pattern or consistency when they come up. Notice what your physical reaction is – is there a knot in your stomach, does our throat feel tight, is there a heaviness in your legs? This is the inner critic speaking.

2) Name them
I call mine Pam. She was someone that bullied me when i was in grade 6. I also love these meme: “My inner critic is An Asshole” and find it inspiring.

Acknowledge it is here, but like a vampire, you can tell it to leave. It’s an emotional vampire after all! Say hello to them, and then tell them they are not wanted. Externalizing the voice helps keep it separate from you. As a tool of Narrative Therapy, it is so helpful to externalize this voice as it helps you not take all the blame or responsibility on your shoulders.

The inner critic is an external voice that has been internalized. Spend some time hearing the voice – what does it sound like? Is it your voice or someone else’s? Can you remember when the inner critic was born? Our inner critic is usually related to not allowing ourselves to be proud of our accomplishments. Can you recall what it was like for you as a child? I know that at times, my inner critic has a Serbian accent that is similar to my mom’s. I definitely hear her (now helpful) voice at times, if only when i’m cooking or doing laundry at this point. It now carries a tone of guidance.

Also, it’s totally okay to be rude and interrupt this voice! By doing so, you are establishing a new habit and helping your poor brain make the changes it needs too.

3) Reflect
Spend some time at the end of a day and see how you often your inner critic showed up – we don’t always notice it in the moment. Stay with the feeling to help move through it. You might want to start a journal that helps you record when your inner critic shows up. Is it daily or after a certain thing – like going to the gym, or scrolling through Instagram. Make a point to recall how it felt in your body when your Inner Critic was crashing your party. Then spend some time writing a list of positive things about yourself – work on self-compassion and witnessing your own gains to balance out the judgement. Take a look at Kristin Neff’s work and the helpful journal prompts and exercises that help you reflect. One of my favourite questions form her workbook with Christopher Germer is “Is your Inner Critic tiring to protect you in some way, to keep you safe form danger, to help you, even if the result has been unproductive?”

While it doesn’t always seem like it, but your Inner Critic is a part of us that is trying to help. It is always loudest right before the breakthrough. The inner critic can be a protector for you, as a part of you that helps soothe your worries. It lives in our sympathetic nervous system, that part of the brain that is ready for flight or fight response to a threat or scary challenge. It truly is trying it help, if only in the all the wrong ways.

When you are reflecting, make sure to make a point to also allow space for self-love and acceptance. Talk to yourself like someone you love. Self-affirmation work can be a direct OFFset to the inner critic. Developing a compassionate inner voice can counter the critic. Ask yourself what you can say with love back to the critic. Acceptance is about being good enough or good-ish, very perfect. It is about being okay with what is.


4) From Inner Critic to Inner Guide
Your inner citric needs love. It is trying to help you. It is usually there to protect you from potential shame or failure. Explore what it is trying to tell you. And put it to work. If it’s telling you that what you did is not good enough, as it to do better.

We need a bridge to get to positive so work on being neutral first. It is about being both/and – both a critical lens to help you make sure you got it right AND a compassionate lovely voice that encourages you to try. Bring in a dialogue – add your cheerleader, warrior, nurturer, or wise future self – like Toni or Frida and bring in some self-compassion – remind yourself that your thoughts are not always right so add more to the conversation. When you feel sad about being hard on yourself, give yourself time to feel this and then move on.

For instance, instead of saying…
I am a terrible cook BUT RATHER i am learning to cook
I am a bad mom BUT INSTEAD i am good at taking care of boo boos
I can’t do this TRY I’m going to try my best for today

Sometimes that inner critic is trying to be a guide or reminding you of something hard, but instead of being supportive, it is keeping you stuck. You can thank the critic for supporting you and then say it’s job is no longer needed – the writer Donna Tart has said that she uses criticism as a guide to getting stronger because she treats it like a vaccine. It makes you stronger. Put your Inner Critic to work with something useful! Laura Markham of Aha Parenting speaks further to this idea here.

This might be a tricky question so bear with me, but try and see what part of your houses your Inner Critic? I am not referring the body now, but rather the part of that is wounded. Is it your Inner Child, work-in-progress Goddess, protector, Adult Self, or your Worker Bee? I’m not suggesting we have multiple personalities persay but we are made up of parts that are shaped by the experiences in our life – both the good and the challenging ones. So, this is a chance to re-parent yourself. This Inner Guide may have a calm and warm voice. It cherishes you and accepts you as you are. In time, this voice will become your own and will be more present. Channel this voice as much as you can – it is a practice after all. You truly are learning a new language and what better way to do so than to practice it in a dialogue with someone else!

5) The Four Agreements
This book is to help us be more intentional and loving citizens of the world. So, why not use the 4 principles and apply them to your own self? The book itself is a small book, but it’s quite powerful. The photo here captures the essence of the 4 agreements and I especially like the one “don’t take it personally.”

Speaking of good books to read, here are some great ones that help you become even more fluent! Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, Your Resonant Self by Sarah Peyton and
Healing your Emotional Self: A Powerful Program to Help you Raise your Self-Esteem, Quiet your Inner Critic and Overcome Your Shame Beverly Engel

As you start to practice this new intentional relationship with your inner dialogue, be kind and gentle with yourself. Notice the criticism or impatience and send it the kindness you would anyone else that is learning a new language for the first time.

Resilience after the Punch

Posted on by
Reply

My youngest was hurt by another student recently. She was holding the door open and he sucker punched her. Because she said No to him. He had overheard her talking with friends about snails. She said she liked them but never wanted to be one. Then, at the door, he called her a snail and she said she didn’t like that and he needed to stop. Then, boom, she got punched in the gut.

The mama bear in me is fierce right now. The trauma therapist knows how this may sit in her body – she was intentionally punched in the stomach for saying no to someone. What does that say to her now? The parent in me knows that 6 year olds are still learning how to regulate their emotions so I am working on empathy for the other student. The therapist worries about the boy and where he learned to do this. And the feminist in me knows that boys that hit girls make me mad as hell.

I was at work when i got the call. I left pretty soon after to tend to her, and see how she was coping. And you know what, she is the definition of resilience. She was able to share how it made her feel, she was able to find ways to play regardless of the event, and she was able to rest that night and cuddle with me. Gordon Neufeld talks about what children need in order to be resilient. It is a sound foundation of attachment and then access to Rest, Play and Feelings. This helps them bounce back after adversity.

((This photo captures her making friends with another child at the beach where we camped this summer – she makes friends as easy as she breathes))

My daughter is also fierceless – be it an incident like this or when she fell on the train tracks this summer. She was going over a tricky train track on her bike. We were able to discuss it that night and help her prepare to go over it again. We were able to access her upstairs brain (thanks Dan Siegel) and know that she could get over the tracks again.

It’s no surprise that her dad and i helped her access her feelings – we made it clear that she did nothing wrong, and that we were proud of her for going to the teacher. She followed her instinct to bring in the support of the staff at school, and felt seen by them. My daughter was able to recognize that maybe the boy’s bucket was empty whereas her’s is full – she has a community of friends and he is new to the class. My daughter was also about to reflect that a sucker punch is different than a fight with her brother. The fact that it came from nowhere hurt her more than the punch itself.

Each year, there is an event called Take Back the Night. It’s for women-identified people and children to reclaim the street and fight for the right to feel safe at night. I have been going for years and love the energy that the group commands. I have also taken my kids since they were babies and toddlers. It feels like the timing is perfect this year, as it is this coming Friday in Toronto. I think my daughter needs to march and know what her right is to her body and saying NO. Check out this link to read more about it – there are events like this all over the world.

Don’t get me wrong – we are still working on co-regulation of her emotions too and she has her own struggle still with impulse control and the infamous 6-year change. Just this morning, she was so mad that her brother (who’s older) got a smidge more of juice in his cup. She refused to bike to school with him.

I told her this was emptying my cup, literally. I tried to remind her of bucket filling and she told me that it was a juice cup, not a bucket so it didn’t count. Go figure.

Let That Good Feeling Linger

Posted on by
Reply

Sunflowers are my absolute favourite flower – they are strong yet fragile, bend to the sun, and keep facing upwards. I also love their cheery colour and reminder of hot summer days. I went with my family recently to a sunflower farm, where we were about to walk among hundreds and hundreds of rows of them. I took in the felt sense of this experience and it lingers in my body in a happy way (kind of like that smiling flower in the photo here). I’ve been practicing this a lot lately.

Since summer break is coming to a close this week (for many of us it feels like the end of summer as a whole), I want to share this experience with you as it may come in handy when you need to hold on to the good feelings in your body.

It was my anniversary this summer and my partner and I were able to have an extra long date. While it happened over the course of a seven-day long therapy training for me, we were still able to stay present in the date. It might be because I am immersing myself in somatic-based therapy work but we were able to put our good feelings from the date in an imaginary jar.

We love bike riding in the city, both with our kids but definitely without them as well. After a delicious meal at one of our favourite places, we took a long bike ride along the harborfront. It’s such a gift that the city I live in has a great lake connected to it. As an ocean lover, i know that it may not be an ocean persay, but a Great Lake is a close second. As a water loving person, I know I never spend enough time in its presence. So, we decided to bike along a new path that is right beside the lake. It just opened recently – that itself was such a nice gift as we may not have done it with our children.

I was able to use the bike ride as a way to share with my partner more about Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) and how it works. There are 5 core organizers that are the main base of how SP therapy helps connect the body to the mind both in healing trauma but also in everyday mindfulness. It’s a great way to help good feelings linger in an intentional way, like an imaginary jar of a good date you want to hold on to.

The 5 core organizers are body sensation, five senses, movement, emotion, and cognition, and in that order. So on our date, we decided to blend all of them and this is what we came up with:

1) Body Sensation: My body felt like a warm glow in my heart and my core, and a freedom in my shoulders that experienced the wind
2) The Five Senses: The feel of air touching my arms, the smell of the lake, the beautiful skyline of the city, the sounds of life around us, the taste lingering from my delicious dinner
3) Movement: We brought awareness to our legs pedalling both up hills and around us. It was an incredibly hot day so we also noticed how the pedalling felt with our warm bodies
4) Emotion: I carry with me now such a deep sense of love and happiness both for that experience, to share with my partner, and to be with my partner in that moment
5) Cognition: I acknowledged how grateful I was that we had that time together, and shared this talk with him so that we could hold onto it together

Now when life gets in the way, and we are getting stuck in the grind of everyday life, all i need to do is to recall this date and my body will respond. I will embody the memory and not just think about it. When I’m forgetting a detail, all i need to do is to recall the smell of the lake, or the body sensation in my core. As i bike daily, i get a quick hint of the memory whenever i feel the breeze on me or grip my handlebars. I don’t need to recall a big part of the story, but rather a single moment and my body and mind are united in recalling the happy moment. It’s a lovely way to practice more intentional felt sense of positive moments – we are so prone to minimize them and rush through them. It’s like I’m peering into that jar of happy memories or giving myself a warm hug by recalling this night.

As summer is coming to a close, you can try this tool. What memory from these last 2 months do you want to cherish and hold on to?

How to Live a Balanced Life

Posted on by
Reply

It’s butterfly season right now, and this summer brings a happy supply of them where i live. As they are an anchor for me, I’ve been working on creating a tool with the butterfly as the inspiration. I love the quote from Rupi Kaur that reminds us that ‘growth is a process that takes time’. Indeed, strength is necessary for a caterpillar to become a chrysalis and then to transform and push out of cocoon. The metamorphosis of the butterfly is the perfect display of the rite of passage we all go through.

Some of us go through it more gracefully or intentionally, while many of us struggle as we did not have the best models of this sea change.

As a therapist, i am also a work in progress. I am my own wellness or resilience coach – I work hard to create my version of a balanced life by making a point to bring joy in, taking care of myself, as well as keeping myself connected to others. After reflecting on my own journey, i noticed an intuitive path that i took. With this in mind, i created this worksheet as a guide to help you.

I love Wheel of Life tools that highlight the various parts of us. The wheel is similar to the 6 Dimensions of Health Wellness: emotional, occupational, physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual. It was created to help people see the need for balance in this various realms. Reading this list, can you notice where you might need to make some changes? Did anything surprise you?

In order to build our capacity when we’re faced with challenges, we also need to appreciate wonder and awe, moments of pleasure and joy. That’s hard to do if you can’t know what gives us this sense of pleasure.

The resource I created is similar to the wheel, and a bit unique as it breaks down the parts into the holistic trifecta of Mind, Body and Soul (sometimes referred to Spirit).

I believe this balance is even more sacred now. I don’t think of the pillars of wellness as separate parts of our Self, but all 3 are interconnected for our overall well-being. We can’t have one without the others. As social creatures, our nervous system has a social engagement system that also needs community and connection. That’s why I included ways to feel connected to others. Even when apart, we need community.


Think of these butterfly parts as a way to create more balance in your own life. Each part is integral to living well. So, the Antenna symbolizes the Soul; the Head is the Mind and mental health realm, and of course the Body represents the physical self-care we need to stay well. The 4 wings around it are for family, friends, work, and community. I call it The Four Wings of Connection. Add what you do that nourishes each part, and what you wish to add in order to create more balance. See what comes up, what’s missing, and what you’d like to add moving forward. We are our own experts, so get to navigate the way we live our life – what do you chose? Use the butterflies you see in nature as a guide – take time to slow down and linger in one place.

what the caterpillar saw as the end, the rest of the world saw as the beginning. lao tzu

This season is a perfect time to set some intentions – both for the rest of the year, and to honour your experience this past year. It also serves as a guide to help you live your life with more intention, a life that you love.

I’ve created a free 2-page PDF that you can print and work on yourself, Get a cup of tea, a nice pen and take some time to sit with this. Click here to get a copy.

The Makings of a Good Therapist

Posted on by
Reply

I love what I do. It may sound strange to think that I enjoy listening to people share their hard feelings, but what I also see is their healing process and transformation. I’m not so vain to think i made a difference, but rather I was there to bear witness to their own change. Going to therapy is still a taboo topic, as we have not accepted mental health needs support like any other forms of health does.There has been a lot of movement towards accepting therapy, both for people to go to someone for help, as well as a bigger societal shift in accepting that a therapist can help someone feel better, just like a dentist, doctor, or nutritionist can. Instagram has an amazing selection of therapists who use that tool as a way of sharing resources for free. While it’s not therapy persay, it is a great starting point for me. It’s a bit like feelings porn for me too. Have you seen this fabulous account, for instance?

I have a love-hate relationship with how therapists are depicted in pop culture. It’s no wonder people have misgivings about coming to see a stranger and unload secret feelings. Naomi Watts’ character on her show Gypsy (the name itself is problematic) really made me cringe. Anne in Working Moms is another example (though I love her new office). Gabriel Byrne’s character on In Treatment, or Toni Collette in Wanderlust, and more recently the therapist in Big Little Lies gives me hope that we are moving towards more positive portrayals. It helps to lessen the stigma – therapy is not just for extreme mental health needs after all.

While watching the second season of Big Little Lies recently (and no, that therapist is not perfect either), i brought me pause to think about what i think makes for a good therapist. Here’s my short working list.

I will bear witness to your process. I have had clients come to me and say point blank that they want me to ‘fix them.’ I so wish that was possible, but it truly doesn’t work that way. I don’t have a magic wand to do that sort of trick, and more importantly, therapy is not for someone else to fix you but rather you must do this work yourself. It is truly our own work that helps us heal.

I know that I hold a lot of power in my role as a therapist. As a feminist therapist, i make that awareness explicit in our work together. I also play a role in displaying a healthy relationship with the people I support. As an attachment-based therapist, I see how unhealthy relationships have been a great cause of suffering. While it’s important to me to build a trusting and respectful relationship with the people I support, I am not their friend. I do think that therapy works best when there is a reciprocal relationship (relational). One big difference between talking to your best friend about a problem and coming to me is that I am not just a positive cheerleader, but someone who will challenge you if you are wrong and also provide you options, not just agree with you. I am like an accountability partner to help you stay on your task and commitment to yourself.

Some of my favourite words as a therapist are vulnerability, feelingful, courage, curious, compassion, resilience, and reflection. I have a toolkit of resources, tools, worksheets, and exercises to guide you in this process. Therapy is goal-based and an opportunity to establish tools and resources, work on the painful memories, and integrating them into your everyday life now. The ultimate goal for therapy is that it helps you live the life you love so that you no longer need to come to therapy.

As a therapist I am a vault that holds your secrets. Therapy won’t work if you can’t trust that person with your deepest feelings, so much so that you don’t feel safe in sharing them. Building this relationship plays a key role in how therapy works best. It’s also hard for me to say goodbye when therapy is ending, and yet I know that the goal of therapy is to have it be short-term with a clearly structured beginning, middle and end. I get ghosted as a therapist and while I know that the relationship is not about me (and I yield a lot of power), it is still a feeling-based relationship that is built on compassion.

With the new Controlled Act of Psychotherapy in Ontario, changes are being made to what therapy looks like. For instance, some people seek counselling as a way to help them with some life goals on wellness, having a better life and get back on track. A life coach also does similar work on wellness work but their focus is more on helping you live your optimum self. Psychotherapy is a deeper dive to help someone who is struggling with something that leads to feeling stuck, and is based on a diagnosable mental health issue (like postpartum depression or post-traumatic stress from the impact of childhood abuse). I am not a life coach, but my work can straddle any of these three areas.

A good therapist, like anyone, sees the value of continuous professional development. I am always learning and am a better therapist because of this. Even seasoned therapists of over 30 years need to keep learning about modalities that are evidence-based and validly researched. I also believe that a good therapist does not only use one modality as each person is their own expert and one size does NOT fit all.

I make people cry for a living. That means, while I follow your lead and have no agenda for my own, sometimes there is no emotional by-passing in therapy like there may be in everyday life. I will validate your experience and feelings, and hold space for you in a less biased way. My whole body is my instrument, especially as I use somatic-based therapies and mindfulness in my work. Going to supervision, therapy and peer consultation is a necessity, if not a requirement. I also practice what I preach as self-care is imperative so that I don’t burn-out or feel compassion fatigue. So don’t worry about me – I am a container that regularly gets my tune-up.

If you’d like to work with me, to live the life you love, contact me here. I’d be honoured to be that vault for you.