WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT... Your INNER CRITIC

The singer, author and life coach reveals how she overcame crippling self-doubt to achieve her big, fat dreams

My inner critic’s name is Frank. He sounds like the boys from school who used to tease me for singing all the time. He looks like my ex-boyfriend’s grumpy old chihuahua with his tongue perpetually stuck out. Since I was a young child, he’s whispered in my ear, “You suck,” “You’re too fat to swim at the beach,” and “Who the hell do you think you are trying to sing on stage?” The voice tells me these stories to make me feel small.

I first became aware of my inner critic when I lost my sister Rowena after a long illness when she was seven and I was five. That childhood trauma ignited the voice and it has run in the background of my life ever since, like a soundtrack of self-doubt and shame. This inner dialogue stung throughout my teenage years and finally came to an ear-piercing crescendo at age 21 when I had a nervous collapse in London. I was deeply unwell at the time, not sleeping or eating, and experiencing acute anxiety. That mental-health episode forced me to get help and my recovery came in the form of a very good therapist and a very good book by Dr Claire Weekes about anxiety. One of the techniques I learnt involved naming my inner critic as a way of externalising the voice of my self-doubt, my eating disorder, my anxiety and my internalised misogyny. I started telling Frank to fuck off. It was a reminder that my lower brain is not the boss, I have a higher brain.

I am a human being with a developed intellect and I have the ability to talk back to my imposter syndrome.

Telling Frank where to go took the fear out of my amorphous thoughts and stopped my rolling panic attacks. If you listen to the silliness of the stories you tell yourself, your choking insecurity loosens its grip.

This is just one of the techniques I share in my new Audible series, Tame Your Inner Critic, with neuroscientist Dr Charlotte Keating. It’s important to know what you can and can’t control. I can’t control what people think of me, the weather or COVID-19, but I can control how I think and feel. Once I learnt that lesson, I freed myself to live the adventurous life I’d always wanted but had been too afraid to chase.

When I was 20, just before

I moved to London, where I had my nervous collapse, I wrote a list in my diary of all the things I wanted to do when I grew up. I was working in a call centre at the time and was very secretive about my deep-down dreams. I wanted to: write a novel, make beautiful music, act in a theatre, make a million dollars and run like the wind. After learning to tame my inner critic, I was able to tick off all the dreams on my list. And now I’m sharing the tricks I’ve learnt with the women around me. Overcoming self-doubt is an ongoing process; I still use the same techniques I learnt in my early twenties when I’m feeling panicked, tired or have to show up on a big day. Acknowledging Frank, and telling him to kindly fuck off, reminds me that I’m the boss.

I’m still not a great runner, but I don’t let that stop me from running like the wind.

Tame Your Inner Critic is available now, only on Audible at audible.com. au/tame