Inner Critic vs. Muse: Settling the Sibling Rivalry
CW: Anxiety
15 minute read
Very silly picture of 2 corgis in Devil/Angel costumes, just for fun: licensed with subscription to CanvaPro.
You know those cartoons from your childhood with a tiny devil & angel sitting on the character's shoulders?
We don't often give that clichéd cartoon plot device a lot of thought, but I feel like there might be something to it after all. I sat down today to write about anxiety, and this is what came out. It did NOT go where I expected it to go, but here we are. Enjoy the ride!
In cartoons the devil and angel trope represents the character's inner conflict when it comes to decision making— Should I make this important choice, or that one?—but for artists and creatives, this might sound familiar: rather than devil and angel, bad vs. good, where there's an obvious moral choice, today I see them as the inner critic (devil) and muse (angel)... and the roles are reversed when it comes to what they want and what they're asking you to do.
The Muse says, "Come onnnnnn, let's go play, live a little... Let's play with some paints, or spend the whole morning writing a story set in a far off imaginary land... Think of the possibilities! Let's make a mess, look silly, try something new! Wouldn't that be SO fun??"
…and the Inner Critic says, "That's a stupid, ridiculous idea. Stop being so immature. It's not productive and you're no good at it anyway, so why bother? Don't waste your time; you should either do something useful or... ugh, I don't know, just watch TV instead..."
Perhaps not in so many words; sometimes it's the ideas behind the thoughts rather than a specific dialogue. This is just an illustrated example for clarity... but you get the idea..
In this case the angel is the one tempting us with life's truly indulgent carefree pleasures, and the devil is the one either trying to keep us on the straight and narrow and making the "responsible" choice, or asking us to check out completely because that is also "safe"...
The Muse starts whining, the Critic raises their voice... The near-constant bickering between them, the push and pull, is much like our inner conflict as artists and creatives, and... it's better known as anxiety, (which is itself a mild form of fear) and when we're caught up in it, it gets overwhelming, we shut down or distract ourselves, and we get nowhere.
Sound familiar at all? If it does, please read on.
(Here is my disclaimer that what follows is my opinion based on a distillation of over a decade of reading and personal experiences as a full-time creative...
I may be an expert on creativity, but I'm not a therapist. Please don't consider this to be mental health advice or a substitute for it. If you feel triggered at any point, you may not be ready to hear this message at this time, and that's okay: please take care of yourself and feel free to check out and navigate elsewhere.
Also, I am not a parent, and none of this is judgement towards parents or parenting or the behaviors of anyone's children. Finally, this is a simplified visual metaphor on a blog, so just take from this what you will, leave the rest, and please be kind.)
As it turns out, when it comes to Fear, our nervous system often can't tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived one... and further, can't tell the difference between fear and excitement (horror movies and roller coasters exist for a reason). Consider that our bodily reaction to fear (fight/flight/freeze) feels A LOT like our bodily reaction to excitement. We are ready to take action! But which action???? It can be so confusing.
First off, we need to get curious and attempt to recognize where these conflicting thoughts are actually coming from. Because these fears often come from our early experiences, this angel & devil trope could be applied as a metaphor to explain different aspects (or ages) of our inner child, or perhaps even two inner children of different ages and lived experience.
"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist when [they grow] up"
~Picasso
Our Muse could be viewed as our younger, more innocent inner child who is begging for some nurturance, indulgence, delight, excitement and play. If we ignore their voice for too long, they'll whine and either have a complete meltdown to get your attention, or they'll just.... eventually stop asking (and wouldn't that be tragic?). This inner child is gleefully confident, and they want what they want: to experience JOY and FUN. They want to feel secure, so they can safely explore, to grow, and to provide us with balance in life. They love possibilities: Can we? Could we? What if we... ? Please???
The Inner Critic is often not our voice at all, but an amalgamation of internalized societal messaging we heard in our early life, from culture, media, schooling, family life, and peers... and here I am envisioning them repeated by a fearful or hurt, somewhat older, sensible inner child or teen, with more lived experience but lowered confidence. These voices can be everything from playfully chastising to straight up insulting or abusive... but either way, there's one thing to keep in mind: our inner critic DOES typically have our best interests at heart, at least usually, because the voices who first said these things to us often (but not always) did too. They mean well and they love us (and their sibling the muse) in their own weird way. They want us to fit in and belong and keep us/ themselves "safe" even if that safety is at the expense of our enjoyment or personal growth. So that is key to remember.
So, how do we make the sibling rivalry stop, or at least quiet down the bickering, so we can finally make some bloody ART??
First of all, we need to recognize the cyclical nature of creativity, which is another blog post in and of itself; I'll write about that sometime soon. But the long and short of it is, creativity and productivity (muse & critic) are not always constant. Not by a long shot. (So forgive yourself if you had that expectation that they ought to be!) Instead, we can go with the flow as the spirit moves us.
We can't pay attention to both of them at the same time.
We can instead hear these voices out, in turn.
We kindly, respectfully acknowledge each of them, and get curious about their motivations. And then when we understand we can provide them each with what they want or need in a generous way that feels right and good. (This is sounding an awful lot like Tara Brach's RAIN framework: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture)
(On that note, meditation helps us to notice our thoughts and feelings as mere information, so that we can see them from a distance, for what they are, and not identify with them too strongly, so we can maybe do something about them later... Tara Brach has a lot of free meditation resources at her website but this is neither an endorsement nor affiliation)
With regard to which sibling to listen to first, at any given time, which voice is loudest? When you feel this art-related anxiety, pay attention to your bodily sensation: does it feel more like fear (Critic) or like excitement (Muse)? As for which is which: apparently we breathe more quickly and shallowly when we're afraid, and we breathe more deeply and slowly when we're excited. Try it out next time. (credit here to Gay Hendricks, who also claims if you breathe into the fear you can turn it around... worth a try sometime)
And hey, if it really comes down to it, just pick one at random.
Once we have decided who to attend to and what they want (more on what they want/need later), we can actually get down to providing one of them with our full attention... we can listen to the other one later. And then the other one. They need to take turns. This gets us unstuck and moves us forward, one step at a time.
Left, Right, Left, Right. Even if the steps are not equal.
And how do we do that?
Well, we kind of need to be our own parent.
There, I said it.
There's a lot of talk about "re-parenting" in coaching and therapy and self-help circles... to compensate for how our own imperfect very human parents might've unintentionally failed us, although they were doing the best they could under the circumstances and with what tools they had, etc etc, which of course they were. No judgment here. (Hi Mom, you did great; I love you!) However, even if we had literally the best parents in the world, we still moved out at 18 or 25 or whatever, and whether our parents are still with us on this Earth or not... They've done their job, however they did it. So, rather than re-parenting (we'll leave that to therapy), how about just "self-parenting" for now... picking up where they left off, and doing it our way. It's up to us now to provide for ourselves, not just materially and financially but also with perspective and learning and security and structure and gentle discipline and rewards and nourishment, etc.
Our fully conscious, present, mindful, as-objective-as-possible minds get to be the parents to our constantly bickering inner children, not only that, but get to take it on as a profound, loving responsibility.
And okay…. I REALLY didn't see this coming but I'm going to take a controversial spiritual aside here.
Julia Cameron talks about reparenting and inner child work in her book, The Artist's Way, which I've completed three times now. In it she often refers to a non-denominational God, however you perceive God to be, as the Universal Creator perhaps a kind of Universal Life Force Energy, which lives in everything. And if you find that plausible, you'll maybe have heard "God Lives In You, As You" (Elizabeth Gilbert, and also, John in the Bible, I think???)... So, if God is in Everything and in Everyone, God is in You and Me... but we have inner children within us, and we need to become our own parents, then God is their own parent and their own child and hey, here we have the Holy Trinity! Amen.
I don't know... I'm just grasping at straws and making some pretty loose association connections here, but that concept finally makes a bit more sense to me. I am not a religious person and was not raised with religion. However, lacking any spirituality from my own roots, these days I'll take what makes sense to me from where I can find it. So I see this responsibility of taking care of myself to be a kind of spiritual stewardship. Taking care of my own spirit, and helping other people take care of theirs. ANYWAY.
ANYWAY, back to anxiety and making ART.
There's good news and bad news.
The bad news is, art-related anxiety never really goes away. Ask any experienced artist if they still feel some anxiety over perfectionism, productivity, impostor syndrome, not-good-enough-ism, comparison, originality... Almost all would admit a yes, or conveniently change the subject. Well, shit.
The good news is, it normalizes. Becomes entirely manageable. Not really that big of a deal, after a while. You gain the skills of responding to it, and you get used to it. This dynamic? It's ongoing. These kids don't move out, unfortunately. You'll be stuck with the little brats for life, but at least they're cute. You'll adapt and raise them well and love them anyway.
The other good/bad news (depending how you look at it) is that the existence of this anxiety/fear is entirely necessary to the creative process:
"If you are to create, you must invite anxiety in. But then you must manage it. If you can't manage this necessary anxiety, you will block; and we can start right now to call creative blockage the inability to manage the anxiety that attends the creative process, for that's what creative blockage most often is" ~Eric Maisel, psychotherapist (emphasis mine)
It is the dynamic tension created by this anxiety that makes things interesting. Talent aside, it is the artist's bravery and courage, hard work and resilience and perseverance in defiance of that fear, that leaves us in awe. If creating were painless and easy, maybe everyone would do it, but it wouldn't be as exciting or interesting or remarkable. I don't even know if we would see the beauty in it.
The very good news is, getting through this is entirely doable. There is also help available to get you through the rough patches.
If you need help with more severe or acute anxiety that gets in the way of everyday life, seeking the help of a licensed therapist is a necessary place to start. However, the everyday low-grade anxiety that accompanies the creative process? That I can help with.
It gets easier as you go along as well. There is movement, back and forth play, in that creative tension. And there is momentum, like a pendulum, potential and kinetic energy available in near-perpetuity, once we get it going.
Yes, we could just ignore them and distract ourselves and survive and get on with our day, get through the week, go through the motions... We could ignore them forever... but do we want to?
Some options to provide for and nurture your Muse or younger innocent Inner Child:
-Carve out/ schedule time for play and recreation because "just for fun" is important and restorative (Brené Brown)
-Embrace possibility: adopt "could" rather than "should" and see what shifts for you
-Pick up an old hobby that you used to love
-Adopt a beginner's/learner's mindset and try something new, maybe take a class
-Stickers and crayons and play-doh from the dollar store (seriously)
-Go outside and play in nature, flip over rocks, (carefully) climb a tree, make a sand castle
-Play make-believe with actual children if you have some in your life; let them take the lead
-Offer yourself praise and encouragement, and remember practice makes progress
-Make a mess or "bad art" ON PURPOSE, again, just for fun (ask me how, it really is fun!)
-Enjoy some "indulgent" self care
Some options to reassure and nurture your Inner Critic/ older more fearful Inner child:
-Ask yourself if the fear is a real threat or imagined: reassure yourself that you're safe and okay when merely perceived
-About mindsets and beliefs, ask honestly: "Is that true?" and "Can you know for sure that it's true?" (thank you Byron Katie)
-Recognize and gently call out any all-or-nothing, black & white thinking, recognize there is a lot of room for shades of grey and in-betweens
-Reply to negative self-talk with positive counter-examples and evidence (keep a physical, written running list of accomplishments and compliments)
-Offer yourself kindness and self-compassion by default (See Kristin Neff for resources here)
-Offer acknowledgement and gratitude (I hear you, thank you for your opinion and for trying to protect me, but I've got this, actually.)
To provide for your Inner Critic:
-Identify your true needs vs. "shoulds"
-To indulge the inner critic, do some "productive" self-care activities based on actual needs: house chores, necessary errands, grooming, etc...
-Provide structure and accountability around these needs
What else can you think of?
Final thoughts - IF you're feeling a lot of stress about creative anxiety, take heart and know that it's entirely normal. It is strangely a good thing, even necessary. If we nurture these opposing forces in turn, it provides an opportunity for us to care for ourselves while we make the art we want to make, whether it's for its own sake or some other motivation.
Typically, we humans (even so-called non-creatives) defer to the Inner Critic nearly exclusively, doing sensible grown up things, until the Muse stops asking. This causes an imbalance and keeps us from creating. Yes the fear feels real, it is valid to feel afraid, but, cognitively, is the threat a real threat? Or a perceived one? Are you in freefall or safety-belted into a rollercoaster? Are you in a dark haunted mansion, or in a reclining theatre seat? Is this excitement instead of fear? How much?
What if you could let go of perfection and expectation and just make art for fun? Would it be safe then to indulge the Muse?
(More than likely, yes).
Artists and Creatives know that when the Muse appears and asks for attention, it's helpful to also listen to them whenever you can, which can feel a little scary, but that's where courage and bravery come in.
Courage and bravery are about being scared and doing it anyway. (Thanks Carrie Fisher)
It's facing fear and saying "Not today Satan!"
(just for fun, and to drag out the devil metaphor a little longer)
Perhaps hiring a mentor or signing up for an art class will help you indulge your muse on a more regular basis?
In summary/ TL;DR:
It's everyday anxiety that keeps us from creating, and that's entirely normal to feel and experience. A metaphor for this anxiety is the conflict between the cartoon angel & devil on our shoulders, a visualization of our scared & hopeful inner child(ren): (One, the younger, innocent Muse, the cartoon angel, begging us to come out and play— and the Inner Critic, their sensible, jaded older sibling, the cartoon devil (perhaps a little bit goth), responding with we can't, we shouldn't). This conflict between excitement and fear keeps us stuck because we can easily get overwhelmed and then ignore both of them, distract ourselves and look the other way until the thoughts pass and we are on to other matters. This conflict that prevents us from making the art we want to make is actually a crucial ingredient for making it. We must attend to each one in turn to make forward progress.
