Working with Inner Criticism
For therapists, healers, coaches, and teachers
A 90-minute Seminar with David Bedrick
“I have learned SO much from today. This has helped both personally and professionally.”
Most of our clients are plagued by inner criticism.
These can be judgmental voices in their heads. Or, they can be parental or cultural viewpoints they've internalized that have no voice, for example, viewpoints about their bodies or ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving.
Nonetheless, these VIOLATE by looking at them as if they are unworthy, inadequate, or less beautiful, intelligent and divine than they really are.
Inner criticism is chronic and persistent, running in the background of all our actions, even when we don’t notice it.
Awareness of the flow of this diminishment is especially important with the healing of trauma because of the way traumatic events are internalized and continue to be relived, over and over inside. It is like a parent hitting a child; though the hitting has stopped, the violence inside perseverates.
“Bedrick offers a deep, astute, accessible, & practice-based path to divesting from the most debilitating mind state - shame.”
—Gabor Maté, MD
In this seminar, you’ll learn 4 best practices for dealing with inner criticism:
Having your clients speak the words of the inner critic out loud so that it can be witnessed and heard.
Helping your client connect with their body/somatic feelings in response to being spoken to and treated this way.
Interviewing and educating the inner critic to discover where there's a potential value in that viewpoint.
Most radically, discovering and integrating the energy of the inner critic (not the content and opinion).
And, you’ll discover the power of role play/drama therapy in dealing with inner criticism:
Role play between the person and their critic (parts work)
Deepening the role play through somatic amplification
Don't miss this profound training!
If you enjoyed the Transference and Countertransference seminar, you'll certainly enjoy this too. Here’s what participants have said:
“David, this seminar was incredibly impactful! You put words to entanglements I have been experiencing with 1:1 clients and was unsure how to navigate.”
“Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and personal stories, it’s a pleasure to learn from you.”
“This was such a powerful training, I can’t thank you enough for holding it, and an accessible cost!”
Working with inner criticism is warranted when your clients:
Have low esteem or self worth
Are subject to cultural marginalization and dehumanization
Show no progress over time with you or past healing efforts
Have been abused and/or traumatized
Have chronic difficulties that don’t seem to ‘get better’
Talk about “still” having problems/difficulties
Think of themselves as “trying” hard
Compare themselves to others
And, obviously, those who judge and criticize themselves
NOTE: The most insidious and injurious form of inner criticism occurs when your client TOTALLY BELIEVES THE CRITICISM. In these cases, THEY ARE THE CRITIC. THEY BECOME THE PERPETRATOR IN THEIR STORY, but don’t know it. The authentic self gets annihilated. This is actually a form of radical dissociation and deserves our most potent interventions.
Here’s what attendees have said about this seminar:
“Powerful to watch and hear David respond to an inner critic. Thank you for that demo.”
“I do this work in some ways but this is incredibly clarifying.”
“This work is so important, it’s profound.”
“So grateful to you, David, and the volunteer for the demos. I learned a lot from your exchanges Deeply moved and inspired by it all.”
“Moved and inspired watching David work with people on inner criticism.”
“Powerful to watch and hear David respond to the inner critic.”
GET ACCESS TO THE CLASS:
The live class is now complete and the recording is available for purchase for $40
MEET YOUR FACILITATOR:
David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he offers facilitation training to deepen the skills and awareness of healers as well as workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. David’s embodied way of teaching is far more than informational, students are often brought to tears and face to face with their beauty, power, life path and soul.
David’s passion for studying shame arose from his childhood, growing up with a father who used fists and belts to express his rage and a mother who coped by denying and gaslighting his experience. Over thirty years of research, teaching, and working with individuals awakened his heart and mind to how the dominant healing paradigm pathologizes people—seeing our sufferings and ills as something to fix and cure instead of messages to be understood and invitations to deepen our relationships with ourselves and the world around us. In this way, David understands our difficulties as “dreams”—invitations to insight, soul, and the divine unfolding of our lives.
David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.
His fourth book, The Unshaming Way, was published by North Atlantic Books in November 2024.