How I Get Out of a Self-Critical Spiral: Part 1, The Process Steps

I fall into self-critical spirals all the time.

When I have a pain flareup and have to cancel my plans. When I think I did a bad job on a call. When I’m late responding to texts. When I eat like crap over the weekend. When I get stressed that I’m not going to achieve my business goals.

I would say that minimum 2-3 times a week, I fall into some kind of sticky, persistent, quicksand-like self-critical funk.

Here’s how I pull myself out of it.

This is not meant as a manual of exact steps for you to follow (though you’re welcome to follow them!).

This is the custom playbook I’ve developed for myself over time, through LOTS of reps, iterations, and adjustments.

And I’m going to keep updating and iterating on it in the future! My playbook a year from now will probably look very different than the one here today.

But I thought you might like to see a snapshot of what it looks like right now.

First, I ask: What would I think if Taylor Swift did this exact thing? (aka I tap into my Inner Fan)

I talked about how to tap into your Inner Fan several months ago, and it’s still a technique that I use regularly.

Let’s say I have a pain flareup, cancel all my calls, don’t do any writing or anything else on my to-do list, order takeout for dinner, and stay up until 4 am watching crappy reality TV.

That is a sequence of events that is guaranteed to send me into a self-critical spiral.

When I wake up bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived the next morning, I am going to feel like absolute crap about myself on every dimension.

My inner critic is pretty strong to begin with, but after a day like that, it will transform into a Hulk-sized beast with a mile-long list of judgments that totally paralyzes me.

A Hulked-out inner critic is hard for me to out-maneuver. You can’t just have a rational conversation with it. Logic and evidence make no impact.

So I ask myself—

If Taylor Swift had a pain flareup, canceled all her calls, didn’t write any songs, didn’t do anything else on her to-do list, ordered takeout for dinner, and stayed up until 4 am watching crappy reality TV…what would I think about her?

I’m a huge freaking fan of Taylor Swift, which is another way of saying I have unconditional positive regard for her. Whatever she does, I’m a fan.

And when I ask myself that question, I transfer some of that unconditional positive regard onto myself.

If Taylor Swift did those things, I would still see her as a whole person outside of one day’s actions. Those things would be an insignificant blip with little to no impact on my overall opinion of her.

If anything, I might say “Sounds like a rough day! Take it easy and get some rest!”

When your automatic brain is really flared up, logic and evidence my not reach it.

And when that happens, you can go back to your automatic brain’s native language: association, aka “just hold these two things next to each other and make a connection between them.”

The Inner Fan question operates on association, not logic.

I’m not trying to make a logical connection between me and Taylor Swift.

I’m making an associative connection between us.

I’m telling my brain: “Take the stuff I did yesterday. Hold it next to your unconditional positive regard for Taylor Swift. Make a connection between those two things.”

This doesn’t instantly make me feel amazing.

But it lightens the load enough that I can get out of bed.

Then, I gently, gently, gently start to take action.

Once I’m out of bed, I start (gently, gently, gently) doing Productive Person Things.

If I was a good, productive, on-top-of-it person, what would I do? I’d do the normal routine I do when I’m feeling good.

So I start slowly doing that. Brush my teeth, mouthwash, shower, pray, coffee, Wordle, texts, emails.

My Hulked-out inner critic really wants to believe: You’re a lazy slob that gets nothing done!!!

But slowly, one by one, I’m doing Productive Person Things (per my own mental definition).

And this creates an incongruence that my brain needs to resolve. How can I be a lazy slob if I’m doing Productive Person Things?

The more Productive Person Things I do, the weaker my inner critic gets, because it just doesn’t make sense to my brain.

Then, I bathe in a stream of other people’s thought suggestions.

At this point, I’m still not feeling amazing. But I’ve gotten myself to “low grade crappy,” which is a big upgrade from “catastrophically crappy.”

I’d like to feel sharp and purposeful and on top of things.

But I don’t really have the mental energy to find the thoughts that will get me there.

Enter: Other people’s thought suggestions.

I turn on a podcast from one of my favorite coaches.

It’s a business podcast, and the topic of the episode isn’t related to self-esteem or self-criticism in any direct way. It’s just the host sharing fun facts about herself.

But I tell my brain: Just relax into this stream of someone else’s thoughts and see if anything resonates with you.

See if anything clicks and makes you feel sharp and purposeful and on top of things and good enough.

And when I’m looking for it, I find it.

The host talks about how, for her, setting big revenue goals isn’t only about making more and more money — it’s really about who she’s becoming as she pursues those goals.

And something about that resonates. I think about who I’m becoming and who I’m trying to be. I feel motivated. Energized. Purposeful. On top of things.

I’m back.

Once I feel better, I ask: What happened? Do I want to do anything differently?

Once I’m out of the self-critical spiral, I can analyze what happened calmly and analytically.

How did my day end up taking me to such a crappy place?

My inner critic wants to say: It happened because you’re LAZY!!!!!

But my analysis shows that that’s not what happened.

I tried something new in my physical therapy routine — something I believed would be helpful.

Inadvertently, the new PT caused a minor flareup.

When I have a flareup, it’s very hard for me to focus. I almost always reschedule my calls when this happens because trying to coach someone when you’re distracted isn’t helpful to anyone.

I tried to write but didn’t have the bandwidth for that either. I actually still sent out an email newsletter, just from my backlog of pieces I hadn’t published yet.

The other tasks on my list didn’t seem important enough to battle through the flareup to complete.

A flareup tends to make me very tired, and when I’m very tired, my brain is reaaaaally convinced that takeout will be both comforting and energizing. I was too tired to fight it, so I ordered takeout.

I felt bad about ordering takeout, and because I didn’t want to sit there feeling bad about myself, I kept hitting “next episode” to block out that bad feeling until I was so tired that I just fell asleep (which took until 4 am).

So the root cause here wasn’t laziness at all.

It was 80% just plain health stuff.

• Moving calls and adjusting my schedule made total sense.

• The takeout wasn’t the best decision, but I get it — it’s a low-energy moment for me! I should probably pre-select a moderately healthy takeout option for these kinds of moments, so I can still have the fun of ordering out but it’s not total open season on Uber Eats.

And it was 20% the impact of my own self-critical spiral.

• Once I started feeling bad about myself for ordering out, I just wanted to escape that feeling. Which led to me watching hours of TV… Which only gave my inner critic even more shade to throw at me.

• No laziness here either! I just didn’t catch on to what was happening because I was tired and distracted by pain.

• Now I knew this was a mental pattern that could happen during a pain flareup. Next time, I just needed to catch the spiral even earlier and put a stop to it.

But my inner critic’s diagnosis of “You’re a lazy slob” was totally wrong.

That’s literally not what happened here.

---

I don’t share all this to say “Here’s your ready-to-go manual for getting out of self-critical spirals.” (Though please feel free to borrow from this!)

I have not yet found a universal set of process steps that can get every person out of self-critical spirals every single time, in all situations.

If I ever find it, I’m going to shout it from every rooftop.

But I don’t think it’s about the specific process steps. Because I keep updating and evolving this playbook, even just for myself.

I think the real magic is in the PRINCIPLES that allow me to develop and continually adapt this playbook.

I started writing those principles, thinking it would be a few bullets or paragraphs at most, but it turned into a full second article that’s even longer than this one.

So those principles are coming up in the next newsletter :)

And if you want to develop your own custom playbook for getting out of self-critical spirals…

That is exactly what I help my clients do.

So come talk to me, and let’s start today :)

---

Part 2 ➡️

📸 Instagram | 💌 Newsletter | 👋🏽 New? Start here