The inner signal from the Inner Critic.

When I think about the inner critic, I’ve been doing some work on it with my therapist — and I started asking myself a simple question:

What if the first thing the inner critic says is a lie?

For instance, I  am  dealing with imposter syndrome, I thought , I’m not a educator . But in my case, that’s just not true. I have three licenses. I’ve been in education for over 30 years. By every measurable standard — I am a teacher.

So what makes the lie feel true?

It’s the emotion.

It’s the feeling that shows up in the center of my body and convinces me the thought must be real.

But what if we’ve been reading that emotion wrong?

This weekend, I was driving to the movies and had a moment where I felt that familiar sadness. And I started to wonder — what if the inner critic isn’t proving the lie?

What if it’s reacting to how I’m speaking to myself?

What if that sadness isn’t telling me I’m a fraud… but instead saying, it’s painful to think less of yourself than you really are.

That changes things.

Because now the emotion isn’t evidence — it’s a signal.

A signal that something I’m telling myself isn’t true.

And maybe the work isn’t to silence the inner critic completely… but to learn what it’s actually trying to say.

So here’s the question worth sitting with:

What if the feeling you’ve been using as proof of your doubt is actually a signal that you’ve been underestimating yourself?

When you feel that familiar wave of self-doubt, do you instinctively treat it as evidence that the doubt is true — and what might shift if you started treating it as a signal instead?