Taming Your Inner Critic: Turn Self-Attack into Self-Awareness
This Jungian Life Podcast
Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano
4.8 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2025
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!
Our inner critic—that voice constantly tearing us down—can stem from difficult childhood experiences, negative cultural messages, or even powerful archetypal forces deep within us. While healthy self-assessment involves honestly owning our mistakes, feeling genuine regret, and making amends, the harsh inner critic keeps us stuck in cycles of self-hatred and shame.
Sometimes, beating ourselves up can actually be a sneaky way to avoid openly engaging a problem or soberly accepting responsibility. The trick is to slow down, get curious, and talk back to that voice—to have an honest inner dialogue rather than just giving in. At its worst, the inner critic can be devastating, pulling us toward despair; that's precisely when we need the support of others and deeper wisdom—turning toward the Self will help us find a path to peace.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this Jungian life. |
| 0:04.2 | Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, |
| 0:09.7 | invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. |
| 0:19.4 | I'm Lisa Marchiano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia. |
| 0:23.4 | I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia. |
| 0:28.3 | I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst, on Cape Cod. |
| 0:54.0 | Thank you. We wanted to talk about the inner critic, our tendency to self-attack, to condemn ourselves, to blame ourselves all the time for things. What is that about? What purpose does it |
| 0:57.1 | serve? And how might it be affecting us? And how can we understand this from a depth psychological |
| 1:03.5 | lens? But before we jump into that very meaty, juicy topic, I just wanted to mention that the three of us trained to become Jungian analysts at the |
| 1:15.9 | C.T. Young Institute of Philadelphia. And the Young Institute of Philadelphia has a seminar program |
| 1:23.8 | that allows people with a serious interest in Young to come and partake of some |
| 1:31.0 | juicy, delicious training. You don't have to be a clinician and you don't have to want to be |
| 1:36.5 | an analyst, but you do have to be, you know, really interested in this stuff. And then it's great. |
| 1:44.0 | Yeah. So if you are curious, |
| 1:48.1 | interested, this has just piqued something in you. Go online, take a look at C.G. Jung |
| 1:54.7 | Philadelphia.org. Every month there are different teachers, different topics. It's a whole wide range. |
| 2:04.6 | All the teaching. Yes. Of all kinds of really wonderful material to learn and read and listen to and a whole cohort of peers and a great community. |
| 2:21.7 | It's an opportunity to be part, as you said, of a community of like-thinking individuals, |
| 2:27.5 | which for many us can be quite difficult to find. It's fun. We had a great time in the seminar. And Philadelphia is a wonderful city |
| 2:38.0 | to spend time in. It's incredible on many levels, culturally, in terms of the resources that |
| 2:45.6 | one can access while you're there. The museums are world famous in Philadelphia, but having an opportunity |
| 2:52.4 | to have a concentrated learning experience around Jungian ideas to be able to really dive deep |
... |
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