Cultivating Loving-Kindness for Inner Critics: Buddhist Practice for Therapists

In this episode of The Practitioner's Heart Podcast, host Poh Gan, a psychologist and Buddhist practitioner, shares practical Buddhist wisdom to help therapists and healthcare workers cultivate loving-kindness and manage the inner critic. Poh introduces a simple yet profound practice using Metta (loving-kindness meditation) that can be integrated into daily life to soothe self-criticism and promote resilience. Listeners are guided through a hands-on-heart exercise designed to bring immediate relief and create new habits of self-kindness, ensuring a sustainable and balanced practice. This episode is a resource for therapists seeking deeper spiritual alignment and support in their personal and professional lives.

00:00 Introduction to The Practitioner's Heart

02:29 The Inner Critic's Replay Loop

04:10 Understanding the Inner Critic

06:40 Practicing Metta: Loving Kindness

14:23 Hands-on Heart Practice

19:39 Building a Sustainable Practice

21:21 Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

Transcript

Hey, welcome to the practitioner's heart offering practical Buddhist wisdom for a sustainable practice for therapists and healthcare workers. If you are keen to learn more and deepen your practice beyond the theoretical understanding of Buddhism. If you are finding it hard to calm your little active mind after therapy work, I welcome you to join me to dive a little deeper.

Each episode I'll be sharing some common issues that therapists may face when integrating and practicing awareness, compassion within themselves, and also supporting clients. I'll be sprinkling some pearls of wisdom that I've learned from my master and teachers that will be helpful as internal resources for the helpers in us.

I'll also be interviewing other therapists who are on these spiritual paths together to share their experiences of how they integrate and practice wisdom and compassion in their daily lives. I want to let you know that you're not alone. You are part of a bigger community who aspire for greater soul alignment, growth, purpose, and awakening, that we can strike a balance of juggling our busy modern life as therapists with a clear mind and an open heart.

I hope to inspire more practitioners to explore deeper spiritual meaning and purpose on our path to enlightenment and awakening. I am your host, Poh Gan, a psychologist, a Buddhist practitioner, a parent of two children, a fellow human being with a busy mind, but with a great inspired vision for collective awakening.

Let's begin.

Welcome to the Practitioner's Heart Podcast. I'm excited to share this space with you. Today, I want you to picture this

as you're driving back home after an intense back-to-back sessions. On the way home, your mind is looping in replay of today, that one moment in the session where you feel like you stumbled your words, um, the intervention that landed flat, the question that you wish that you had asked, or the one that you wish you hadn't, the clients that you may need to manage risks or have a safety plan, the clinical mind, that therapist mind, the one that will work so hard to sharpen turns on itself and the voice of the inner critic starts to set in and gets loud, starts to ask questions that cut deep. Ah, was that good enough?

Did I do a good job? Did I actually help? Am I just a fraud? Did I do enough to support the person? I'm not competent enough. Sound familiar. This replay loop, the cycle of inner self-criticism is one of the most common and painful parts of our work. It's a heavy burden to carry home at the end of the day.

Sometimes it's the part that drains our energy if we're not aware of them. It's like a quiet thief of our resilience and energy. Today we're going to talk about the antidote to this inner critic voice. We're going to explore a simple but profound Buddhist practice that can help us to meet the inner critique, not with more struggle, but with compassion and loving kindness. It is important to first acknowledge where this inner critique comes from. For most of us, it isn't born from a place of malise or bad intention. It is. I think if this inner critic could speak for its concerns, it's probably our deep desire to do good work, to be effective, to truly be of service.

We hold ourselves to an incredibly high standard because we care so much all of us come into this line of work, not really because we wanted to earn heaps of money. Of course, that would be nice, but we have this genuine desire to be of service. When that caring turns into relentless self-judgment, it stops being a helpful guide and becomes a source of internal suffering, and it feels that burnt out guilt cycle that we've been talking about in the blossoming therapist community, feeling that we are either giving too much or not giving enough. It convinced us that we're not good enough, or that maybe we need to push ourselves harder, further try harder. And the moment when we are aware of that and finding ways to get ourselves out of that spiral. That's where we can break the cycle of burnout. It is not to argue with the inner critique or try to banish it or to bandaid it with lots and lots of affirmations. Yes, we want affirmations, but. I think it is fundamentally to have a different relationship with our inner critique.

This brings us to a core concept in Buddhist practice. Um, it's called Metta, which is often translated as loving kindness. I want to be very clear when I talk about applying loving kindness to yourself, I'm not talking about empty positive affirmations. It is not about looking in the mirror and saying, "I am a perfect therapist."

When you feel like you've just failed. This creates more internal war comparison and the duality of perfect or imperfect. It is inauthentic. And our systems knows it. Instead Metta is about generating a genuine, embodied feelings of warmth and goodwill toward our imperfect, struggling self.

It is an acknowledgement of the difficulty of the moment, this share humanity and an offering of care right there and then in the middle of it is a difference between saying like, "Oh, you're fine. This is fine."

Or instead, it is really genuine loving kindness gaze towards yourself that, "This is really hard right now. And I'm here with you." The first is a denial of reality. The second is a deep acceptance of it, which is the first step towards true relief. The state of loving kindness actually goes beyond words and conceptual mind.

You see all sentient beings wish to be happy, in peace and feel love. We all have this common goal of wanting to be happy and our intrinsic human nature, true nature, is love and compassion. We don't have to contrive love, we just need to align ourselves to it. The genuine state of that self energy or pristine awareness is complete with loving kindness and compassion.

In Mahayana Buddhism, we refer to our inner arising and seizing of thoughts and perceptions as "inner sentient beings". They arise and seize based on external circumstances and conditions. They are temporary and fleeting. It's like a seed in a garden. When the conditions of water, sunlight, and nutrients are all complete and available, they sprout and they grow.

If we are kind to our "external human beings" or animal beings. We too have to be kind to our internal "inner sentient beings" as well. when the voices of inner critiques are loud, it's usually an ego or an "I" that is at play, clinging to how I should or should not behave. show up. When we become attached to these inner critic voice and refuse to let them go, this usually creates tension within us. In Buddhist psychology lens,

It's very much "whole versus parts" lens of viewing our internal experiences. If we aligned ourself back to our awareness, our true nature, this "Self-As-Context" of greater spaciousness and openness,

this part of us. Is actually complete with unconditional love and compassion this inner critique, this voice inside us is actually a part, maybe that is in defense mode or, sense some danger and wants to protect you. The ego, the "I".

Evolutionally speaking. That's how we as mental health professionals continue to reflect and improve. it's built up in us that we continue to reflect how did we go in the last session and what are the things that we have done well and what we could do differently. And that's great.

That is working for us because we continue to improve as therapists, but we do not need to push. We do not need to engage in name calling. And we do not need to have an argument with this inner critic or this tug of war with our inner critic. In fact, if we treat our inner critique the same way as all beings in the external environment that we wanted to show love, care, and compassion towards them, we.

Will be curious and open towards these inner critique and what's the story behind it? What is it motivated to do Where do you learn this name calling from? What are you trying to do to protect me? Often the inner critics might be the past conditioning of how we need to be harsh towards ourselves in order to survive.

It fits into the stories of I need to try harder.

But let me ask you, have you ever wanted our clients to get bullied into improving themselves? No, not really. In fact, I don't think anyone ever will have long lasting transformation or changes if it's all motivated out of fear of critiques or punishment.

So how do we practice self-compassion with Buddhist psychology lens? How do we practice this in a way that feels accessible, especially when we are exhausted, we can start with a practice that is both light and beneficial. Something that it can do in a car after a tough session at your desk between clients or in bed when you wake up at 3:00 AM with that familiar replay loop running.

And I am sure a lot of you are quite familiar with the hands on heart practice. It's incredibly simple. The next time you notice the inner critique starting its monologue, the criticism, the doubt, the feeling of being a fraud or an imposter, try this. First, you simply place your hand on your heart.

The physical touch is quite important here because it's a somatic anchor. It activates that parasympathetic nervous system, the care system, the same way a parents touch soothe a child as a direct nonverbal signal to your nervous system that says, "it's okay. I got you. You're not alone in this."

And second, you take a one big conscious breath. Not a huge one, but just a single intentional inhale and exhale. This brings you out of that spinning spiral thoughts in your head and into the present moment into your body, and connect to this part of you that's open and spacious, with wishes for all beings to feel loved and happy.

Maybe you can think of a time that you feel the love towards a baby or a whimpering puppy, or your loved ones. Bring a smile on your face. And third, as you breathe, you silently offer yourself a kind phrase. This is where the Metta comes in. This phrase isn't meant to fix anything, it's just to acknowledge.

You could say, "This is a difficult moment," "I'm doing the best that I can." "May I be kind to myself" or even just "Ouch, that hurts,"

and maybe a response to your inner critique. I know you're looking out for me. I see you and notice that you are in pain.

You are scared. May you be well, may you be safe.

Let's try it together just for a moment.

if it feels available and comfortable for you, I invite you to place a hand over the center of your chest and feel that warmth of your hand. Feel that gentle pressure Take one slow breath in and a full breath out.

Silently in your mind or for yourself, one of those phrases, perhaps "I'm doing the best that I can",

or, "I know you are scared. I wish you well and safe," to your inner critique

and just notice what that feels like. There's no right or wrong way to feel it. This practice is simply the gesture itself. The intention is to be kind.

" I am a good enough therapist."

And notice how your body relaxes after the acknowledgement.

So this is a small practice that is the antidote to the inner critique voice when it gets too loud. It doesn't fight. It soothes. It doesn't argue. With the content of the criticism, it holds a part of you that is in pain with loving kindness. And over time, this small gesture can begin to build a new neural pathway.

It creates a new habit. Instead of meeting difficult moments with more harshness, it begins to instinctively meet it with a moment of care. and you are, in essence tuning the instrument of your own heart to allow it to align to that open spaciousness.

you're learning to hold space for yourself with the same loving kindness and compassion that you so readily offer to your clients. I think it's an essential part of how we build a sustainable practice, not by becoming like a perfect practitioner who never make mistakes because we're all still on the path,

by becoming practitioners who are aware, who are tuned in to how our body feels, how our inner critique, our inner, beings are behaving, and how to care for themselves when they do, when they get a little bit of tantrum in the mind. It is how we do this work for a lifetime, not just for a few years before burning out.

So the next time this replay loop of inner critic begins, I invite you to try it. Hands on your heart, one breath, one kind phrase, and it may just be a short, kind and effective intervention for yourself. Thank you for joining me on The Practitioner's Heart. May you be well. May you be safe and may you be kind to yourself.

As we close our practice for today, I want to thank you for sharing this time. If this episode resonated with you, the most meaningful way to support the podcast is to share it, share it with a colleague, or live a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It helps our community to reach other people who need it.

Until next time. Keep your heart open, keep your mind clear and steady. Go be your amazing self as you awaken yourself and others.

See you next time.

Just a gentle reminder that our conversation today is for inspiration and education only. It's not a substitute for therapy or clinical supervision and our time together doesn't constitute a therapeutic relationship.