The Use of Humor in Confronting One's Inner Critic

Stephanie Houser, a certified CJEA practitioner, shares a delightfully creative journal process she did while confronting her Inner Critic. Using art and writing, she brought humor to the experience, and broke through a block she had. This approach to negative self-talk, using humor, is one I have witnessed over the years as being highly effective. Here is Stephanie's story.

The Use of Humor in Confronting One's Inner Critic
by Stephanie Houser

I wanted to tell you about a recent experience I had with my Inner Critic that really helped me to get past it in order to start writing and drawing again. 

I was drawing a picture of my Inner Critic and my non-dominant hand started drawing funny things over it - a flowered hat with a big bow, purple hair, and as I'm drawing I hear these other voices chiming in, "Give him blue eye-shadow," "Put curlers in his hair," and as I'm adding each thing to the drawing it becomes more and more funny to me. As I put the final touch on the face - a pair of cats-eye glasses - I just started laughing. It was such a wonderful way for me to negate the critic's power. 

Then my non-dominant hand wrote "You're Ridikulus! You have no power over me!" at the bottom of the picture and I made the connection to the boggart banishing in Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter series of books, there is an entity in it called a boggart and that entity is a shape-shifter that takes the form of it's observers worst fear. The way to defend against a boggart is a spell called Riddikulus: you make the creature into a figure of fun with your imagination so that fear can be dispelled with amusement. If the caster is able to laugh at the boggart, it will disappear. I found a picture from the Harry Potter movie that looked so similar to my drawing, too. 

I wanted to share my experience since I have been either writing or drawing ever day since I did this. I thought it might be helpful for others to try it this way.

Stephanie Houser, Certified CJEA Instructor
Groups and Individuals
Central Coast, California
shouser@charter.net

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Lucia

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