Mental Judges The Criticism Mechanism Within

There are some days, there is not a moment during the day when we are stressed, we have a good day at work, we have a good time with our spouse, we have not received any negative news, everything is in order, so to speak. When we put our head on the pillow, we have no reason not to have a good night's sleep.

We go to bed, close our eyes, but we can't fall asleep. First we think about why we can't sleep, then those thoughts turn into an outside voice whispering in our ear.

It is as if the voice is whispering "you weren't good enough today", "is this who you are? Couldn't you be better?", "look at you, how could you not have thought about that incident?"

Hay! Where did this voice come from now?

Have you ever wondered who these voices belong to?

There is an inner voice that appears in all of us from time to time, that throws our mistakes in our faces, that makes us feel "inadequate". The impact of this voice on our lives may be greater than we think.

In this article, we will try to evaluate from philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific perspectives where this critical voice comes from, how it can change shape and how we can establish a healthier relationship with it.

Philosophical and Scientific Background

The philosophical perspective:

According to Sigmund Freud, the human mind consists of three main structures: id, ego and superego.(1*)

Id is the impulsive and impatient part of our mind that nurtures and controls our most basic instincts and desires.

Ego is the part of us that controls our alignment with reality, regulating the desires of the id according to the conditions of the external world.

Superego, on the other hand, is the representative of the moral rules we adopt ourselves, the social rules and the values we learn from the people/institutions/concepts we accept as authorities.

Superego is shaped in our childhood by the voices of our parents, teachers, religious or cultural figures we accept as authorities.

In the beginning, it finds a place for itself with the fear of "I will be punished if I do wrong". As time passes, this external voice becomes a mechanism by which we judge ourselves.

The superego has two main functions:

The ideal self: It defines the "person we should be"

Conscience: It punishes our behavior that we consider "wrong", often with the help of a sense of guilt.

It is important to note here:

If the superego develops too rigidly, the critical mechanism, which we call the inner judge, is almost never silent. Instead of making constructive criticisms, it constantly throws our shortcomings, mistakes and flaws in our face. This is the most destructive form of mental judgment.

Therefore, from Freud's point of view, in order to understand the inner judge, in order to realize what voices our superego consists of, I think it is useful to ask ourselves the following questions:

Does this voice really belong to us?

Or is it the echo of the authority figures we heard as children or younger and accepted without question?

If we become aware of the superego, perhaps we will not silence the judgmental voice, but we will have transformed it from a "judge" to a counselor.

This observation of modern psychology is surprisingly consistent with the observations of the Stoic philosophers who lived thousands of years ago. Indeed, we can see the same approach when Epictetus says that man finds his freedom in his own judgment.

Stoacılık ve Epiktetos: The Door to Freedom, Our Own Judgment

The Attic philosopher Epictetus says that we should seek our freedom in our own judgment, not in external factors. According to him, the events that happen to us do not hurt us directly; the real pain is caused by the meaning and judgments we attribute to these events.

One of the most well-known pieces of advice that Epictetus gives us is this:

"It is not the event that disturbs me; it is my thought about that event."

In a way, this perspective also defines the inner voice that we call the mental judge. After all, this inner voice is the "inner" voice. If this voice is constantly criticizing, belittling, blaming, we are the one who turns our mind into a prison, because we are the one who does it to ourselves.

From the point of view of soteriology, we cannot say that freedom is being able to do anything; freedom is being able to be the master of our own reactions, no matter what happens to us. That is, we cannot control what happens outside, but we can choose how we respond to it. (2*)

One of the practices suggested by Epictetus is to divide things into two categories:

Things we can control:

For example our thoughts, our behavior, our actions.

Things we cannot control:

For example, the behavior of others, the weather, the past, death...

It is useful to consider the connection between our own judgments and freedom in this context.

If the judge in our mind is judging us based on things we cannot control, it will only produce anger, guilt and feelings of helplessness. But if we shift our focus to the things we can control, the mental burden we place on ourselves is reduced and our sphere of freedom becomes wider.

In short, Epictetus tells us that:

True freedom does not arise from the outside world, but from the effort and determination to transform our own judgments.

When we move from the inward-looking understanding of freedom of the ancient age to the psychoanalytic depths of the 20th century, we encounter Lacan. Lacan says that this inner voice is not only our own...

Lacan and the "Big Other": The Eye of the Judge Within

According to the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, it is not only one's internal confrontations that shape the human self, but also one's confrontations with the perspective and approach of society.

This concept, which he refers to as an invisible authority, Lacan defines as the "Big Other": unnamed social rules, the way language shapes our understanding, and the expectations others have of us. (3*)

The "Big Other" is not a concrete person. Rather, it is an "external gaze" that we internalize in our minds, as if it is constantly watching and judging us.

The rules we learn as children from our parents, teachers, religious authorities or cultural traditions become ingrained in us over time and begin to speak as if they were our own voice without us being aware of it.

Therefore, when we blame ourselves or think "this is what I should do", we are in fact often speaking with the voice of the Big Other.

This voice is not fed by our subjective desire, but by the values that society codifies as "right" and "wrong".

One of Lacan's important points is this:

The Big Other is not entirely "real"; it exists in a symbolic order. But its effect is very real. Because we act according to that gaze, we acknowledge its existence even as we seek its approval or rebel against it.

When we look at the concept of the mental judge from this perspective, the critical question to ask is:

"Does this inner voice judging me really belong to me, or is it the voice of the Big Other?"

If the answer is the latter, perhaps we are trying to defend our own life in someone else's court. And this realization may be the first step towards liberation.

While Lacan's concept of the "Big Other" draws attention to the external judgments that shape the individual's own self, Nietzsche looks at this process from a completely different perspective.

Nietzsche: Peace with the Will to Power to Prevent the Inner War from Turning into Nihilism

Nietzsche argues that life is inevitably full of conflicts within as well as without. Man also carries within himself a "battlefield": there is an endless tension between conscience and desire, between fear and courage, between the past and the future.

If this inner battle is not managed properly, it can turn into nihilism (i.e. the loss of the meaning of life). Because man exhausts his energy in conflicts that he cannot resolve within himself, and in the end everything is "empty".

Nietzsche introduces the concept of "will to power". (4*) According to him, the will to power is not only the power to dominate others, but primarily the power to rule one's own inner world.

According to him, making peace with the will to power is not possible by denying or silencing inner conflicts, but by embracing, transforming and channeling them into creativity.

Feelings such as anger, frustration or guilt should be understood and transformed into useful energy rather than destroyed.

Nietzsche's call to us is this:

"If we are at war within ourselves, we should not try to win that war, but to draw strength from it."

Because if we suppress these inner conflicts without transforming them, they accumulate in the dark corners of our minds. And there they can develop into a sense of emptiness and ultimately nihilism that eats away at the whole meaning of life.

But the man who makes peace with his will to power embraces both his own past and his own shortcomings, so that the inner battle is no longer a consuming burden, but a source of deepening his being.

The scientific perspective

Kristin Neff ve Özşefkat: Transforming Our Inner Judge

Psychologist Kristin Neff is one of those who systematically introduced the concept of "self-compassion" into modern psychology.

Self-compassion, according to her, is not "self-pity"; on the contrary, it is the practice of transforming our inner harshest critic, the mental judge, into a friendly voice.According to

Neff's research (5*), inner criticism seems to be "a mechanism in our minds that motivates us to be better", but when it is constantly accusing and punishing, it leads to psychological destruction. This is where self-compassion comes in.

Self-compassion consists of three basic components:

Self-Kindness:

To be able to say to ourselves, "I'm struggling right now, but it's a human condition" when that voice inside tells us that we are "not good enough".

Common Humanity

Remembering that making mistakes is not unique to us; that all people stumble from time to time. This helps to prevent the inner voice from telling us "you'll be fine", "you've always done this".

Mindfulness

Noticing and not getting caught up in that inner voice that keeps judging us, without suppressing or magnifying challenging emotions.

Research Findings

Kristin Neff's studies show that individuals with high self-compassion experience less anxiety and depression.

In stressful situations, cortisol levels drop faster.

It is easier for them to adopt a improvement-oriented approach instead of the loss of motivation caused by internal criticism.

Our inner voice that judges us, gets angry, punishes us, often "thinks" it's there to protect us from our mistakes, but it's usually just "punishing voices from the past running around in our heads".

The practice of self-compassion helps us to change the tone of this voice from a punishing judge to a mentor offering support, without silencing it.

Exercise: Retraining the Inner Judge

When we experience a difficult moment, when we hear that voice, we can say to ourselves these three phrases:

"This is a painful moment." (Mindfulness)

"Pain is part of being human." (Common Humanity)

"I can be kind to myself in this moment." (Self-Kindness)

These simple sentences soften the "harsh questioning" of our inner voice, helping to establish a new and more compassionate tone in our inner dialogues.

The Default Mode Network in the Brain: Anatomy of the Constantly Working Inner Voice

When we are idle, when we spend time with ourselves, it feels like our brain is resting. Although it may seem that way to us, our brain is busy and active most of the time.

There is a special network that is activated during these moments of what we think of as rest: Default Mode Network (DMN). (6*)

This is the network that automatically processes thoughts such as reviewing the past, planning for the future, reviewing ourselves and guessing how others see us.

The self-talk factory

This mechanism is activated when we revisit past events, imagine scenarios that never happened, review our mistakes, or guess what others think of us.

If we leave it as an automatic mechanism and don't make it conscious, it can unwittingly become our inner judge and persecute us.

When the DMN is active, our brains often think in a "me" centered way.

When functioning beneficially, this reinforces our sense of self and strengthens our social bonds.

But if it is unchecked and grows, it can cause us to fixate on past mistakes or to think endlessly about negative possibilities for the future.

At this point, the Mental Judge comes into play:

Like a prosecutor looking for evidence against us, whether we are guilty or not, it digs into our past.

It judges us, accepting things that have not happened yet, that may not even be likely to happen.

It magnifies even small mistakes, sometimes not even mistakes, things that can be learned and improved, and declares us "guilty" from the inside.

According to studies, when the DMN is overactive, rumination (obsessive thinking), which is often seen in depression and anxiety disorders, increases. (7*)

Mindfulness and meditation reduce DMN activity and engage the brain's "task-positive network". Balanced functioning of the DMN is crucial for both creative thinking and emotional balance.

Exercises to Keep the DMN in Balance

We can use the following techniques as a balancer when we feel that our inner judge is pushing us.

Labeling Technique

When we have this feeling, we can become aware of the situation by suggesting to ourselves, "This is a thought, it is not real".

Bodily Focus

To momentarily shift our focus away from that thought, we can pay attention to the warmth, smell or texture of an object we touch.

Short Breathing Breaks

Several times a day, we can do a 1-minute conscious breathing exercise.

Default Mode Network can be our brain's friend or potential enemy.

If we leave it running unaware, it will never stop generating material for our inner judge.

But if we are aware of it and manage to channel it, we can turn it into a guide that helps us learn from the past and take more informed steps for future situations.

Amygdala and Medial Prefrontal Cortex: Neurobiological Echoes of the Judging Voice

Although the "judging voice" in our minds may seem abstract, it is actually powered by the interaction of two very concrete centers of the brain.

Amygdala: Danger Detector

The amygdala is a fast defense system that has evolved over millions of years of evolution.

It signals "threat" when we recall a bad memory, criticism or embarrassing memory. This threat can be perceived by our body as real as a physical attack. The inner judge's reactions based on anger, guilt or shame often originate in the amygdala.

For example, if we have experienced a moment of embarrassment in the company of friends, even months later when we recall that moment, our heart starts to race and our hands sweat because the amygdala's danger-signaling register in our memory is triggered.

Medial Prefrontal Cortex: Mirror and Judge

mPFC is the area of our brain that processes the perception of what we call "me" and predicts how others see us.

It comes into play when we evaluate ourselves, comparing what we "should be" according to societal norms with what we "really are". As this difference grows, the critical voice of the "inner judge" gets stronger.

mPFC interprets "threat" signals sent by the amygdala. If it sees a lack of approval from others, shame or the possibility of ostracization, the judgmental voice can get louder.

The Mental Judge Loop

The amygdala says: This situation is bad, it can be dangerous.

mPFC takes the reed: Yes, because society says it is wrong. You have made a mistake here.

The inner judge is not idle.

"You must not behave like this again. You shouldn't behave like this again. In fact, you always do this."

It makes life miserable for us with inner voices, then again the danger signal, again the evaluation, pulls us in and out of our little vortex.

When this cycle is repeated over and over again, our feelings of chronic self-criticism and guilt are reinforced.

What Research Shows?

In chronic depression and anxiety disorders, the amygdala is overactive and the mPFC tends to overinterpret these signals.

Mindfulness, self-compassion exercises, and cognitive reframing techniques can modulate the mPFC's response to the amygdala, softening the inner judgment.

In people with improved emotional regulation skills, mPFC-amygdala communication is more balanced and less threatening. (8*)

Understanding these complex networks of the brain is one of the most powerful tools we have to combat internal judgments. But it is not enough to just understand it; we need to integrate this knowledge into our daily lives.

Solution Approaches

Bodily awareness: Observing bodily responses, such as breathing and heartbeat, when a threat is perceived is the first step to recognizing amygdala activation.

Conscious pause: Asking "Is this really a threat, or just a thought?" when the judgmental voice kicks in.

Social bond strengthening: Being accepted in safe relationships reshapes the mPFC's perception of "social approval".

The amygdala is our inner fast and emotional line of defense; the mPFC is the slow but rule-bound referee.

When they work together, they can provide a balanced self-assessment. But when one is overly dominant, the "Mental Judge" kicks in and the person becomes cruel to themselves.

The development of the inner voice: Internalization of Parents, Teachers and Society

Oftentimes the "judgmental voice" within us is not innate and is learned. The voices that come from the outside (parent, teacher, society) as a child become embedded in our brains over time and transform into our own inner voice.

1: Internalizing Parental Voice

Between the ages of 0-6, the brain copies behaviors and attitudes from the environment, especially through mirror neurons.

In this process, the words, intonation and judgments used by parents draw the first map of "right" and "wrong" in the child's mind. (9*)

If love and approval are constantly imposed on the child as a condition ("I will love you if you do this, I will approve of you if you behave like this"), the child will build his/her inner voice in the future within the framework of this kind of conditioning.

Example:

If the mother or father says "You are so clumsy" when the child spills milk on the floor, the child's inner voice may repeat the same sentence when the child makes a mistake in the future.

School is the first place where the child encounters authority figures outside the family. In this process, rules, discipline and the grading system reinforce the perception of success and failure.

Symbols such as "well done" and "writing on the blackboard" leave deep traces in the reward/punishment mechanism of the brain.

Neuroscience Note:

During this period, the medial prefrontal cortex begins to develop and the capacity for social evaluation increases. The child begins to ask the question "How do others see me?"

3. Society and Culture: The Voice of the Big Other

In adolescence and young adulthood, society's values and cultural norms act as the "Big Other" (as mentioned in the Lacan thread).

Fashion, religion, morality, "ideal" lives on social media... all set the tone for the individual's inner voice. At this stage, the inner voice is no longer the mix of a single parent, but of a whole society.

4. Permanentization of the Inner Voice

In adulthood, we have internalized most of the external judgments. When we make a mistake at work or do not conform to social norms, that old voice comes back into play. This voice turns into a "conscience" when it is constructive and a "Mental Judge" when it is destructive.

5. Is It Possible to Break the Cycle?

If we recognize the origin of the inner voice and become aware of it ("Is that my voice or my mother's/teacher's voice?").

If we approach ourselves in the same way we would approach a loved one in the same situation.

If we can turn criticism into improvement (instead of taking it as "I did this wrong and it's shameful", we can say "I learned from this criticism and I can do this better").

It seems possible.

Our inner voice is an invisible script written in the words we were taught in the early years of life.

But we are the director of this script. If we want, we can soften the judgmental part of it and turn it into a supportive life coach.

Societal and Cultural Influences

Most of us grew up with requests, suggestions and expectations from our family or environment such as "You should be successful", "You should be better".

These words, while they may seem motivating, act like a time bomb, potentially turning our inner voice into an auditor constantly looking for inadequacy.

Social media multiplies this pressure. When we are compared to "perfect" lives every day, our own inner voice becomes more relentless: "You're still not good enough."

Culturally, making mistakes is often coded as a cause for shame, not an opportunity to learn. This increases the harshness of the mental judgment; one tends to run away from one's mistake, not to make amends for it.

Real Problems and Solutions

What is wrong with the current system?

In fact, the inner voice is inherently there to support our development. However, in the speed and pressure of modern life, this voice turns from being constructive into a destructive controller.

Achievement-oriented culture is constantly telling us: "You can do better, it's not enough." Over time, this voice becomes a mechanism of internal pressure rather than a tool for development. This, in turn, leads to the constant need to "fix" our own lives, chronic burnout and loss of self-confidence.

What can we do to transform the mental judge? Why are you criticizing me? What is your purpose?

Then observe the answers in the same tone... The point is to try to understand the intention of that voice.

Then, instead of trying to silence it, try to notice the side of it that tries to protect us... After all, most of the time it is there to protect us from shame or failure, but its method is harsh.

At this point, let's not be cruel to ourselves, let's develop self-compassion... Let's treat ourselves in the face of mistakes as we would treat a loved one.

Let's remember that mistakes are not ours alone, that they are a natural part of being human.

Let's recognize the presence of the critical voice and observe it without getting caught up in it...

Let's see thoughts not as absolute truths, but as contents that come and go in the mind. If we ask ourselves the question, "Is this thought serving me right now?"...

If we take small breaks during the day and say these sentences: "I'm good enough. This is what I can do right now, and that's valuable. Of course I'm going to improve and I'm not going to stay at this point, but I'm not going to persecute myself."

I feel like it could happen. I feel like if we can do these things, instead of fighting with our inner voice and stressing out, we can join hands and move forward to a brighter future.

We all have an inner voice that is shaped by our own experiences, and so is mine.

There were many times when some of my experiences turned my inner voice into a self-flagellating "you are not worthy of being loved that much anyway".

Then I took this flagellum, I said what is wrong with you brother, then I realized that it was not about flagellating me, the flagellum was already in my hand.

Now we are walking hand in hand, I hope these beautiful changes I have made for myself are also beneficial for you readers.

Conclusion and Message to the Reader

The critical voice within us may have emerged to remind us of the small mistakes it sees in us, to help us correct them.

But if we fail to recognize, understand and manage it, it begins to silently rule our lives. But understanding it allows us to break this cycle:

And maybe the real issue is not to fight that inner judge, but to take the pen from its hand and rewrite our own story.

If so, try to answer yourself:

"Is the voice that speaks inside you really yours, or is it the echo of someone or an event you once heard, feared, loved or felt sad about?"

In this article, we tried to recognize the judge within us.

In my next article, we will focus on the area that this voice affects the most, "our relationship with emotions" and the question "is it healthier to suppress or express emotions?"

Until then, stay with love.