Treating oneself with compassion for the reasons behind self-criticism is more effective for feeling safe than self-criticism.

“if you want to help people move from motivating themselves with criticism to a more kind of constructive criticism more compassionate motivation if you leave out that step of having compassion and even gratitude to our inner critic for trying to keep ourselves safe it actually doesn't work”

“if we don't listen to it but if we listen to it and say hey okay i see you're worried you're worried about my safety thank you so much i hear you trust me i'll do everything i can to keep myself safe once you do that then it's much easier for the more compassionate part of ourselves to try to motivate a change”