Helping Clients Transform their Inner Critic from the Inside Out

Name: Helping Clients Transform their Inner Critic from the Inside Out
Brand: The Embody Lab
Price: 198.0 USD
Availability: InStock

"Helping Clients Transform their Inner Critic from the Inside Out" offers a multi-faceted exploration of the inner critic, defining it as a normal yet often harsh internalized voice stemming from early experiences and societal pressures. Through diverse perspectives, the modules delve into its manifestations, from critical self-talk and physical sensations to protective functions and ego-driven behaviors. The program equips participants with a rich array of somatic, inquiry-based, and compassionate techniques, empowering them to transform their relationship with the inner critic and cultivate self-compassion. Ultimately, this package aims to guide individuals toward integrating all parts of themselves for enhanced self-acceptance and well-being.

Comprehensive Curriculum

Module 1: Listening to the Voice Within (Dené Logan) — Inner critic as ego's self-sabotage, Byron Katie's "The Work," humanizing others, fear of one's own power.

Module 2: The Origins of the Inner Critic (Dr. Albert Wong) — Developmental origins, somatic manifestations (chest tightness, constricted breath), resource breathing, empty chair dialogue.

Module 3: Listening to the Body's Wisdom (Deanna Jimenez) — The CARE process (Catch/Acknowledge/Resource/Engage), personifying the critic, bringing compassion to protective intentions.

Module 4: Turning Toward the Critic (Dr. Christopher Walling) — Historical context (Freudian superego, TA critical parent, IFS), somatic psychotherapy approach, SASB model, enactment exercises.

Module 5: Unmerging from that Critical Voice (Ann Weiser Cornell) — Inner Relationship Focusing, protectors are always worried / powerless / alone, acknowledgment without agreement ("Something in me says...").

Module 6: The Inner Critic — An Ecopsychology Perspective (Dr. Jeanine Canty) — Ego inflation in Western society, false self, expanded senses of self (ecological/multicultural/transpersonal/self-transforming/imaginal), nature and creativity.

Module 7: Befriending the Inner Critic (Cyndi Darnell) — Embodied befriending, inviting critic into heart space, physical cradling of symbolic representation.

Module 8: The Wounded Protector (Dr. Frank Anderson) — IFS compassionate approach, curiosity about positive intentions, origins inquiry, offering alternative protective methods.

Plus: Golden nuggets from guest Fran Booth.

Learning Outcomes & Professional Benefits

Core competencies across 6 areas: Understanding the Critic (protective origins, diverse manifestations, developmental/cultural roots); Somatic Awareness (physical manifestations, breath patterns, body cues as entry points); Intervention Techniques (resource breathing, empty chair, CARE process, Inner Relationship Focusing, embodied befriending, inquiry); Relational Approaches (dialogue rather than fight, empathy for burden, alternative protective strategies); Expanded Perspectives (ecological/transpersonal/multicultural selves, humanizing others, resting inflated ego); Transformation Process (resistance → compassion, unblending, externalization, integration rather than elimination).

Who This Is For

Therapists working with self-critical clients; IFS practitioners deepening parts work with critics; somatic practitioners addressing embodied criticism; clinicians working with perfectionism and shame; anyone supporting clients with low self-esteem; practitioners interested in multiple modalities for critic work; therapists wanting to integrate somatic, cognitive, and relational approaches; professionals working with trauma survivors (where critic often develops).

Faculty

Frank Anderson (Dr.)

Frank Anderson, MD, is a world-renowned trauma expert, Harvard-trained psychiatrist, and global speaker. He is the co-author of the IFS Skills Training Manual (2017), the best-selling Transcending Trauma (2021), and his memoir To Be Loved: A Story of Truth, Trauma and Transformation (2024). Dr. Anderson has a long affiliation with Bessel van der Kolk at the Trauma Research Foundation and is a former lead trainer at the IFS Institute under Richard Schwartz. He is the director and cofounder of the Trauma Institute and Trauma-Informed Media, dedicated to integrating neuroscience with cutting-edge therapy and bringing trauma healing to the world.

Dené Logan

Dené Logan is a Marriage and Family Therapist, a group facilitator, and an author based in Los Angeles. In addition to working with clients in private practice, she is a mindfulness coach, a yoga teacher, and specializes in supporting others in showing up more authentically in all of their relationships - including (and perhaps most importantly) in the relationship with themselves. Dené utilizes her background in depth psychology to infuse archetypes, ritual, and metaphysics into the exploration of how each of us can reclaim the aspects of our authentic selves that we’ve been culturally conditioned to turn away from in an attempt to maintain attachments. Her first book, Sovereign Love: A Guide to Healing Relationships by Reclaiming the Masculine and Feminine Within, is available now.

Albert Wong (Dr.)

Dr. Albert Wong is the Director of the Trauma Certificate Program at Somatopia. He maintains a private counseling and consulting practice centered around somatic psychotherapy and is the founder of the online somatic education platform, Somatopia: www.somatopia.com.

Deanna Jimenez

Deanna Jimenez is an Assistant Professor in the Somatic Psychology Department at California Institute of Integral Studies and a somatic/transpersonal psychotherapist in private practice. Her work explores the intersection of mental health, race, culture, and spirituality, with a focus on supporting individuals and couples engaged in transformative justice and social change. Drawing from transpersonal psychology and embodied practice, she supports clients in building grounded, spiritually rooted resilience while challenging systems of oppression.

Christopher Walling (Dr.)

Dr. Chris Walling, PsyD, MBA, FABP, is a licensed clinical psychologist, board-certified psychoanalyst, and active leader in the bio-behavioral sciences. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Research Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Research Chair & Past-President of the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy. A Fellow of the American Board of Psychoanalysis, he serves as Clinical Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute and was honored as a 2024 Gina Ogden Curatorial Scholar. His clinical interests span somatic psychotherapy, relational psychoanalysis, human sexuality, and trauma psychology.

Ann Weiser Cornell (Dr.)

Ann Weiser Cornell is an author, educator, and worldwide authority on Focusing, the emotional self-healing method developed by her close colleague Eugene Gendlin. She has taught Inner Relationship Focusing in twenty countries for more than thirty-five years, as well as online. Her books include The Radical Acceptance of Everything, Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change, and 21 Days to Better Boundaries. She is co-author (with Barbara McGavin) of Untangling: How You Can Transform What's Impossibly Stuck, and Past President of the Association for Humanistic Psychology.

Jeanine Canty (Dr.)

Jeanine M. Canty, PhD, is a professor of transformative studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), telecommuting from Boulder, CO. Formerly chair of environmental studies at Naropa University, she continues to teach at Naropa and Pacifica Graduate Institute's ecopsychology certificate program. Her teaching intersects social and ecological justice, ecopsychology, and worldview transformation. She authored Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing our Collective Narcissism and Healing our Planet (Shambhala, 2022) and edited the second edition of Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women's Voices (2025).

Cyndi Darnell

Cyndi Darnell is a world renowned sex & relationship expert. She brings over 25 years of clinical and practical expertise to the world of intimacy, relationships and somatic healing. She's the author of Sex When You Don't Feel Like It: The Truth About Mismatched Libido & Rediscovering Desire. She works online with people of all genders and orientations around the world in many relationship configurations via zoom.

Fran Booth

Frances Booth, LICSW, is a Certified IFS therapist, consultant, and international trainer, colleague to Richard Schwartz (founder of IFS) and Susan McConnell (author of Somatic IFS). Her somatically focused clinical practice specializes in trauma, anxiety, depression, cancer, eating, and attachment disorders. A graduate of Cornell University and Simmons School for Social Work, she has held adjunct faculty positions at Smith College, Tufts Medical School, and William James College. Her trainings include mindfulness at Insight Meditation Center, mind/body work with Joan Borysenko, and Wavework with Dayashakti at Kripalu.