When we talk about the inner critic we usually focus on someone else’s inner critic—we read the article about the successful director that still suffers from self doubt, or we talk to the person in our writing group who just sold a script and they tell us they’re worried that everyone will think they’re a fraud. In cases like these it’s easy to see the inner critic for what it is: A nebulous cloud of doubts and worries that isn’t rooted in reality. But when it comes to our own inner critic, truth and fantasy become much more difficult to separate from each other.