Do you have a harsh inner critic reacting to what you think, feel and do? Sometimes the inner critic is so blended with the self--who we think we are--that it's difficult to even identify it as the inner critic. And it's even harder to imagine that our inner voice could be anything but that inner critic. Having that critic going on constantly is exhausting and depressing. It can berate us with: You're not good enough; You're going to fail; Nobody really likes you; You're too much; You can't do anything right; You're never going to be happy; You're so stupid, silly, immature, worthless, ridiculous. It can push us to go above and beyond and then cause us to zone out because we're done.

When we cultivate mindful awareness with meditation, we can create space enough in our thoughts to see the inner critic objectively and we can cultivate self-compassion to respond to what is happening in the moment as a loving parent would.

Reparenting Ourselves and Mindfulness Meditation is a 6-week series focusing on cultivating an inner, loving-parent awareness that eventually can have a stronger conscious presence in our daily lives than the harsh, inner critic. Each group session will begin with reading from the Loving Parent Guidebook published by the Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families, talking about what comes up for us from the reading, then we will do a mindfulness meditation practice and end with time to ask questions and share insights.