The Antidote to the Inner Critic? Your Intuition.

The magic happens in Vroesenpark.

We often think of intuition as something soft or vague. But for me, it’s been the opposite. It’s been strong, clear and kind.
If your Inner Critic tells you you’re not good enough, then your intuition is the voice that says you are.
If your Inner Critic makes you doubt yourself, your intuition helps you come back to who you are.

This is how that looked for me.

A few years ago, I was in a relationship with someone who would qualify as an avoidant partner. Days with him could be heaven or hell. His push-and-pull behavior was exhausting. I’ve always been anxious in relationships, so with him, I was constantly going out of my way to please, trying to win his love and not to be abandoned.

He was like a god to me. Larger than life, superior. I remember feeling lucky he was with me. I wondered whether other women saw him as extraordinary as I did. One day, he’d love-bomb me with attention and the next he’d turn cold, distant, as if I’d done something terribly wrong.

Did I mention we worked together? He even became my manager. So the anxious-avoidant dynamic wasn’t just emotional, it was embedded in my everyday reality.

Every day, I was overwhelmed by the constant negative self-talk of my Inner Critic. It told me he would leave me at any moment, that I wasn’t enough, that I wasn’t in control. It never occurred to me that maybe I was valuable, maybe I was lovable as I was. I wasn’t responding to reality, but was reacting from old wounds. From childhood abandonment. 

That’s when I started therapy. I showed up to my first session like a good student, “homework” in hand: “I have anxious attachment. He’s avoidant. I know I’m projecting unmet childhood needs from my father but I can’t stop doing it. Help.”

One day, I was spiraling again. My Inner Critic was on full volume, telling me he was right to ignore me, right to be angry. That I wasn’t enough. I went for a walk in Vroesenpark in Rotterdam. If you read my stories, you will notice that nature always seems to be the place where I reconnect with myself. As I walked, overwhelmed and anxious, I suddenly had a thought that cut through the noise:

“You’re not anxious. You’re angry. Look at how he’s treating you. He’s not special. You deserve better. You matter.”

Boom.

That was it. One of the most magical moments of my life. A full-body unlock. For so long, I thought I was anxious but what I was really feeling was anger.

That walk helped me get closer to my anger, to listen to it, to make friends with it. And in doing that, I felt relief. I felt like I was loving myself, maybe for the first time. Because my anger, in that moment, was love. It was a boundary. And the voice that told me I deserved more? That was my intuition.

It didn’t yell, but it was firm. It was loving. It was clear.

That moment didn’t fix everything overnight. I still took two steps forward and three back. But I remember the day when things truly shifted. I was on the phone with him, crying, afraid he’d leave me. And out of nowhere, I heard myself say: “We can’t be together anymore.”

I couldn’t believe I said it. It should have felt like my worst nightmare. But it didn’t. It felt liberating.

That voice that helped me say it? Still my intuition.

Since then, I’ve kept listening. Just the other day, I was caught in another spiral, feeling sorry for myself over something else. And there it was again, the voice. “No, Ioana. You don’t want to do this.”

So clear. So kind. So certain.

Intuition isn’t the opposite of logic. It’s the opposite of the Inner Critic. It’s the part of you that loves you fiercely, enough to walk away, enough to draw a line, enough to say: you matter.