One way of dealing with the inner critic, found in many different traditions, East and West:

So the holy elders,” I added, “claim that the best strategy to cope with troublesome logismoi [thoughts] is simply to ignore them.” “Precisely. Our first defense against destructive logismoi is complete indifference. This is the healthiest and most productive method to head them off right at their inception. Ignore them completely. Never open up a dialogue with these intruders. Do not interact with them either out of curiosity or out of overconfidence.”

Kyriacos C. Markides, The Mountain of Silence: a search for Orthodox Spirituality