I am grateful to my inner critic for trying to keep me safe.

Whatever it is doing badly, it is not trying to ruin you.

The whole design brief was to get ahead of a humiliation that happened once, probably a long time ago, and nobody has ever told it the emergency ended.

Picture antivirus software from 2009 still running full scans at nine every morning over a machine that hasn't held anything worth stealing in years. Slow, loud, wrong about nearly everything — and installed, originally, by somebody trying to help.

Gratitude sounds like an odd response to that until you notice how much better it works than fighting. Things that feel attacked defend themselves. Things that feel heard tend to quieten down and take up less of the afternoon.