I'll just put in a (brief) plug for the article...

One of the things it talks about is healthy vs unhealthy roles. Healthy roles are: happy kid, manageable persecutor / critic; able / competent rescuer. Unhealthy roles include: unconsolable kid (victim); out of control persecutor / critic; impotent rescuer. It talks about how our experience as a kid leads to us internalising those roles. As a strategy for helping the client internalise the healthy version of those roles (the way out of the unhealthy roles) they talk about role plays where the client and therapist take turns... When the client is being the persecutor (internal critic) and the client is being the kid then eventually the kid will be at a loss as to how to respond... Then the therapist can step in (as the competent rescuer) and that is supposed to be emotionally healing. The client can internalise the healthy competent rescuer and that can lead to structural changes in the personality where the client is able to play competent rescuer to their own unhappy kid.

How do we learn to be a competent rescuer to ourself if we have never had that modelled? I've seen a lot of the unhappy kid :-( I've internalised my mother the harsh critic / persecutor. My Father played incompetent rescuer (he ran away). I need someone to show me how to do it...

I'm wondering if you could show your t the article and if you could work together... It is unclear to me how much your t is mirroring your inner critic...

Might be a different way for the both of you to look at the situation...

Maybe.