Cognitive restructuring
'Cognition' is a word used to denote a thought or belief, and 'restructuring' involves challenging a cognition by looking at the evidence for or against it. The basic idea behind cognitive restructuring is that thoughts themselves are not facts; you need to consider whether the thoughts you are having are true and to consider whether there are any other ways to thinking about a particular situation. At first this can be a real challenge: we often believe what we think and don't question our own thoughts. However, often our thinking is biased, and with perfectionism it can be biased towards thinking too negatively and harshly about yourself.
What happens when the critical voice gets louder?
You can expect that over time there will be periods in your life when the self-critical voice starts to become louder again and tries harder to capture your attention.
Usually this will indicate that some trigger has occurred in your life that has caused you to feel bad about yourself so that you start listening to the self-critical voice again. When this happens it can be useful to identify the trigger. Depending on the nature of the trigger, try to identify how this feeds into your perfectionism and which techniques you can use from these sessions to help you overcome these issues.
Above all, don't be disappointed in yourself when the self-critical voice gets louder. This is part of the natural ebb and flow of thoughts in your mind.
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It can be very helpful to have the compassionate voice written down to make it more salient and audible. Write out the most helpful thoughts which you wish to practice hearing and keep them somewhere you can easily refer to. For example...