overcoming bad inner voices we don't
often think about it and may never
discuss it with others at all but pretty
much everyone has voices in their heads
a murmuring stream of thoughts that run
along inside our minds most of the time
sometimes the inner voice is encouraging
calling for you to run those final few
yards you're nearly there keep going
keep going or urging you to calm down
because you know it will all be okay in
the end
but sometimes the inner voice is simply
not very nice at all
it is defeatist and punitive panic
ridden and humiliating it doesn't
represent anything like our best
insights or most mature capacities it's
not the voice of our better nature we
find ourselves saying you disgust me
things always got to with you or
you use this little idiot where do inner
voices come from an inner voice always
used to be an outer voice we absorb the
tone of others a harassed or angry
parent the menacing threats of an elder
sibling came to put us down the words of
a schoolyard bully or teacher who seemed
impossible to please we internalize the
unhelpful voices because at certain key
moments in the past they sounded
compelling the authority figures
repeated their messages over and over
until they got lodged in our own way of
thinking part of achieving happiness and
maturity involves altering our inner
voices which means encountering equally
convincing and confident but also
helpful and constructed varieties of
voices over long periods and taking care
to internalize them they might be the
voices of a friend a therapist or an
author
we need to hear them often enough and
around tricky enough issues that they
come to feel normal and natural
responses so that eventually they come
to feel like things we are saying to
ourselves they become our own thoughts
the best sort of inner voice speaks to
us in a gentle kind and unhurried way it
should feel as if a sympathetic arm were
being put around our shoulder by someone
who had lived long and seen a great many
sad things but wasn't and bittered or
panicked by them in certain states of
humiliation around work in many of us
there is a mocking and contemptuous
voice inside one's head it suggests that
love respect and kindness only ever come
via worldly success and competence or
failure not being able to make a public
speech taking time to learn to drive a
car not being especially brilliant at
sales rightly debars us from love and
appreciation we need to incorporate a
voice that separates out achievement
from love that reminds us that we may be
worthy of affection even if we fail and
that being a winner is only one part and
not necessarily the most important part
of one's identity this is traditionally
the voice of the mother but it might
also be the voice of a lover a poet to
be liked or a nine-year-old child
chatting to his or her mum or dad about
a stress at the office it is the voice
of a person who loves you for being you
outside of achievement many of us grew
up around nervous people people who lost
their tempers the moment the parking
ticket couldn't be found and who were
knocked off course by relatively minor
administrative hurdles like the
electricity bill
these people had no faith in themselves
and therefore without necessarily
wanting to do us harm
couldn't have much faith in our own
abilities either every time we faced an
exam they got more alarm2 than we did
they always asked multiple times if we
had enough to wear when we went outside
they worried about our friends and our
teachers they were sure the holiday was
going to turn into a disaster
now these voices have become our own and
cloud our capacity to take an accurate
measurement of what we are capable of
we have internalized voices of
irrational fear and fragility at such
moment we need an alternative voice that
can pause our runaway fears and remind
us of the strength we have latent within
us which the currents of panic have
hidden from us our heads are large
cavernous spaces they contain the voices
of all the people we have ever known we
should learn to mute the unhelpful ones
and focus on the voices we really need
to guide us through the thickets of life
we humbly offer this voice as one of the
more helpful ones we might take on board
from a young age we talked it's a
terrible thing so when we feel it as we
all do we're inclined not to examine it
we just feel that she did all Italian so
ever that means it's got some amazing
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