You just want to be there. Present. Living here in the moment, absorbing everything and changing nothing, letting it be as it is. But then there’s this voice in your head. And it wants something else. It wants to comment, judge, tear everything down, offer no hope, just crush and pulverise. You feel it, but you can’t turn down the volume.
Outwardly you seem indifferent, interested, open. But your questions, your tone, even your eyes wound, as if you’d hidden a screwdriver in your words and now you’re drilling into the ears and soul of the other person. And you don’t even notice.
Where does this voice come from? It comes from our environment, our upbringing, how we’ve dealt with successes and failures, how others have built us up or torn us down; which stories we hear over and over because older people say them, people who don’t know better and never did know better.
These voices now sit inside us. They’ve grown into us. And they get louder precisely when we can’t use them; when we want it quiet because it’s important and we need to form our own clear thoughts.
The voice is in your head. But you are not the voice. And you don’t need to listen to it. You can’t push it away, can’t block it out. It will always be there. But you don’t have to do everything this voice says. “You can’t do this, it’s not worth it. You’re too young/old/small/big/stupid/whatever”: When you hear that, you can spend hours thinking about how worthless you are. But who’s doing the judging here?
You can also just stop. With the next breath. Just like that. Or you can listen to your inner monologue like a podcast and switch off after a while because everything constantly repeats and nothing new comes.
Do you have children? What do you drill into them? Do you talk the way your voice talks to you? They fall off their bike and you run over, care for them, lift them up, hug and comfort them and then encourage them to try again. Why don’t you do that for yourself too?
You fall off your bike and instead of licking your wounds, you get angry. How could this happen, am I too old/unfit/unfocussed/whatever? And then the inner voice judges harshly that you’re too old/stupid/weak to ride a bike. It hisses that you must stop now because you can’t do it anymore and don’t want to anymore.
But there’s another way. What if you crouched on the footpath and asked with amusement what just happened? No blame, these things happen. And you’re glad your arms and legs aren’t hanging at odd angles.
Why don’t you listen to yourself more when you talk to people who matter to you? Why don’t you talk to yourself that way? Next time: When your inner voice is loud and cutting again, remember (as soon as you notice) that you have a choice and can stop anytime. With the very next breath.
What would you tell your best friend, your children in this situation? Why shouldn’t that work for you too?
First published in German at reinergaertner.de, where I’ve been at it since 1997. AI did the heavy lifting on the translation. I did the heavy squinting at the result.