The other day something happened that I didn’t really want to happen.

It wasn’t anything dramatic. But I didn’t like it.

Then suddenly, without warning, I found myself feeling anxious. Unsettled. A kind of quiet dread clenching my chest.

I felt restless. My brain flipped into urgent problem-solving mode. Like I should DO something to change it. Work harder. Fix something. I just wasn't sure what - or how…

And then, after a while — longer than I'd like to admit — I stopped and asked: ‘Wait a moment! What is actually going on here?'

And when I was finally able to become quiet enough to listen… there it was.

A voice.

Chattering away underneath everything.

Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a steady, insistent stream of small terrible verdicts.

I’m not good enough. I’m getting it wrong. I’m going to fail. I should be doing more.

I hadn't actually heard it. 

I’d only felt it — as dread, as urgency, as that particular flavour of anxious busyness that masquerades as uber-productivity.

Sneaky, mean little voice!

Caught it!

So, this is the thing I want to share with you today.

Most of us don't actually hear our inner critic.

We just feel it.

We feel the sudden heaviness. The spike of irritation. The creeping shame. The anxious, restless, urgent need to do something, fix something, prove something.

And we don’t question it.

We just think those feelings are telling us something real about the truth of the situation.

We don't realise there was a voice first.

A story that ran so fast, so quietly, that we missed it entirely.

And the thing is…

That voice isn’t even telling the truth.

But if you can't hear it, you can't question it.

And if you can't question it, you can't choose differently.

So you just keep living inside a story you never agreed to.

And that's where we need to begin.

Not with fixing the voice. Or challenging the inner critic. 

Not yet.

First we have to simply become aware that it is there.

Just a small, radical act of noticing: ‘Oh. There you are. Saying mean, untrue things about me.’

Inside The Portal of Permission this month, we're all working together on exactly this — learning to catch the voice before it catches us. 

If you know that little mean voice is tripping up you too, come and join us for a month on How to Love Yourself in Your Head Talk. 

It's so helpful to do this in community!

If you loved yourself, what would you say to yourself about your inner critic now?