What to do about the Mean Voice in your Head
I saw my ex-fiancé in the grocery store the other day. That is, I saw someone vaguely shaped like him: tall with glasses, the right color hair and the now stooping posture that I’ve noticed in the photos that mutual friends share on social media.
I can’t 100% say that it was him because the instant I “saw” him I had a knee-jerk reaction to put down the mozzarella cheese I’d been pondering, turn, and walk (swiftly) in the other direction. It didn’t stop there. As I walked away it was immediately 25 years ago and I was pissed over an insult he made about my body (btw he also insulted someone else I care about in the same sentence. We can acknowledge that there’s a reason things didn’t work out with that guy.) For a few minutes I stood fuming in the grocery store while assessing how much “worse” my body is now than it was at 22.
I would like to say that all the years of coaching and yoga helped me have a very evolved response. That I walked back and had a nice little conversation with him. But what really happened is that I finished my shopping faster than I ever have before and got out quick. So much for personal evolution.
Your Past is still here
This is such a good example of something I talk to my clients about a lot: your past is still with you. Things that we think would be long gone and have no impact on us, can come back at any moment. Then we make unexpected and less-than-conscious choices. Most of the time we don’t even know it’s happening.
When you were little you got a lot of messages from the people around you. Messages that told you how to behave if you wanted to belong. Messages that kept you safe physically. Messages that also kept you “safe” in your family or other places like school or places of worship.
A lot of those messages were truly important. Things like don’t run out into traffic, or touch a hot stove, or only eat candy have kept you alive for all this time.
But a lot of the messages you got when you were younger don’t hold up into adulthood. You might have gotten the message that the most important thing you could do is stay close to home and take care of your family. But it doesn’t resonate with your innate wanderlust. Or you got the message that the best way to keep a relationship going is to always sacrifice your needs for the good of your partner. But now you’re exhausted and resentful. You might have gotten messages about your appearance needing to be perfect. Only you don’t want to your put energy there because now you’re invested in saving the water supply and you’re messy all the time. Some messages don’t resonate with adult you anymore.
Making a New Way
The interesting thing is, when things are going relatively ok, we can side-step the old messages. With enough self-determination folks choose to push back and make their own choices. You live abroad instead of in your small hometown. You go on a retreat even if your partner doesn’t understand. Or you let yourself have dirt under your fingernails even if your mother would faint if she saw you.
But it’s a shaky rebellion. The messages are still there, and they’re ready to pounce if given the chance. The chances always come. Sometimes they come in a big life change like having a child or getting a divorce. Sometimes they come through exhaustion and suddenly you’re doubting your whole life. Sometimes they come when you see the the source (like me and my ex-fiancé last week). It’s why you fall back into old habits and feel like a little kid when you go home for the holidays.
The Mean Voice
When the messages come back they sound like the mean-voice in your head. They tell you what you’re doing wrong, and how terrible of a person you are for doing it. They’re drenched in shame and guilt. All they want is for you to pay attention and start playing by the rules that were laid out for you when you were little. And no, they don’t care whether those rules work for grown-up you one bit.
The worst part is, most folks won’t even notice the voice. They’ll just feel like crap and question their decisions. Luckily that’s not the only choice.
Notice, Name, and Make A Different Choice
This is where mindfulness practice is so helpful. In mindfulness-based meditation you become mindful (aware) of your thoughts. You watch them, you notice them, you don’t do anything with them, and they eventually dissolve back into the quiet where they came from. With practice, mindful awareness spills out into your life off your cushion. Now you notice the mean voice and the stress it’s causing.
Noticing is golden because that means you can do something about it.
Fighting the mean voice head on doesn’t work. Don’t bother, you’ll just end up in a toxic positivity loop arguing with your mind and strengthening the mean voice.
It’s possible to use alternate thoughts, to replace the old thoughts, but it’s not as simple as just thinking happy thoughts. There’s a whole process to it, and if you’re interested I suggest diving into the work of Byron Katie. I have witnessed her process working for many of my clients and for myself. But without support it’s a little tough.
A simpler path is to give your mean voice a name. Think of that voice in your head as a character. It really wants to you to be safe and happy and healthy. It just doesn’t know what will get that for you. So who is that voice in there? Is it an extreme version of your mother? Or a particularly harsh teacher you once had? Maybe it’s a television character you saw that has the same vibe as your mean voice. Who is it? If you could name that voice, what would you call it?
This may sound silly, but naming your mean voice does something very important. It separates you from it. Now you have the space to watch what it says but you don’t have to take it to heart, or believe it. Now you can choose when to follow it’s advice and when to stand in your convictions.
I can tell you that I’ve done this with several of the mean voices in my head and it has been freeing. Watching them rather than believing them has been life-changing for me. Most notably, it frees me up to do what I want to do in the ways that I want to do it, rather than holding back because of old thought patterns.
So, with my ex-fiancé I don’t really wish I’d done anything different there in the grocery store. There’s nothing that needs to be said after all this time. And I don’t particularly care to catch up with him.
What’s more important is that I caught the mean voice that wanted to remember what he said, and to make my body wrong because of it. Instead of listening to a 25 year old insult, I laughed it off. I reminded myself that was his voice, not mine. And I went home to my dear husband who says nothing but kind things to me.
That memory could’ve stuck in my head for days or weeks. It could’ve sent me into a spiral about my body. But because I know how to work with my mind, it was more like a passing blip. Just enough to remind me that I’m still human, I still feel, I’m still affected by my past. But I’m not prisoner of it.
Enjoy Your Freedom
The same can be true for you. You don’t have to be a prisoner of the messages you got in your past. The next time your mind is being extra hurtful take a few minutes to name the mean voice and step back from it. Imagine another person is saying what that voice is saying to you. Then decide, does it work for you now? or not?
You have the power to choose. You can choose to move in the ways you want to move, regardless of what you were taught. I hope you’ll choose to move in ways that make you feel more peace, ease, and freedom. Let me know if I can help.
I help folks learn to hear and name the mean voices in their heads all the time in my coaching practice. If yours is getting you down, let’s have a chat.