Let’s take a look at the internal monologue, also known as your inner voice, internal dialogue or the voice inside your head. This is when you hear yourself talking in your head without actually speaking or forming sounds. A little bit like carrying on a conversation with yourself. Hearing or so in your own head is a completely natural phenomenon. Some experience this more than others, and some people have no internal monologue at all.

When we talk about inner dialogue, we talk a lot about how to be kind or how to separate feelings from facts. How we speak to ourselves matters; you cultivate an inner voice as you grow. Some from first-hand experience and some from how people talk to you. You create your worldview, your lens, the core beliefs that shape a lot of how you speak to yourself and how you see the world. These filters at times become personal bias and must be kept in check.

When thinking about your inner voice, when’s the last time you asked it where it came from? Or how it came to be? We did not get these ideas or narratives in our head from nowhere. It’s helpful to think of our inner dialogue as you may have had a specific relationship or experience that shaped how you looked at the world from there on out.

When I was young, as most kids do, I made messes a lot, and as a neurodiverse kid I made even more than my neurotypical counterpart. I remember my grandma saying “there’s a ray of sunshine” after I spilled milk all over the countertop in her kitchen. It’s a phrase I have heard in my head ever since. Echoing the first time she told me, but it’s no longer in her voice it’s in mine. This echo in my head is kind to me. It reminds me that mistakes are reversible, being messy is human and that I have the power to perceive a ray of sunshine about things if I look for one.

This self-conceptual communication is important. That includes thoughts, contemplations, feelings and assessments we make of ourselves. This internal monologue is not always so kind. Negative self-talk is usually the first to gain traction when an inner voice is critical, negative, punishing or when there are thoughts or comments made from oneself to oneself that are mean spirited, pessimistic, unfairly critical, or just overly judgmental. We all have an inner critic and it’s important to challenge it.

Where did I get the evidence for this idea? I could be out socializing, and my inner critic is telling me no one cares to hear about my interest of the week or opinion on the topic at hand, and I might hear in my head how when I talk so much it’s annoying. The evidence you ask? Well, it’s not coming from anyone at the table. When I make comments or ask questions, I know my friends enjoy hearing them and contribute back just as I enjoy doing the same with them, but my mind loves to pick at how when I talk so much it’s annoying. My evidence is one person who suffered a lot but just one person, nonetheless. Not a valid sample size nor reliable one, in fact a very biased one. Instead of embracing my current reality and the people that are around and seeing myself how they see me, my inner critic decides to replay echoes from this one person from my past who said it’s annoying when I talk so much. I don’t hear it in that person’s voice anymore. I hear it in my own. Somewhere along the line the echoes of that phrase got taken over by my own voice.

Oftentimes this phenomenon occurs when the way someone else has critiqued us echoes in our head. After a while the echo fades but sometimes we pick up that narrative and continue it ourselves. This person isn’t here to tell me that when I talk too much it’s annoying, but I’ve been hearing it for so long it’s something comfortable to hear. So, I’ve taken over and decided to become the voice of that negative thought and be how that person was to myself in my head. How unfair!

Asking ourselves why we talk to ourselves the way we do is important. We deserve to be using narratives that matter and are reality and facts, not one set up and fed to us or learned that we continue to utilize to hurt ourselves. If you find yourself having a harsh inner critic or want to talk more about what your internal dialogue looks like, please contact Life Enhancement Counseling Services at 407-443-8862 to schedule an appointment with one of our licensed mental health counselors.