Is It Your Inner Critic or Spirit Guides? How to Tell the Difference #260

You've been there. You go into meditation, you ask for guidance, and something comes through — clear, certain, wise-sounding. And you think, okay, this must be my guides. Except… what if it isn't?

Here's what nobody talks about enough: your inner critic is a really, really good actor. (Like, Oscar-worthy.) It has studied you your entire life. It knows your voice, your fears, the exact spiritual language that will make you stop and listen. And it will absolutely dress itself up in the costume of "wisdom" if that's what it takes to keep you small and safe.

This episode is about learning to see through it.

Genuine spirit guide communication has a signature — a felt quality — that the inner critic simply cannot fake. In this episode, we'll dive into how to tell the difference between your own thoughts and your Spirit Guides.

You'll walk away from this episode with four practical ways to check in with yourself in real time to discern the imposter from the real deal Spiritual guidance.

***2026 in-person Reiki class dates in Sedona are scheduled! Join us in-person

Christina Wooten helps you access the wisdom and support of the Spirit World to elevate your life.
She is a Certified Psychic Medium and Reiki Master Teacher.  Christina is the owner of Sedona Medium and co-host of Modern Life and Spirit podcast.

She offers Psychic Medium Readings, Soul Readings, and teaches how you can start communicating and receiving messages from your Spirit Guides - through her program.
Learn more about her offerings here


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Transcript

Narrator: 0:48

Christina, welcome to the modern life and spirit Podcast where we explore spiritual topics relevant to today's world. Your hosts, certified psychic medium Christina Wooten and Reiki master teacher Robert Wooten, break down how to work with spirit to create more positive growth in your life. Consider this podcast your go to spiritual resource for navigating the modern world.

Christina Wooten: 1:15

Hey there, kindred spirits. Welcome to Modern life and spirit Podcast. I'm Christina Wooten, certified psychic medium at SedonaMedium.com Welcome to our episode before we get started. I was just wondering, has anybody else been watching battle of fates? I think we were watching on Disney plus. But Robert and I got so into that show, and it was so much fun. We really, really enjoyed it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should definitely look it up, called Battle of fates. It's a Korean competition show, and it gathers up 49 of the country's top fate readers. So they're Korean shamans, they're Saju masters, they're tarot readers. There's face readers. I think there was a foot reader on there, and it puts them head to head, to prove that they can do what they say, that they can do. And it was just such an interesting experience. It was beautiful to kind of watch this cultural education, to see the shamans at work, to watch how the fortune tellers process things, how they presented the information that they received. And it was just fascinating to watch. And what I kept thinking as I was watching it kind of in the background, is that what I want people to understand about intuitive and psychic work is that it's ancient. It is a respected art form, and it's real. And one of the most enjoyable parts of the series, really is the variety. You know, seeing all these different forms of reading side by side, understanding how each one of them works. You've got different people communicating with the other side. There's people interpreting birth charts, reading physical features, and every single one of them has something to offer. So listen, if you are between shows, if you haven't had chance to see it, if you need something to dive into right now, it's definitely worth a watch anyway. Onward, today, we're going to be talking about how to expand your skill of discernment. So discernment is critically important to your ability to develop needed trust in your intuition. I'm sure that you have had this experience before where you have been sitting on a really big decision. Maybe it's a career move, it's a change in a relationship. Maybe you're taking a big risk or a big leap, and you go into meditation, or you try and connect with yourself, and something comes through, and it comes through loud and clear, this is too risky. You're not ready Stay where you are. And the voice, it's so certain, it's so articulate, it doesn't feel panicked, you know, it seems like this wise voice, and sometimes it feels like it's protection. So you decide to listen and follow this advice, because you know it makes sense, right? But there's something that you need to know before this happens again. Your mind has so many Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky little tools, and the inner critic is the most convincing actor in your entire inner world. It has studied you your whole life. It knows exactly what language you're going to believe, exactly which fears are going to hit you in those unhealed spots, it knows exactly how to dress up in the illusion of some sort of spiritual wisdom or guidance, so that you don't question it. So today, we're going to work on developing your discernment even more so you can start to recognize that wolf that's in sheep's clothing, okay? In fairness, Wolf maybe seems a little bit harsh, right? Because the inner critic, it's not a villain, and it's not a spiritual problem, really, it's a protection system that was built a long time ago, usually in childhood, and it's. Care to help keep you safe from specific types of pain, so maybe rejection, failure, humiliation, abandonment, your psyche learns pretty early on what hurts and the inner critic is assigned to help make sure that you never go near those types of experiences that bring that pain up again. The problem with the inner critic, though, is that it doesn't mature. It is built by a child for a child's world. It never really gets this update that you have grown up, that you are capable now that the coping skills that you have, the resources that you have available to you are totally different, that the risks that it's protecting you from are often the exact experiences that your soul came here to have. So the inner critic, it doesn't activate randomly. It activates the most intensely when you are closest to a genuine breakthrough. So it's the moment that you start opening up to your guides, that you're trying to practice trusting your intuition, that you are considering a path that really aligns with your soul and maybe is very different than what you've been doing in the past. That is precisely when the inner critic gets pretty loud. Sometimes it interprets growth as danger, as something that's scary and something that is inevitably going to go wrong. So the very times that you most really need that clear guidance are the times when the inner critic is most aggressively drowning out your real intuition. Unfortunately, it's just so darn convincing. Okay, the inner critic has three things going for it that makes it exceptionally hard to see through. The first is that it uses your voice so it doesn't sound foreign. It sounds like you thinking, okay, so it uses language that you understand and language that you're very comfortable with. Second, it often contains partial truths, so there usually is some real risk involved in whatever it is that you are considering, which makes that fearful narrative feel pretty credible. There is something to lose right now. Third, it's highly motivated, so it's going to work harder. It's going to get more creative, the more important the decision is. So it will borrow from the language of wisdom and of spirituality things that you're familiar with, if that's what it takes to stop you moving forward, real spirit guide messages have a quality that the inner critic can never fully replicate. And it's not because the critic isn't clever, because it really is. It's really good at disguising itself, but because the energy underneath the words is fundamentally different. So genuine spirit guide, communication tends to feel calm, even when the content is is serious, it's intense, it might bring up fear for you, the message is calm, it's clear without being urgent. So we've talked before about the difference between ego and intuition, and one of those hallmarks is this strong sense of urgency, right? So we have clear information with the absence of urgency that is important. Our spirit guide communication is always loving, even if it's corrective or it's somehow redirecting us, okay, it's loving, and how it does that, we can feel that the foundation is love, caring, compassion, and it also points towards something, rather than away from something. So I'm going to say that again, because it's important for you to remember, okay, spirit guide communication will point towards something rather than away from something, and it tends to leave you feeling more expanded after you've received the information, instead of feeling contracted or smaller. There is this quality of spaciousness that comes with it. So a guide message creates room, okay, the inner critic, even when it sounds really wise, tends to create a closing feeling. So that might be awareness that your options feel like they're. Narrowing. Maybe it seems like possibilities are shrinking or the world is getting smaller, right? But things are going inward, and you feel like you're contracting inward. And I think one of the most reliable markers of genuine spirit guide communication is that it surprises you, so it brings a perspective that you had not considered. Maybe it reframes something that you've been really stuck on, or it offers a piece of information that your own mind just simply couldn't seem to get there it was not generating the inner critic, by contrast, tends to be really familiar, so it's recycling old fears. It's recycling narratives that you've heard from it many times before, since it was first created in childhood, right? So let's look at the inner critic and spirit guide communication in a little bit of a side by side. Okay? So the inner critic arises from a fear of past pain. So it's really past oriented and spirit guide communication really arises from a love for your future growth, for future possibilities, for the expansion right? The inner critic looks backward. So it's looking at what went wrong before, what evidence is there that this isn't going to work, and everything that you need to protect yourself from, spirit guide communication is is looking again forward, at what's possible, at what's needed, or what might help you, or at who you are. Becoming the inner critic, that voice tends to create a particular physical signature, right? There's a tightening in the chest, there's a feeling of contraction. There might be a tightening in the throat where the throat chakra is, especially shallow breathing, a vague sense of just dread, stress, anxiety, even if the words sound reasonable right underneath it, you're feeling uncomfortable now, guide communication tends to create the opposite. It's a sense of expansion. So you're settling in, you suddenly feel more open. Maybe your chest feels more open, your energy feels more open. Taking a breath seems a little bit deeper, and you feel more at peace about things, the inner critic loops so it comes back to the same fear again and again and again. And over time, it increases in urgency, gets a little bit more urgent. Spirit guide communication tends to come through offer the wisdom that it has, and then kind of rest. So it's trusting that you received it. So if a spirit guide message repeats, it's usually patient rather than escalating. Okay, so it's saying the same kind of thing. So it's saying, yes, you need to do this. And if you check in the next day, yes, you need to do this. Okay, so it's, it's staying the tone, the feeling, the vibration, is maintaining. Now, if you get curious about a message, so you start really trying to work with it, you're putting it through its paces. So you might think, all right, well, tell me more. Where is this coming from? What's underneath this message guide, communication is going to open up. It's going to deepen. Whereas the inner critic has a tendency to get defensive, or it can deflect, or just kind of get louder, more urgent, more stressful sounding right? Because it doesn't like to get examined. It doesn't like that. It's trying to deflect. Okay? It's defensive nature is just to put out all of this energy to kind of rebuff you. So we're really looking at, if it opens up and deepens, it's helping you from a spirit guide perspective, whereas that defensive, stressful type of energy coming back at you that is going to be a calling card of your inner critic. So now that you understand what it looks like when you're getting inner critic messages versus spirit guide messages, there's a few things you can do in the very beginning stages of working with your intuition, to just check in with yourself, to make sure that you are trusting the right voice, that you're getting the right information, and that you're not staying small, because that's what your inner critic is pushing you towards. That sense of safety or contraction, right? So there's a few things that you can try just to help develop your discernment even further. So one is just checking in with your body. Your body has a strong physical reaction to the inner critic. Okay? So check in with your body. Place one hand on your chest, maybe one on your belly, and just take some slow, deep breaths and notice what's happening in your body. Physically, are you feeling expansion or contraction? Do you feel a sense of ease and lightness, or does it feel shallow? Do you feel tight? The body almost always knows before the mind catches up, so tune in there first, because a lot of times it's going to give you the answer right away, it's going to go, Aha. We have all this tension, all of this stress, all of this shallowness, all of this contraction. I'm definitely in the wrong vibe. So number two is asking yourself, Where is this coming from so ask yourself simply, is this message trying to love me forward, or is it trying to protect me from pain? Both can sound caring, right? But one is moving you toward your life and toward your soul, energy and growth, and one is moving you away from risk guide communication, even when it's redirecting you always has a forward moving quality underneath it. Okay. The next thing you can do when you're still feeling a little bit unsure is get more curious about that message. So rather than just accepting or rejecting the message, just ask, tell me more. Where is this coming from? What is the loving intention behind this? And then notice what happens, because genuine spirit guide. Communication is going to respond and it's going to take you deeper. It's going to help you in your understanding. It's going to piece things together that you've never thought about before, which is bringing that surprise element that we talked about, the inner critic, is either going to escalate the rhetoric a bit, or it's going to go quiet, because it rarely welcomes that kind of examination. Okay, it's just doesn't have much more beyond that. It's like, this is what I got. I'm playing all the cards up front, so if you can't go deeper with it, then, and it kind of stops at a certain point. That's telling you where that energy is coming from. And then the last thing I suggest that can be really telling is to do a little bit of a 24 hour reset. Okay, so when the message that comes through, and it feels really important, but kind of uncertain, okay, especially around a big, significant decision that you're trying to make, give it 24 hours before you act on it. So in that window, notice whether the message feels the same the next day. Is it still clear, is it still calm? Is it still pointing in the same direction? Because guide communication like we've talked about, it's going to be consistent over time with that same energy, that same frequency, but the inner critic may soften a bit or shift once the emotional charge of the moment has passed. So if you notice that it has this quality of constantly shifting and changing in a way that seems to be connected also with your emotional charge of the moment, that's a big calling card of the inner critic. Now that you can start to recognize the inner critic more, I do want you to also know that we need to view this with compassion. The inner critic is not your enemy. It has been doing its very best to help keep you safe with all of the tools that it has, but it was never meant to be your guide. It's just not equipped to be able to do that. Doesn't have that perspective. It was never meant to have all the power to decide your life's direction, right? So the more fluent that you become in the language of your actual spirit team. Of working building relationships with your spirit guides, the quieter the critic gets, and it's not because you've silenced it. It's just because you have simply stopped mistaking it for something that it isn't okay when you know what that real guidance feels like in your body, in your energy, in the quality of what comes through the impersonation stops working. It just doesn't hold that charge for you, it's a lot easier to see through how hollow it really is. So that fluency, it's a practice, it's something that you build. It's important that you develop these relationships with your guide so you recognize what they sound like. And it gets easier. Every single time you show up, you pause, you feel, you ask, and you start to get into that deeper level of discernment. I mean, sometimes just asking the question, where this is coming from, is going to bring that Aha, awareness to the forefront. All right, everyone, I really encourage you to put all of this into practice, to start right away, to start using this awareness when you are feeling like you are connecting, to check yourself, to make sure you are truly connecting and not that you are fooling yourself, that you are in that other version of yourself that is speaking rather than connecting with a higher perspective. All right. Thanks so much for joining me. If you want to continue to learn about opening your intuition and learn about your spirit guides, be sure and join our mailing list. I've got some special stuff coming up that I know you don't want to miss. It's pretty easy. You can just go to Sedona medium.com forward slash mailing list. Thanks so much for joining me. As always, many blessings.

Robert Wooten: 22:56

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