My Inner Narrator Could Use A Nap

The loudest voice in your life might be the one nobody else can hear. We’re talking about personal dialogue the inner self-talk that shapes your mental health, your relationships, and the choices you make when life gets heavy. I’m not asking you to borrow my map of healing. I’m unfolding mine, so you can recognise your own patterns and start building a language that actually supports you. 

We start with a hard truth: even a beautiful story of origin can leave you with a script that breaks down the moment “privilege stops working.” When the identity you built around being the helper becomes the reason you can’t ask for help, the real battle is internal. That’s why we dig into self-language the voice your body speaks, the voice your relationships inherit, and the voice you use on yourself when nobody is listening. 

Then I bring in the Red Sea crossing as a metaphor for healing: not just the miracle, but the long night of wind, fear, and walking forward while old identities still shout behind you. Sometimes faith begins with borrowing courage from the people walking beside you. We pause for a body check-in, because mindfulness and breath are not accessories they’re tools for settling the nervous system so the story can settle too. 

I also speak openly about living with bipolar II, masking, and what it means to sit with the darkest voices instead of rushing to suppress them. A line from Brianna Wiest shifts the frame: healed doesn’t mean flawless; it means sadness, fear, and grief no longer run the whole conversation. If you’re ready to look at your inner dialogue with more honesty and more compassion, press play, then subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review so more people can find this kind of support.

Transcript

Welcome And Season Seven Close

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello mindful partners. June, of course, was Men's Mental Health Month, and with that conversation with Ulua Xiong Dao, whom you know as Aki. Last week, we officially bring season seven of Mindfully Witsum Shake to a close. When I stepped into this new phase, like starting season seven, I made myself a promise I would approach healing and service less from the standpoint of telling people what healing should look like, and more from the language each season of my own life is teaching me. Now, I know that sounds realistic because after all, every form of media is trying to persuade us of something. The difference, I hope, is this. I am not asking you to borrow from my map. I am simply unfolding mine before you. But the real goal is for you to find your own map and run with it. Before you say to Michael, I really don't have anything

Not Borrowing My Healing Map

SPEAKER_01 1:52

to heal from. Sometimes it whispers, sometimes it wears expensive perfume, sometimes it looks like privilege, and sometimes it disguises itself so well that all it leaves you with is an existential question that you cannot quite answer. I recently heard someone recount his school days. By every standard, he had what many would call a privileged upbringing. He lacked nothing, his words not mine. Until the day privilege stopped working. Suddenly, the relationships he thought he had could not carry him through the moment he needed the most. The very identity he had built around always being the helper became the same reason he struggled to ask for help. Listening to him, I realized something. No matter how beautiful your story of origin may be, it gives you a language. A language your body speaks. A language your relationships inherit. And perhaps most importantly, a language

Privilege Identity And Self Language

SPEAKER_01 3:30

you speak to yourself. And this, this, this self-language is the most interesting one because it can make or mar you. That internal dialogue fascinates me the most because nobody else hears it. Yet it quietly influences almost everything you do. And since none of us can truly do life alone, that conversation matters. Do you remember the episode What Eve meaning leaves in how we respond? That was the first episode of season seven. Link in the show notes. I told you that I wasn't returning with a placard to force mindfulness down anyone's throat. I was coming back with a crossing. And honestly, this crossing has felt like the journey of the Israelites through the Red Sea. Many people remember the miracle? Few. Very few remember that the East Wind blew all night. If you don't believe me, go and read Exodus 14, 21. Personally, I wouldn't want to be there. I am terrified of large bodies of water. I can't swim. I always always say that the day I can swim, then all the fears in my life would have disappeared. But I happen to enjoy thunderstorms. For some reason, thunderstorms make me sleep. But a strong east wind opening a sea? No. Thank you. Imagine hearing

Red Sea Metaphor And Courage

SPEAKER_01 5:28

the chirries of the people who less than twelve hours earlier were your colonial masters. Imagine standing between two walls of water while every story you've ever believed about yourself tells you that you are still a slave. And then someone says, be still. No amount of be still and no would immediately tell me. It's easy for us to say the Israelites were. But maybe eventually I would look around and notice that my fellow travelers had settled enough to keep walking. Or are also looking at me, wondering how I was navigating things. You never know. Maybe I would remember the miracles that got us there. Maybe I would whisper to myself, just maybe this impossible thing is possible. Because sometimes faith begins with borrowing courage from the people walking beside you. I will repeat that again. Sometimes faith begins with borrowing courage from the people walking beside you. Now, before we go further, let's check in with our bodies. Remember, I say sometimes the stories will settle when your body settles. So I invite you, if you are where you could close your eyes, you could close your eyes. If not, just take a deep breath, deep cleansing breath in through the nose. One, two, three, four, in out.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Let it go.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Now, let's continue. The last four or five weeks have felt exactly like that crossing, and somewhere in the middle of it, or I caught myself saying the words

Breath Check In With Body

SPEAKER_01 8:06

of the Israelites, were there no graves in Egypt? My Egypt. Many of you already know that I live with bipolar too, and in many ways, that reality shaped why I wrote Living Mindfully a Journey to Being, why I started advocating for mental health, and why this podcast exists at all. The dream has always been simple, to bear bridge, to help demystify the language around mental health, to remind people that they are not alone. But healing, healing has humbled me. It really is a journey. There are days when my whole mood balanced, and I think, huh, today I feel wonderfully human. And then there are days when familiar voices invite me back to my Egypt.

Bipolar II Masking And Origin Voices

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Back to old narratives, back to conversations inside my own head that once produced creativity but also carried pain. Some nights I simply show up while the east wind keeps blowing. I wish I could explain the number of internal conversations I have every single day. Different situations, different people, different versions of me. One thing I realized very early in my life was that almost everything happened first in my head. So I became good at masking until masking stopped working. And perhaps that is why this entire series matters. Because what if the voices that still dictate how you show up for yourself are not actually yours? What if they belong to the generations before you to experiences that shaped you but no longer deserve to define you? You are, after all, an upgrade of stories you didn't even write. The work is not silencing every voice. No, that's not the work. The work is learning which ones deserves the microphone. Over these last weeks, I learned the difference between suppressing something and healing it or healing from it. I tried all my coping mechanisms, the tools that had served me before, the ones me and my therapist painstakingly curated to fit me. They served me for a long time. But this time, some seemed to have failed. In hindsight, maybe they didn't fail at all. Maybe my mind and body were asking me to sit with something I had not fully acknowledged. One of the strongest messages I preach on this podcast is the importance of building your tribe. Ironically, during this time, I couldn't find mine. Oh, not because they weren't there. Oh, I had my face, my greatest gift in this journey, but even Jesus had a close-knit tribe with three exceptionally close ones. You know, those ones that went with him to the garden, yes, those ones that slept while he was praying. That was how I felt. Like Jesus and these three friends. No heresy intended. His three closest friends sleeping while he was fighting for his life. The key word here is felt. My friends did reach out. They tried out the tools I have empowered them

Tribe Support And Sitting With Darkness

SPEAKER_01 12:50

with to help me. But my voice of origin was waning. And guess what? I allowed it. In hindsight, I think I allowed the voice space because I didn't want to turn shape through it and mask it out. I didn't know if it was the right call because that call took me to the darkest places I have not visited in as long as I didn't want to remember. The oldest voice inside me kept insisting that I was alone. That voice was loud. Very loud. Loud enough that I believed it. Loud enough that I withdrew. Looking back, I think I let it speak because I didn't want to rush to silences. I wanted to hear it fully, believing that maybe, just maybe once heard, it might finally lose its power over me. Oh, it took me to dark places. Places I had no desire to revisit. And then, almost quietly, I picked up Brianna's whist, When You Are Ready, This Is How You Heal. You know, one of those books I tell you that I I buy just because of the title. So to remind myself, I was on a journey. Again, the title, When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal. Two pages in I'm saying to myself, I know these things with a huge arrow. Then one line stopped me in my tracks. It said, Our healed selves are not our flawless self. They are not immune to sadness, fear

Redefining Healing With Brianna Wiest

SPEAKER_01 15:08

or grief. They are not just controlled by those experiences any longer. It feels sadness when it needs to feel sad, fear when it needs to fear, and grief when it is time to grieve and contentment on a regular basis. At this point, I knew I had made the right call. Was it dark? Yes, very. Did they threaten to drown me? You best believe. But I was present enough to know that these things were things that shaped me, but not what I lived by anymore. But I will have clear pictures of them and then leave with the contentment that I lived to tell the stories, or at least some of them. I will be content to encourage someone listening today, oh yes to come, that the voices might rage, but you are the storm. Here, how she puts it herself.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

You are not the pain. You are not your circumstances, you are not whatever temporary moment you find yourself in. You are that person on the inside. And the journey of your life is finding the courage to be them. If I could get everyone in the world to believe just one thing. And you have no idea. You really have no idea how good it can get and how good it can be, except you do know. Because it's that inner voice inside saying I was meant for more than this, there is more than this.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Let us sing. When I listened to this and read that quote from before, suddenly I understood. Healing does not eliminate sadness or fear or grief. It simply means those experiences no longer get to run the entire conversation. While I cannot promise you that difficult thoughts will never return, because they might. And maybe that's where healing quietly begins. So, welcome to this new series on personal dialogue. Most of the stories you'll hear over the coming weeks will be mine. I don't know how long the series will be for, but most of the stories you'll hear over the coming weeks will be mine. Not because they're universal, but because they are true. Take what serves you, leave what doesn't, and above all else, pay attention to the conversations happening inside your own mind because they may be shaping your life more than you realize. But before I leave you with some thoughts uh or with whatever it is you've taken away from this

Reflective Exercise And Closing CTA

SPEAKER_01 19:36

rant, here's one reflective exercise. Choose one event, old or recent, one memory that still stirs something in you. Doesn't have to be bad. Yeah, good or bad. Then I invite you to sit with it. And wait for it. Write that event a letter. Write that person that is you that was in that event a letter. You just might be surprised by who answers.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

So before we go, let's take another deep cleansing breath in through your nose. Four, three, two, one, and one, two, three, four, side out.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

And that's about it for today. And if anything in this episode speaks to you or has spoken to you, please like, give us a follow, and share. Of course, you can find mindful timeshe on Instagram at mindfultims. And that will give us just a little bit of visibility, and I would truly, truly, really appreciate it. A big thank you to Uluatobi for being such an absolutely best production pal. Until next time, be kind to yourself. Love yourself, love your neighbor, love your country. Above all of this, love God. He is the essence of your being. I am Uluatumishi or Ladakwa Koku. Stay mindful.