Unmasking the Inner Critic: The Hidden Voice Holding You Back (And How to Silence It)

Ep 122. Unlocking the Power of Your Inner Voice: Break Free from Limiting Beliefs and Rewrite Your Mental Programming

As human beings, we all share a universal experience: we are shaped by our environment and those who raise us—from parents and extended family to modern-day mentors, teachers, and caregivers. These early influences imprint powerful messages on our minds, often through their actions, voices, and words. These messages form the foundation of how we navigate the world, solve problems, and stay safe.

But there’s a shadow side to this inner programming.

When caregivers are under stress, the guidance we receive—though often well-intentioned—can come laced with criticism, guilt, shame, or fear. This emotional residue embeds itself deep within our subconscious, especially during formative stages of brain development, shaping what psychologists call the “superego”—an internalized voice that criticizes, doubts, and limits us.

Over time, this inner critic can become like a collar and leash—subtly controlling our every move, creating self-doubt, anxiety, and even sabotaging our ability to succeed, thrive, and live freely. It's the reason so many of us feel stuck, held back by fear, perfectionism, or a nagging sense of "not being enough."

But here’s the truth: this voice isn’t you. It’s a recording, a protective mechanism gone rogue. And once we become aware of it—truly aware—we gain the power to break its hold and rewrite the script.

✅ Learn how to identify this internal voice
✅ Discover how it formed during your early development
✅ Gain practical tools to override outdated programming
✅ Finally reclaim your voice, your power, and your life

This is the first step in self-regulation—not by suppressing the inner voice, but by understanding it, and rising above its limitations. Take care and walk well. 

Transcript

Welcome back folks to episode 122 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in Health Psychology, licensed professional counselor and an adjunct professor at a local community college. And what we're going to be discussing today has to do with our inner voice, the very voice

that Freud called the super ego that is often attributed to the mother that exists in the back of our mind telling us don't do that and don't touch that dirty thing sort of thing when people elevated to the point of shame and guilt. But the reason we're going to talk about it today, it has to do with self-regulation and how sometimes our regulation of self comes from a place that was imposed upon us when we were very young, but often we did not question as to what

the degree of control that was required, um, had to do with often it had to do with something that was very immediate, very episodic, very in the moment when you were a child that could have caused you harm. But when we grow up, often this inner voice gets generalized to many things. And this is where we're going to start the discussion. So the inner voice is something that we all have. And then it's in our inner self regulatory skill. That's one of the first ones that we learned.

in the sense of it being a cognitive process where we start to weigh things is this good is it bad and what consequences are so the beginnings of consequence type thinking and cause and effect type thinking as it were

is going to be one of the first things that we learn that if you do this you might get pain, if you do this you may get pleasure, or if you do this you might get scared or hurt. And there is this connection, a correlation between a cause and effect in the sense that we might know over time what it is that happens. So in this essence what I want to insight is this principle of the environment is my teacher. And the environment can be externally where we're exploring when we're very young, even when we get older.

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we experience it as well when we're going into novel new territories. Sometimes that can be scary. Quickening, some people really get excited with that expectation of hope that there's something good out there, something interesting, such as treasure hunters and people that like new experiences, don't know what's going to happen, but they kind of expect it to be new. So they're kind of leaning in the direction of not only new, but also positive. And that attribution isn't a bad thing, but it can also be a bad thing in the wrong consequence.

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things to, but just not as honed nor as hypersensitive as what an animal would have. But what about the learning environment in the sense of vicariously, I'm watching somebody do something, then I see them result in, let's say, being able to ride a bike, for instance, and then I start trying. And we start working at that because we see it as a worthy goal. There's a value or payoff, an expected payoff, one that we project in the future, one that doesn't exist yet. So notice we're time binding here. And then

that ties into what it is that is our self-regulatory skill because we have an expectation even a predictive quality but what I'm going to get as a result of my efforts if I fall down enough times on that bike soon enough I'll be able to balance and work it out that's the expectation there are lot of little variables and they're having to do with capacity muscularity one's neural structure and ability to remember how to do things and also neural drive do we have the ability to retain the information and skill and be able to

actually generate the necessary skills. So once again, variables, but we tend to jump into this semi, I have concluded evidence that we have in our mind that we tend to take as potential and there's nothing wrong with that. But how this ties into the inner voice is that often

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Whenever we have things that work really well and we succeed, we're praised. Whenever we fail, often we're coddled or cared for if you're in a caring, loving environment, or you could also be punished if you don't do something right. And if that happens to you when you're young enough, and I say young enough in the sense that, pre-verbal, whenever you're an infant, a toddler, two years to about three to four years old, wherever we're still learning the language and learning the rules of social engagement, so to speak, learning what that level

the social level that we live on that has to do with these agreements that are unspoken that we just tend to follow and we tend to vicariously learn by watching and by the instructions no don't do this and don't do that and you're supposed to say this don't say that we start learning the bumpers where the guardrails are in our life but also there are some times where things aren't quite so gentle potty training is one that has to do with one of our most basic traits as a human being that when we

eliminate when we urinate, defecate, that we must have a supportive environment when we do help our children learn how to do this. Know that.

At 18 months is whenever children, say children, there's still babies at that point, are wired into wherever the connections are made that they can actually start at 18 months is the beginning, start to learn how to do conscious control of urine and passing a fecal matter. They know it's coming, but they just can't control it before. But the actual wiring doesn't connect until 18 months.

And often I hear so many people that are now my age. I'll be 59 tomorrow's, September 23rd, my birthday. So this is a fun podcast. the day before, but,

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that are my age that grew up wherever they're apparent or very harshly. And there's a huge amount of guilt and shame around body image, the self, and also whenever they are doing their private toilet behaviors that have become distorted where there's a sense of dirty, of guilt, of ugliness, and spoke to a really

close friend for a while and they had some concerns about that such that they wish that they didn't have to and there were some things about control and the concept of dirty and dirtiness this sort of thing that worked so heavily into their own worldview that there were some very distinct lines of demarcation when they would interact with people and cleanliness and this sort of thing it was a rather odd thing but

There were also some fallout as a result. were some unhealthy connections as far as relationships go. And the reason I mentioned that is that it can distort how it is we interact with our world and people. And the fact of the matter is that we're wired to be able to control at about 18 months, but that doesn't mean we have absolute control. It doesn't mean we have skill. We're just starting to learn it. And that behavior, many people I've talked to, some

parents male and female both assume that just because they could see and can copy the behavior that all of sudden that they forgot and somehow yelling at him or all of a sudden you're telling them with vehemence that you know you did wrong or Guilting and shaming them because maybe there's not money in the house to buy diapers this sort of stuff and That becomes a heavy weight upon the child where not only is it about this is dirty or this is usually not supposed to be doing this or why are you doing this when it's the most natural thing a human can do

we eat and we breathe, we're going to eliminate at some point. We will eliminate by way of our sweat glands and our breath, whatever it is that we take in from our environment that we need to do to live. So this is very closely tied to many things that start developing into depression, anxiety, and what we call personality disorders in the clinical sense. And much of this isn't something that is spoken because it is a gut felt sense. And sometimes we don't have a bridge to make the

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visible understanding that word bridge to where we could cognitively make sense of it to be able to speak it to somebody else. So it can be very difficult. Now,

The reason I mention that is that often whenever we are, and at some point we were little, and whenever we are the older and teaching someone that's little, if we're parenting or guiding or mentoring or helping somebody raise a child, for instance, we have to remember that the voices that we speak in the tones and also the body language and the message that we're speaking, we have to be very careful with.

because we're going to be building the inner voice that that little one will be carrying around in their mind. And you don't want to hurt them. You don't want them to have a distorted way of living because if we think about it, if my way of life and the way my lens became dirtied or occulted that I could no longer see clearly, but through this assumed perspective that wasn't even mine to begin with, but was given me.

And as a result of my own stress, I developed it further and no longer the person that is attached to the voice is there, but I am generating that voice as a memory. Now I am limiting myself. I am scaring myself. I am guilty myself. I am shaming myself. And we have to learn how to get past these things. If we want to become optimal performers in our lives, not necessarily Olympic level, heroic level. And I will be speaking to the term heroic in just a moment, but just the fact

we can do better, become better performers in the sense that we have better outcomes in our lives, that we don't always have to take that step that takes us in the direction that takes us into a relapse if we're addicted to substances or behaviors, whether it be gambling or pornography or even for that matter, anything like drinking or other substances for that matter. We don't have to take those and we can choose better for ourselves with that same projective expectation sense that we have and we are predictive.

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also expective in her mind sense and Be able to see ourselves in a better way not only Expect ourselves to be that but see that we can achieve ourselves in that mind sense

in better light and arriving in a better light the way we believe ourselves to be, to become that person we want to be, to become that person that we are, that is burgeoning, that is wanting to break out of its shell, not unlike a baby chick breaking through a shell that uses its little, little beak to start breaking on the inside. We have to break out of that. And Maslow, one of his most famous quotes said that, man must become what he must become. We must become that who it is that we are. That, that is

is unknown, are new, that are novel, that are frightening, that are scary, that are unpredictable, that are unexpected, and we just don't know. Sometimes the first step is a very tiny step in the right direction. Just leaning in that direction is movement. But getting progress and getting some traction, that takes

little time and effort, yes, but realizing that we can move is the most important thing. There is something that I teach very frequently and that is that the first language that we ever speak, we learn in utero and that's movement, motion. Whenever we start looking at our ideas, once we become more cognitive and capable of thinking of what it is we want to do when planning, we have to remember that often the paralysis by analysis that we talk about is something that is very reflective of what

happens to us in our environmental stress sense that we might freeze. We should be able to flee, move away from, or fight for that matter. But engaging and going in the direction does not necessarily mean that we have to beat.

armando (13:11.394)
into submission what it is we're trying to do but rather engage forward also as a type of fleeing but not fleeing away from an avoidance but rather fleeing from the immediate scene of freezing where you're at stuck sometimes we need to flee the freeze or the spot in which we are freezing and taking root so to speak

So that way we don't get stuck there thinking about what I could have done, what I could have been and where I could be or should have been and get beyond it and realize that often the things that keep us stuck are that inner voice in our mind, in our own head. And it's not a bad thing to have. It is something that was given us in a sense that most people don't know that they're psychologists, but we are that, but we're also implanting memories in people and also hypnotizing folks and encourage them to believe a certain way.

So we've become inspirators in a way and it's not always a positive thing, but generally it's about protection. And it takes on a very serious tone whenever we want to make sure that our kids don't die as a result of living out in the environment, in the schools now, like they used to be a long time ago. We're very contentious, no different. We're still dealing with other people with different backgrounds and upbringings and we don't want our kids to fit in.

We don't want us to fit in. We are seeing a huge movement in our United States here of not fitting in, but not about individual individualism, rather to the fault of the person to wherever one becomes quirky and nod and that you can't be functional. Not what we're talking about.

Now, whenever you fit in, that means that you're succumbing to the larger social contagion, the larger social hypnotic effect that you don't want to necessarily do because that does not take care of you. Each one of us individually requires that we have the ability to express and become and do who it is that we are. We're all unique and we can be. We don't want a bunch of people in lockstep thinking and acting and doing the same way and following what the

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politicians and what legacy media is telling us right now because we should fear and huddle together like sheep out of out of fear we should be you know safer in numbers and out of fear we should do what the numbers are doing because that way they won't turn on me notice how there's a really strange fear component to that that is very not only egocentric but self-protective nothing wrong with self-protection but also it's done in a way that's kind of distorted it's no longer about

Protecting oneself in one's own interest, but it's not about teamwork either. It's not about the collective and the whole it's about the whole being afraid and reacting and seeking a grand or general protection versus looking at what we can generate for ourselves what we can do for ourselves to be not only generative protective but progressive and Be able to move in the direction of wherever I can be happy

where I can arrive, where I can enjoy the fruits of my labors and still be able to plug into the general whole and relate with them. You don't want to be so unrelatable that you're isolated and you become the hermit on the mountain. Of course, that's attractive for some and I find it.

attractive as well. But we wouldn't want Bigfoot chasing us what we saw. Maybe not in the woods too long, but it's a good place to visit. But I wouldn't want to live there and say that jokingly. But the fact of the matter is we see where people take things to the extreme understandable, but we also have to learn to walk with balance and self-regulation is about being able to balance whatever it is that our individual needs myself, what I need, what I want, what I like, and what I want to pursue.

With respect to the fact that other people are going to do that and whenever other people are doing their thing that whatever I'm doing doesn't have to be less or stopped as a result. I can just go do it where no one's going to interrupt that. I can go do it in plain sight and expect people to respect what I'm doing and not get triggered or bothered by what I'm doing. As long as I'm not harming people or doing things that are illegal, of course. But the of the matter is that inner voice, the reason it's so powerful is because whenever we're taught it, we don't know that we're

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once again as parents as the progenitors of a thought process, the early education teachers that we're technically hypnotizing, we're generally speaking repetitively this idea that we want people to latch onto and respond and remember. And the dangerous thing here is that anything repeated often enough

gets assumed and remembered. Now it may not be taken as true, but often people will act on it as if it is. And that, that is a qualifier and it's very dangerous for many, especially those that tend to very quickly respond emotionally without necessarily having to reason. just go about doing and then wondering why they don't get the results that they need. I will give you a very distinct, for instance, and then we'll hit on the term heroic. Now yesterday, I was at a laundromat and

I was sitting and waiting for my laundry to dry and no big deal. Nothing new, but there's usually families there, kids, moms, that sort of thing. Not a bad environment. It's kind of neat to people watching kind of observe, but

I observed that a mother that had a little child that was about probably about 14 months old cute as a button running around playing and he was by the video game thing and It was a recessed area wherever you know, it was inside it was away from the doors that were the entry on the other side of where the washes were and she was busy doing her thing and The problem is that he got out and took off and started playing and I was watching I seen him and Had something happened. I would have immediately intervened

because I want to make sure children are good to go and he smiled at me waved at me and he was rolling on the floor just being a coo-gee little kid I said kid he was a he was an infant he was still a child a baby rather and mom ran around realizing where's my child whenever she looked up he was gone from where she was at he was safe I was watching but there were other people around

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Doing what they were doing and you could see where she was no longer in the social flow She was at a level of consciousness of safety and security and where's my baby and she was running and she ran right by him and she was looking left and right and she was worried I didn't say anything because some Thing told me just wait for a moment and she went outside looking for him and the lady when it said hey your baby's inside sure enough my assumption was correct and She was looking for baby, but I didn't know that she was I thought she'd seen him but

fact of the matter is my running man model that was verified at that point in a very big way in the sense that when our hypervigilance goes up, blood flow shifts and then it leaves a front part of our brain. also we have auditory exclusion. We don't hear as clearly. We also have vocal exclusion where we have less control and we speak more loudly. We also have that visual narrowing, which she was experiencing. That's why she was turning her head left and right while her heart rate was elevating and she was trotting through the

the laundromat. that means that her vision was narrowed closer to what we would call tunnel vision. Maybe not completely. She wasn't fully there yet, but enough that she didn't see her baby when she was looking and scanning and she scanned right. She walked right by him and scanned right by him and did not see him. He was just standing right next to the, the video game and may have looked upright.

Just like the upright of the, of the machine itself, that she took it as a very general flat surface image. She assumed it to be just one thing, video game, but not her baby, because there was some variance in color, this sort of thing. And she was not seen it. And then she ran out and the lady corrected her. So why is this important? These are the things that when we're little, this is when the voices of stress and change it. She wouldn't pick them up and she was glad to have them. She was embarrassed. And then she was kind of like pat him on the butt, like she was spanking him, but

She didn't spank him, but almost like it was his fault when in actuality it was hers. And the fact of the matter is she had limitations in our capacity to perceive. Now, whenever we have incidents like this, this is a very teachable moment in the sense we want to tell them, no, no, don't go this sort of thing. And we often will do that. That was the padding on the butt, the teaching, so to speak, without necessarily instructing because he was too little to get that. So.

armando (21:37.153)
The point is that often during these times when we're little, we will feel the tension and the stress of mom. And we will hear things that become the voice that will be here in our head, that voice in the back of our mind, that is our correction, our self correction, our ego, superego sense rather, that tells us, don't do that. No, you shouldn't do this or don't trust this. And it's supposedly our voice of reason. It's also our voice of protection. And they want us to know that we should be able to on our own, learn this lesson and remember this lesson because it's important, but sometimes we extrapolate.

generalize, overgeneralize, and then limit ourselves in the things that we want to do that within a reasonable measure are considered what we would call reasonable risk. Not unreasonable in the sense that you have potential for loss of limb or injury or death, but reasonable in the sense that, we try, we'll find out whether or not we can succeed or not. And sometimes that keeps us from succeeding at the things we want most. whenever we get spoken things when we're young, we have to remember that we're very concrete in reasoning. Whenever you tell a little one that,

That hamburger is that cow over there. Can you imagine what their imagery looks like in their mind? I'm eating a cow. That's crazy. This is a hamburger. That's not a cow that kind of heroic Representation in our mind is the type of heroic intensity that our corrections take when we're very young So we must be very careful and we also have to be careful whom we speak these things to as well as adults whenever they're under stress or trauma because things become very suggestible at that

point, we become very easy to suggest too, but also we become very apt to believe things in an absolute sense. And we lose that capacity to stretch our mind, to wrap our mind around the fact that we have gray area and things is not absolute black and white. So to bring this discussion to an end, the reason I'm bringing this up is the fact is that we speak to each other often and we're spoken to.

And the important thing is not to be bombastic, not to be hyperbolic, not to use exaggeration in terms, because then you bring stress to those that, for instance, if you're calling for help, you're telling them things like extremes of terms that may bring them to think it's an emergency situation versus one that, somebody just fell down.

armando (23:52.003)
So trying to regulate one's message, controlling one's emotion, there's nothing wrong with that. That's not stuffing it. That is not letting it run rampant and allowing it to now color and drive and hijack what it is that's going to be your experience at that point from the emotional standpoint. And then it's no longer going to come out the way you want because the emotion is driving. You may lose and drop details that are very, very critical. So the importance in this message is that

We speak factually and without a whole lot of emotion back that up when it's a really important thing. There's a time and place for using hyperbolic speech and, and absolutes whenever we're in a situation where we're not dealing with situations that may have to do with medical safety.

Security and accuracy if your message is important Try to do your best to not allow yourself to get emotional and report the facts not why but the what first where when who is involved this sort of thing the why comes out after the fact and the what can be dealt with after because the one tends to be an opinion or emotion based set of details that we may or may not find useful at some point but unless you need To cut down on time then stay away from the why as a first question

and that's always very helpful. But as far as that inner voice, if we're building the inner voice in the little one that we're raising or that we may be teaching in school,

be careful, be mindful, also stay away from absolutes, stay away from hyperbolic speech and exaggerated emotion, be as calm as possible and teach them how to manage situations that otherwise would be considered stressful and as calm away as possible so that you can be the generator of someone that has fewer limits moving forward in their future that come from within. I want to thank you for listening this lovely Monday morning and I hope that you pass on this

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podcast

I'm certainly gonna ask you if you can like subscribe and share and pass that on to other folks and iTunes and Spotify you can find the podcast there and at all other platforms you can find Your podcasts on including Amazon music and I certainly look forward to talking to you soon. Take care walk walk