Soul Suckers Revealed: Speaking Beyond the Static

What if the voice in your head that tells you you're too much—or not enough—isn’t the truth, but a frightened part of you trying to keep you safe?

In this episode, Lauri shines a compassionate light on the “Soul Suckers”—inner critics like the Nervous Nellies, the Controlling Stage Mothers, the Imposter Monsters, and the Below-the-Belt Bastards. With storytelling, warmth, and grounded wisdom, she guides you through recognizing their influence, reclaiming your voice, and using Soulful Speaking tools—Intend, Align, Invite—to let your soul speak instead.

Whether you’ve been holding back in meetings, onstage, or in life, this episode is a call to stop shrinking and start resounding. Because your voice isn’t broken—it’s just been drowned out.

TAKEAWAYS

1. The Soul Suckers all whisper the same core lie: “Not enough.”
2. Ignoring them doesn’t work—in fact, it makes them louder.
3. Soul Suckers convert you into the toy drum version of yourself; your soul was born to play the real drum.
4. Intend, Align, Invite is the antidote: intention clears the static, alignment opens the channel, and invitation allows us to touch others in the way only we can.
5. Each Soul Sucker has a kernel of truth—but it's distorted.
6. Being different is not a flaw. It’s your one-in-eight-billion superpower.
7. The Controlling Stage Mothers steal spontaneity; connection matters more than perfection.
8. Releasing the Soul Suckers doesn’t mean silencing them—it means choosing not to let them drive the bus.
9. When you honor your soul’s voice, cosmic shifts can happen.

Story Magic
A Soulful Speaking Playshop for loving rebels on a soul-driven mission.

Join me for Story Magic — a live, interactive Soulful Speaking Playshop where you’ll learn powerful secrets from the ancient art of theatre for telling engaging, dynamic stories.

Chapters

• 0:00 Soul Suckers, the Toy Drum & the Real Drum
• 4:24 Overcoming Soul Suckers: Lauri’s East Palo Alto Story
• 9:40 Taking Back the Steering Wheel
• 12:05 Nervous Nellies: Keep Quiet, Stay Safe
• 12:54 Controlling Stage Mothers: Strive for Control, Lose Your Soul
• 13:53 Imposter Monsters: You’re Not Enough, So Perform
• 15:38 Below-the-Belt Bastards: You Are Not Enough, Period
• 18:13 The Kernel of Truth & the Soul Sucker Reframe
• 19:40 Your Difference Is Your Gift

Transcript

Lauri: 1:08

Welcome back to Soulful Speaking. Today's episode is for anybody who has ever felt like an invisible force, sometimes held them back from speaking up, or showing up or shining as brightly, as deep down they know they're meant to. I call these invisible forces the soul suckers. We've talked about them throughout this season and today we're going to shine a light on them. The soul suckers are the force preventing the pure signal of our soul's voice from coming through to the world. They all have one core lie they whisper not enough. There's not enough money, time, energy or you. Speaking soulfully is about daring to let our true selves come through, like really taking up space, being seen, sharing what matters to us in our full one in eight billion radiance. That takes courage, and when we dare to do that, the soul suckers show up. They're the static. They try to drown out our inner knowing. In reality, they mean well, but they are stuck in survival mode. They're not in thriving mode. They're not in. I'm here to fulfill my soul's calling mode and they can, in their attempt to protect us, unknowingly guide our choices when we're not aware. So today we're going to shine a light on them and set ourselves free.

Lauri: 3:01

There's a quote from the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart. So we are not giving in to our fears. Today we're shining the light on them so that we can choose to act and speak from a different part of ourselves. In their attempts to protect us, the soul suckers convert us into the toy drum version of ourselves. Imagine a toy drum like tinny, higher pitched, when in reality we were all born as the real, resounding drum version of ourselves. The soul suckers can only bang on the toy drum. Our souls want to play the full, resonant drum that stirs hearts and changes rooms and makes people's arm hairs stand up on end. The soul suckers feed on scarcity. The soul speaks from abundance. Today we're going to meet them, or re-meet them, and learn how Intend, align, invite helps us to release them.

Lauri: 4:25

And I'm going to start with a story of a time they almost got me, of a time they almost got me. For a few years, starting about 10 years ago, I taught college theater classes on high school campuses in East Palo Alto. Maybe it was 12 years ago, and I'll never forget. One day I was driving down Highway 101 from my place in San Mateo to East Palo Alto on my way to the first session of a Latin American theater course that I was teaching on this high school campus, and that morning the soul suckers were loud in my head. I was actually shaking, with my hands on my literal steering wheel driving, shaking with my hands on my literal steering wheel driving, and the imposter monster soul suckers were in my head yelling things like what are you doing? Turn the car around and you're a white girl from Burbank, california. Who are you to teach Latin American theater to a bunch of East Palo Alto teens? It was a full body fight or flight moment. And then I remembered this is part of my work not avoiding these moments, moving through them and, along the way, doing it myself and teaching, helping others to do the same. So I decided I committed to practice what I preach.

Lauri: 5:59

First I actually listened to the soul suckers' concerns and then I released them from the job of being in charge. You're not responsible for being in charge anymore. Was there a kernel of truth in what they were saying? Abso-freaking-lutely, I am a white woman and I was teaching Latin American theater in East Palo Alto to high schoolers, but instead of making that a reason to shrink or run away. I let it shape the way that I taught. I centered the course on the theme of being an outsider because one thing I learned through doing it let's be real almost everyone feels like an outsider in high school. Even the popular people I've learned down underneath often years later say they felt like an outsider too.

Lauri: 6:58

As I grounded into that and walked onto the campus, I got an image of a friend from elementary school, this sweet fellow, weirdo, ally from childhood, and at first I tried to brush it off like really that's who you're sending to me, thinking that I needed some like wise elder to help me. But something in me knew and persisted she's exactly what I need right now. So I said yes to that intuition, even though it didn't make sense then, and I walked into the classroom with her by my side, not literally, but energetically, and right as I stepped through the door I heard this quiet voice inside say cosmic shift. The soul suckers, of course, muttered no pressure there, but by then they'd really started to lose their grip. It was like they were in the passenger seat pouting a little. That memory of my friend dropped me into empathy, into presence, into remembering what it felt like to be a teenager and as I started teaching I thought what would I have wanted from a theater teacher at that age? And I taught from that place. By the end of the class I could already feel the shift and I could see it. In the beginning there were students who were sort of all folded up with their head turned to the side, kind of peeking out at me through their hair, testing the waters, and by the end you could feel the energy in the room had changed and those very same students were looking at me straight on, without their hair blocking or creating a veil between us. By the end of the semester we'd had a whole lot more of those shifts big ones, little ones, huge ones and that outsider theme. It ended up really being the doorway in creating all of those cosmic shifts for all of us.

Lauri: 9:11

The soul suckers can be sneaky when it's inside our own heads. They show up with control and self-doubt and whispering those lies. They aren't wrong about everything, but they do tend to blow everything out of proportion. They disaster, trip about the future or blame us about the past and look at it with whatever the opposite of rose-colored glasses is. Our job is not to kill the soul suckers as much as we sometimes might want to. It's actually to thank them for their service, thank them for their input and gently take the steering wheel back In the case of my story, literally taking the wheel back and driving it toward the class rather than the other direction. And inside of us, it's taking the steering wheel back of where we go, what we do when we speak, what we say, how we say it. Why should we look at them? Well, because of that, saying what you resist persists. Ignoring them does not make them go away. Trust me. I have whole other stories about times that the soul suckers were chattering in my ear and my intuition was talking to me at the same time and I tried to ignore all of it and was not a very good teacher in those moments.

Lauri: 10:39

Acknowledging them and then releasing them from control does today. When we intend to speak soulfully, we create a beacon. We tell the soul suckers thank you for your concern, and I've got this. Setting an intention is focusing on what our souls want to create before the noise and the static of the soul suckers can fully take over. Align is choosing to stay in the body, the breath and the energy of our soul's frequency, instead of spiraling in fear. Invite is listening to the nonverbal half of the conversation with the people we're in the room with looking for signs of movement, like from hair to now. I will look at you without my hair. That's our intention. Coming to life right before our eyes. Intention clears the static before our eyes. Intention clears the static. Alignment holds the channel open. An invitation lets the music of our soul touch others. So let's shine that light on the soul suckers that are getting in the way.

Lauri: 12:06

First we've got the nervous Nellies. They try to keep us safe by keeping us from speaking at all. They'll tell us we're too tired, too busy, not enough money. Stay silent, stay safe. You don't have enough time, you don't have enough energy, you don't have enough time to take on this speaking opportunity. So say no. And in a meeting when we might have something unique to contribute, they might say you shouldn't speak because you'll take up too much time and everyone is dying to get out of here. Where do they show up for you? Where do you notice the nervous Nellies?

Lauri: 12:55

Next up, we have the controlling stage mothers. The controlling stage mothers join in once we've made the commitment to speak. Like overbearing stage mothers, they try to help by controlling everything, about everything. They over-plan, over-rehearse and suck the life out of our words and out of our presence. They steal spontaneity, aliveness and soul. They hide our one in eight billion radiance beneath all that striving for a phantom perfection. Intention focuses us back on values like connection, not control. It brings the life and our one in eight billion radiance back in.

Lauri: 13:54

The next soul suckers are the imposter monsters. The imposter monsters tell us that we are not enough. For some specific reason. We're not smart enough, important enough, accomplished enough, thin enough, young enough, old enough, pretty enough. You name it as everyone else. They might stop us by or change how we do things by saying, since they all know more than you, you shouldn't speak because what you have to say can't possibly compare. Or if you do speak, you'd better put on your smart mask so they won't notice that you aren't as good as they are. You're an imposter. If you speak up, everyone will know you're an imposter. When the imposter monsters take the wheel, when we allow them to be in charge, we can become like marionettes, letting ourselves be controlled by what we think others might want. You might be noticing a connection between these particular soul suckers and the speaker alter ego masks that I've also talked about throughout this season. The soul suckers are the part of us that convinces us to reach for the not smart enough mask, aka the heady hipster mask, in the first place. They whisper you're different and that difference is a flaw. What we need to do is to flip it. Your difference is your gift. Own it. More on that in a little bit.

Lauri: 15:39

I don't want to forget to mention the fourth soul sucker the below the belt bastards. They are the meanest, deepest, cruelest soul suckers, which is why I named them below the belt. They say things like you are not enough, period. No one wants to hear what you have to say. We might react to these by giving up and holding our tongues. It's really tempting to choose silence in the face of messages like no one cares what you have to say.

Lauri: 16:18

When I was writing my book your Voice Matters A Guide to Speaking Soulfully when it Counts, I was leading a workshop on Zoom way before it was popular. This was like 2013, 2014,. As I was finishing it up and I said there's no kernel of truth to the soul suckers, to the below the belt bastards, and someone said I beg to differ. To the below the belt bastards and someone said I beg to differ. They're saying no one wants to hear what you have to say. The kernel is that somebody somewhere doesn't or didn't want to hear what you have to say. I am really familiar with the below the belt bastards. I used to call myself a recovering workhorse.

Lauri: 17:01

When we hear that soul sucker, especially if it says you're not enough but your work or your calling might be so you need to work a million times hard as everybody else. Drive me to speak with my deranged mannequin mask. All of that effort and that work, the not enoughness plus the passion meeting so much extra work, turned me into a deranged mannequin. When we do that, we tend to come off as defensive, aggressive or needy. Our passion, our true passion, gets distorted and people only see the effort and sometimes it makes them want to run in the other direction. Imagine somebody pounding as hard as they possibly can on that toy drum. Would you want to move toward the sound or in the other direction? The truth is you are enough and you are not alone.

Lauri: 18:14

So let's talk about the kernel of truth. Sometimes there's a kernel of truth, but they wildly exaggerate it. They have a point, something to contribute to the picture, but that thing they have to contribute is not the whole picture. As I mentioned, ignoring them, going la, la, la, la, la la and trying to shove them in a closet doesn't work. The trick is to hear them and then choose to act on a different voice inside of us. By shining the light on them and hearing them, we clear the static. We turn the volume down on the soul suckers and up on the resonant voice of our souls, and up on the resonant voice of our souls At the core of the imposter monster's message you're different.

Lauri: 19:10

The imposter monsters, the soul suckers, think that being different is a problem, so they convince us that we need to hide our differences ASAP and they want us to pretend to be like everyone else or pretend we are what we think they want or need us to be. They're the part urging us to put on those speaker alter ego masks like the heady hipster ego masks. Like the heady hipster. Being different is a gift. Your differences are your one in eight billion gift. Being different is also incredibly needed right now in the world. With our differences, we create harmony with those around us, and life and music are both way more interesting when harmony is involved.

Lauri: 20:11

Imagine when the imposter monsters are talking. What would happen if you reframed what they have to say as a gift, like I have fresh eyes or I see the things that no one else can. What if, instead of suppressing what makes you different, you leaned into it with love? We all have soul suckers. You are not broken if you hear them. Your soul's voice is clear, simple, wise. It may say what it's got to say in this clear, simple, often quiet way, that still small voice inside of us. Way that still small voice inside of us. The soul suckers will try to chatter and drown it out because you're stepping into something that matters, but you do not have to let them drive the bus. The magic comes from recognizing them, thanking them for their input and choosing to listen to and act on your soul instead.

Lauri: 21:25

If this touched you in some way, you can go even deeper with my free soul sucker quiz. If you haven't taken it already, if you have, maybe take it again. It could be different now To find out which of those four soul suckers are driving the bus of you when you don't want them to, or grabbing at the wheel To take the quiz. Go to my website, voice-matterscom. Hover over quizzes in the top menu and select soul sucker from the dropdown. And, of course, as always, please spread the magic by rating, reviewing or sharing this episode with someone that you know that you think would also like. What happens after they shine the light on the soul suckers?