The Voice That Is Not Yours
The cruel voice in my head sounds like mine, but it learned its words elsewhere. I can take my voice back.
Have you noticed that there is a voice inside you that started speaking long before you noticed it had a particular accent? It sounds like you now. It uses your name, your private worries, the things only you know about yourself. But listen carefully, and you may hear that the cruelty is borrowed. The phrasing is not yours. The contempt is not yours. The voice took up residence inside you because it had to live somewhere, and you were the closest body.
That voice is not the deepest part of you. The deepest part of you, the one underneath everything that was done, is not cruel. It is tired, sometimes. It is grieving, sometimes. It is afraid, sometimes. But it is not contemptuous of you. The contempt was given to you, and you do not owe it a permanent room.
When the harsh voice rises, you can pause and ask, kindly, whose voice that really is. Would you say these words to someone you love? Would you say them to a child who had been through what you have been through? If not, then they are not the words you actually believe. They are the words you learned to repeat, and learning can be unlearned.
Talk back, even quietly. "That is not mine. That is not what I actually think about myself." Replace the borrowed cruelty with what you would say to someone you love who was carrying what you are carrying. This is not denial. This is reclaiming the inside of your own head — slowly, deliberately — as a place that is safe to be.