What happens when we truly hear our inner voice?

How we speak to ourselves is part of how we care - deeply - for ourselves.

It helps us see how we relate to ourselves when things go wrong. Flagging the words we use when we're running late, when we make a mistake, when we're learning something new.

And it can be so useful to recognise that some of the harsh voices we hear in our heads aren't really ours at all. They might be inherited. Adopted. Handed down by caregivers, teachers, old bosses, people who were more powerful than us when we were small, and learning how the world worked.

Sometimes of course that criticism came wrapped in love - a parent who scolded us before we'd even done anything wrong because they'd had a bad experience themselves and wanted desperately to keep us safe. The intention was care; the delivery was criticism. And because we hadn't yet learnt the practices of awareness and discernment, we absorbed it. We may even have learnt that love can sound like judgement.

This path of self-compassion and self-talk is nuanced.

It's not that we should never challenge ourselves about something we're doing or have done in the past. That's not what self-compassion is about.

Self-compassion isn't passive - it has action inherent within it. The walking monks in the US, travelling thousands of miles for peace, is an example of compassion in action if ever we've seen it.

But there's a world of difference between the voice of our wisest, kindest self offering us guidance, and the voice of an internalised critic offering us shame.

Kristin Neff, the wonderful researcher on self-compassion, says it simply: self-compassion is speaking to ourselves as we would a dear friend. Not a friend we're trying to flatter or enable, but someone we genuinely care about and want to see thrive.

In the episode of the podcast, where I explore Self-Talk As Self-Care (S19E4) I share a Flow Journaling prompt that came up during one of my Insight Timer sessions. It's deceptively simple:

When I speak kindly to myself, I see...

What landed on the pages of my own journal was this: everything feels easier. The world feels kinder. I'm softer, and others feel that way too. I can navigate setbacks without being consumed by them.

I also saw, with tender clarity, how harshly I've spoken to myself in the past. How casually cruel I could be, sometimes with intent, sometimes simply out of habit. And I recognise that shifting this pattern is both the softest work and one of the hardest - it begins with awareness, and it continues with love.

I'd invite you to try the prompt yourself. Write it at the top of a page and simply see what emerges.

→ To explore more Flow Journaling practices - including ways it can help us in difficult times - you may like to look here