The Two Voices In Your Head

 

I remember the moment clearly, even now.

I was about six years old, standing at a family gathering, watching adults talk over one another, laugh at things that didn’t seem funny, repeat the same stories with tiny variations. Nothing dramatic was happening. No crisis. No revelation delivered by thunder. Just a sudden, quiet realization.

This is strange.

Not “bad” strange. Not frightening. Just deeply odd. Human beings performing rituals they don’t seem aware of. Roles they’ve inherited without question. Lives moving along grooves already cut for them.

And I remember thinking, with the clarity only a child can have, I need to remember this feeling. Not just the event, but the sensation of standing slightly outside it. The awareness. The distance.

That was the moment I decided I wanted to be a writer.

Not because I wanted fame. Or money. Or applause. But because writing felt like the only way to make sense of the world without flattening it. A way to record what it felt like to be alive, rather than what one was supposed to say about it.

At the time, I didn’t have language for any of this. I just knew that something inside me was awake.

My mother, meanwhile, had a very different philosophy of life.

Her belief system was not cruel or malicious. It was cautious. Sensible. Rooted in survival. Life, as she saw it, was about settling down, fitting in, not expecting too much. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t reach too high. Don’t trust big dreams. They only lead to disappointment.

It wasn’t bitterness. It was protection.

And for a long time, I carried both perspectives inside me without realizing they were in conflict.

On one side, there was intuition. Curiosity. The impulse to explore, create, risk, express. On the other, there was a voice that said, Be careful. Who do you think you are? Don’t expect too much. People like us don’t get to live that way.

For years, I treated that second voice as wisdom. After all, it sounded like adulthood. Responsibility. Maturity. Only much later did I realize what it really was.

It was inherited fear.

Here’s the strange and uncomfortable truth I came to today, with a clarity that felt almost physical.

My entire adult life has been a battle between those two voices.

And the pattern is unmistakable.

Every time I followed my intuition – really followed it, not half-heartedly, not while apologizing for it – my life expanded. Opportunities appeared. Energy returned. Money flowed more easily. Creativity deepened. I felt aligned, purposeful, quietly confident.

And every time I listened to the internalized version of my mother’s conservatism, things collapsed.

Not immediately. It never announces itself as disaster. It presents itself as “being sensible.” As “playing it safe.” As “not getting carried away.”

But the result was always the same.

Stagnation. Anxiety. Diminishment. Sometimes outright poverty. Always unhappiness.

This is the part that’s hardest to admit, because it sounds ungrateful, even cruel, if misunderstood.

I don’t blame my mother.

She was doing the best she could with the tools she had. Her worldview made sense given her experiences. Her fears were earned. Her caution was learned the hard way.

But that doesn’t mean it was my truth.

And this is where things get interesting for anyone who creates, dreams, or feels that quiet, persistent pull toward something more.

We don’t just grow up with parents.

We grow internal parents.

Voices that live in our heads long after the original people are gone. Voices that comment on our choices. That judge our impulses. That question our confidence. That frame safety as virtue and ambition as danger.

Psychologically, this is well documented. But creatively – and existentially – it’s devastating if left unexamined.

Because that internalized voice doesn’t just warn you away from harm.

It warns you away from yourself. It tells you not to trust the very instincts that make you you.

And here’s the cruel irony. That voice often speaks in the language of love.

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”
“Be realistic.”
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
“Most people don’t succeed at things like that.”

On the surface, it sounds caring. But the effect is corrosive. Over time, you start editing yourself before the world ever gets a chance to. You start shrinking your desires to fit an inherited template. You start mistaking numbness for stability and resignation for wisdom.

And then you wonder why you feel dead inside.

The breakthrough, for me, was recognizing the pattern without judgment.

Not demonizing my mother. Not glorifying rebellion. Just observing the evidence of my own life.

When I listened to my intuition, I thrived. When I listened to fear disguised as reason, I withered. That’s not a philosophy. That’s just incoming data.

And once you see that pattern, you can’t unsee it. The authentic self is not reckless. It’s not naive. It’s not allergic to reality. It’s deeply attuned to your reality. Your rhythms. Your strengths. Your tolerances. Your curiosities.

It knows when something is alive for you and when something is slowly killing you. The problem is that authenticity rarely sounds authoritative.

Fear is loud. It has scripts. It borrows certainty from the past. Intuition is quieter. It doesn’t always justify itself neatly. It doesn’t arrive with guarantees.

Which is why so many people ignore it. But here’s the truth I wish more people understood earlier. You owe it to your sanity to become who you actually are.

Not who your parents needed you to be. Not who society finds easiest to manage. Not who fear says is “realistic.”

Your nervous system knows when you are aligned and when you are not. Your body knows. Your creativity knows. Your energy knows.

And success – real success, the kind that doesn’t rot you from the inside – almost always follows alignment, not obedience.

This doesn’t mean rejecting caution entirely. It means interrogating it. Asking: Is this warning coming from lived wisdom, or inherited fear?
Is this voice protecting me from danger – or from growth?

For writers especially, this matters profoundly.

Because writing is an act of honesty before it is an act of craft. And you cannot write truthfully while living falsely. The page will know. The work will flatten. The voice will thin.

The goal, always, is integration. To thank the protective voices for their service – and then stop letting them drive your life. To choose, again and again, the path that feels alive, even when it scares you. Because that aliveness is not a luxury. No. it is the foundation of both your sanity and your success.

Keep Writing!