Your inner critic may not even be yours

My mother had always planned on graduating from college.

Instead she got pregnant with me at 18, and adjusted her sights on married life.

The problem?

My father was in the Navy, away at sea for months at a time.

So she ended up alone after all, with a child she hadn’t planned for.

My earliest memories are of my mother’s anger and resentment.

I didn’t understand it, but I did absorb it. That’s just what kids naturally do before they have a choice.

And there’s a reason for that.

Children take on everything around them until about age 6, because the brain’s filter isn’t formed yet.

Then between 7 and 15, the developing brain tries to make sense of all that feeling by building a story around it.

Over time, those stories become beliefs. And an entire self-image gets built on emotions that were never theirs to begin with.

I couldn’t see that until decades later. But when I did, my life suddenly made sense.

I’d carried around so much anger, sadness, guilt and fear, thinking it was mine.

Turns out, most of it wasn’t.

That realization didn’t make me blame her.

She’d been young herself. A child, really, long before her own brain was fully formed.

What it did make me do was stop and take stock.

Because you can’t build a life on top of someone else’s feelings.

I knew I had to figure out what was mine to keep. And what was someone else’s to let go of.

Once I understood that, I stopped trying to think my way out of old patterns. And wondering why affirmations never stuck.

That’s what led me to hypnosis.

I used it to release the feelings I’d inherited. To dismantle the beliefs I’d built on top of them.

And to finally hear my own voice underneath all of it.

As it turns out, you can’t out-affirm inherited pain. But you can clear it away.

I did. And I’ve been helping my clients do that ever since.

Are you ready to find out what’s yours to keep?