The Inner Critic and the Sensitising Event: Healing the Voice in Your Head

Couple Showing Emotional Disconnection

The Inner Critic and the Sensitising Event: Healing the Voice in Your Head The Voice in Your Head Isn’t Yours — It Was Built Around Your Pain

Have you ever felt like you’re your own worst enemy?Like there’s a voice inside that constantly criticises you — no matter what you do?

You’re not alone.And more importantly: you’re not broken.

Below, I explore one of the most overlooked causes of chronic anxiety, low self-worth, and emotional overwhelm: the early defining moment that shaped your inner voice — and how you can finally free yourself from it.

This is where inner critic healing begins. And it’s the heart of trauma-informed therapy, emotional recalibration, and nervous system repair.

What Is a Sensitising Event?

A sensitising event is the moment your worldview shifted — not because of what happened, but because of what you made it mean.

It’s usually an early memory where you felt humiliated, unsafe, unseen, or not good enough.

The actual event may have passed, but the meaning you assigned to it lives on.

And that meaning now plays on repeat.

Your inner critic isn’t random.It was built from that moment.

If you’ve ever wondered:

• Why can’t I accept praise?

• Why do I always feel like something’s about to go wrong?

• Why do I believe I’m too flawed to be loved?

• Why do I keep sabotaging relationships, jobs, or joy?

  
  

This is why.

Your subconscious is running a filter — one created when you were too young to question it.

Healing the Inner Critic Through Emotional Recalibration

In this article, I unpack how this filter shapes every interaction, relationship, and decision you make.You’ll learn why self-criticism is a protection mechanism, and how Emotional Recalibration can gently dissolve the beliefs that no longer serve you.

This is a must-read for anyone seeking:

• Inner child healing

• Somatic therapy for anxiety

• Nervous system regulation

• Breakup recovery and emotional repair

• Healing from trauma without reliving it

You don’t need to stay trapped in the voice that says:

“You’re not good enough.”“You’re too much.”“You’ll never be loved as you are.”

There is a way through. And it doesn’t involve fixing yourself — only reclaiming who you were before the pain wrote your story.

💛 Ready to hear a different voice — one rooted in compassion, not criticism?

Sometimes healing doesn’t begin with what happened — it begins with what we made it mean.In this reflection, I’m writing about the invisible filter many of us carry: the one formed during our earliest pain, and how it still shapes the voice in our head today. The process I call inner critic healing — the practice of untangling the voice in your head from the pain of your past - plays a foundational role in inner child healing and trauma-informed therapy. If you’ve ever felt haunted by self-doubt, inner criticism, or an unshakable sense that something’s wrong with you — this is for you.

We forget who we really are, and accept what we’ve become, according to our life experiences. We give ourselves labels based on this story.

At some point we experienced a defining event. Our earliest most challenging memory. The moment we knew something wasn’t quite right with our world. Something happened, the memory of which, sits in our brains like a house guest who’s outstayed their welcome.

In the magical mystical world of therapy, we call that a Sensitising Event. You didn’t necessarily create this event, it was something happening to you. So you may have done something or not done something - that’s not the point - the point is someone will have behaved in a way that caused you to suffer.

But you retain the memory and most importantly, what you believe you understood was the meaning behind it.

This is pivotal.

You didn’t create the event.

You created the meaning.

🎥 Prefer to listen instead?

Watch my video “You Didn’t Create the Event — You Created the Meaning” on YouTube — a spoken reflection on trauma, the inner critic, and the power of Emotional Recalibration.

👉 Watch the video here

The Journey of Inner Critic Healing

You experienced something that you were unable to understand because you hadn’t yet developed the emotional tools to process the event at the time. Every piece of information we receive through our eyes, ears and other sensory receptors, even our skin, is fed through the filter (of our own creation) of what we believe we have become.

This filter sits in our brain and acts like a translation programme, but it does it in super fast time, faster than your conscious thoughts. And it does it from a wounded place of self preservation and protection, because it was created by you, when your heart got hurt.

The filter drives all your thoughts in a bid to keep you safe, by reminding you of the beliefs you gave to yourself when you knew no better.

That constant voice in your head criticises you.

That voice tells you

😔You’re not enough 😔You’re unattractive 😔You’re too fat 😔You’re too thin 😔You’re too stupid 😔You’re too arrogant 😔You’re too much 😔You’re too short 😔You’re too tall 😔You’re not creative 😔You're not talented 😔You lack discipline 😔You’ll never get anywhere 😔You always mess things up 😔You are not good enough 😔You should’t bother 😔You’ll never be fit 😔You’ll never be healthy 😔You’re too flawed to be loved

But the filter is clever. It won’t do it in so many words. That would be far too obvious. Instead, it will seep into your subliminal thinking.

If any of the following apply to you, then your are still at the mercy of a filter you created when you didn’t have the tools to understand anything else -

If you find it difficult or even impossible to accept praise

If you always have a nagging thought that something’s about to go wrong

If you don’t believe you can be loved exactly as you are

If you believe you are unlucky

If you feel your physical and mental wellbeing cannot be improved If you believe you've been betrayed too many times to trust again

If you are ever going to know the peace that comes Emotional Recalibration Therapy, this filter needs to be gently cleaned.

We are not who we are told we are

We are not our past

We are not our future

We are not our thoughts

We are not our stories

You’ve spent too long struggling with anxiety or an inner voice that won’t quiet.

You deserve to explore where that’s come from and what we can do about it. Heal those wounds, find the strength to heal even more. Again and again, as long as it takes, with no pressure to be perfect.

Fix this and you will fix everything.

You deserve this. Your inner child deserves this.

Can you imagine being free from that pain?

Emotional Recalibration is the process of gently cleaning that filter.

Of returning to your original self — not by force, but by fierce compassion.

📍 Can you imagine being free from that inner voice?

You deserve to explore what shaped it — and how to finally rewrite the story.

🫀 Ready to Begin Your Healing Journey?

🎧 Start Here: A Moment of Calm for the Aching Heart – Free Guided Audio Soothe your system and reconnect to your body and breath.

📍 Next Step: Join Heart Healing Alchemy – 90 Minute Group Meditation in Central London Wednesday 17th September | 7:30–9:00pm | £35 Somatic meditation, emotional release, nervous system regulation.

🤝 Want Personal Support? Book a Free Discovery Call Book a complimentary call to find out how Emotional Recalibration Therapy can support your healing.

We’ll journey together through somatic practice, emotional release, and ritual reconnection.

You are not too much. You are not broken. You are becoming.