The 3 Voices That Hold You Back (and How to Stop Listening)

I had an awkward conversation with my parents last night.

There’s nothing unusual about this - life is a constant medley of conversations with people. Sometimes those talks are easy to handle, but sometimes, more often than not, they can be extremely confronting and uncomfortable to the more shadowy parts of ourselves.

And it got me thinking about the voices that can be the underhand drivers in our life, whether we want them to be or not.

I’ve found that there are three primary voices that hold a powerful sway over us, and those are the voices of our parents, the voices of our past, and the voices of our programming.

And the fact that they all start with ‘p’ is not lost on me at all. It adds a beautiful serendipity to the whole concept and also ties it together in a perfect literary magic of the three p’s that I hope helps us all to remember, in those moments when we are really struggling, that the voices driving us aren’t always in our best interests.

Ultimately, there is a voice that is far more important, empowering and joyful to listen to when it comes to taking the next steps forward in our life, and that is, of course, the voice of our soul. Or some would call our intuition, but for me, they are one in the same thing.

But how do we hear our inner voice when all the other voices are so loud? Well, that’s what we’re going to get into.

The voice of our parents that creates fear and self-doubt

The first voice that can be the loudest in our ear, is the voice of our parents, whether it’s our mother, father, or both. And often, it’s the voice that tells us to “be careful”.

Our parents are our primary influences in life, and we learn everything about the world around us through the lens of their perception, which they then pass down to us. In those crucial ages of 0-7 years, we are molded into little replicas of our parents, doing as they do, living as they live, and seeing the world as they see it.

This is because the ages between 0-7 are when we are a sponge, soaking up all there is to know from the people closest to us, which is our mum and dad.

If we’re lucky enough to have parents who love and care for us, both on an emotional as well as physical level, then they will do whatever they can to protect us and keep us safe.

The downside of this is that they tend to view our lives through a lens of fear and anxiety of what might happen. Their parental concern can help to keep us safe when we’re younger and more foolish, but when we’re older it can feel like an extra burden of fearful concern which can feel suffocating, disorientating and discouraging.

Especially when so many of us are working so hard to keep ourselves positive, confident and encouraged in our own pursuits.

And because we trust their judgement (of course, our parents know best) it often creates an inner tension within us where we are wanting to please them and seek their approval, but also wanting to stick to what we know is true for us.

How to handle our parents’ fears and concerns

We also often misinterpret their concern as doubt in our abilities.

Because while their desire to keep us safe may come across as mistrust in our ability to handle ourselves, it’s really only their deepest wish to keep us protected. It’s nothing to do with doubting what we’re capable of - instead, it’s to do with steering us out of harm’s way as best they can, so we avoid loss, heartbreak and failure. Which, as we are all aware, are all parts of life.

At the same time, we always need to be conscious that our parents are a generation behind us, used to a different way of doing things, with a more traditional perspective on life.

So when the questions and concerns come around, whether it’s to do with our relationship choices, career choices or lifestyle choices, we just need to hold our boundary, remembering that their questions come from concern born in love. We are not here to challenge that, but we are also not here to engage in it to the extent that it pulls us off course.

Instead, we are here to dig deep into the awareness of where those questions come from, hold our parents in compassion, be respectful of their concern, not also not allow them to distract us with it.

The voice of our parents that erodes our self-confidence

On the complete other end of the spectrum, there are also the voices of parents who are critical, belittling and judgemental.

This is a voice I cannot relate to, as that hasn’t been my experience in life, yet I have met many people who have the critical voice in their ear, rather than the loving concern. More often than not, these people have the 13-4 energy or 10-1 energy in their Soul Contract.

The 13-4 is related to our relationship with the feminine (our mum) and the 10-1 is related to our relationship with the masculine (our dad).

This is the voice that blocks our self-belief and whittles away at our confidence.

If we have parents who are bullies, it is highly likely that their parents were also bullies to them. We always have a choice in life as to whether we do as was done to us (which is how we mistakenly think we can claim back our power) or we do the opposite.

Many people choose to disengage with their spiritual journey, shunning away from self-awareness and emotional development, which means that many of us have parents who aren’t conscious of their trauma, their disempowerment, or their lack of self-worth which all drive their unconscious, critical behaviour.

This doesn’t absolve them from it, it’s merely a reminder for us, as the recipients, that we can’t change who they are, we can only accept that it is what it is, and protect ourselves in any way we can from their damaging influence.

As I shared, this has not been my experience, but I know many others who have had very critical parents. It takes huge courage to turn their voices down and put up those boundaries to protect your peace.

The voice of our past that keeps us frozen

The second voice is a much more internal one, and this is the voice of our past.

We’re all made up of layers and layers of past experiences, some that we remember, and others that have sunk into the deep recesses of our subconscious mind - still there, just forgotten.

And more often than not, it is the voice of these past experiences that can have such a freeze effect of us being able to move forwards in our life, whatever it is that we want to do.

It may be that we had a toxic relationship and we’re terrified of opening ourselves up again to someone who might take our heart and crush it in their hand. Perhaps we made a choice in the past that had challenging consequences, and we now no longer trust our decision-making.

And I can personally think of so many different examples of when I tried to do something and the universe laughed and let me slip on a banana skin (metaphorically of course), that created much more fear and caution as a result.

And when it comes to taking a bold and empowering step forwards in our life, that feels a little risky, a little unsettling, or just plain scary, it’s often the voice of our past that pipes us to remind us of all of our failures. Like sounding out an alarm bell to warn us away from trying anything new.

We all know that life is all about falling over and getting back up again. Yet this is a much harder concept to go with the flow with when it comes to real life.

And we cannot ignore the effects of trauma, no matter how small, that can keep us in a state of freeze, where it becomes almost impossible for us to even consider trying something that might somehow cause further stress, trauma or injury to us.

And this is what causes us to miss out on so much in life.

Gently releasing the trauma that’s been holding us back

If you take a moment, right now, to think about something that you want to do, whether in your personal or professional life, you may not be consciously be aware of what past experience may be holding you back, but I bet you there’s a hidden memory, just in the back of your mind, that will come to the surface to show you what you need to work on in order to open up your flow again.

One of the best examples I have of the voice of the past holding me back is all about exercise.

Back in my twenties, I had a job working for a boutique fitness company, as the ‘everything girl’ supporting the founder. It was here that I burnt myself into the ground. This came from cycling in-between the studios, over-exercising in the free classes they offered me, over-giving in my job and just generally overdoing it - for almost four years.

This is what eventually led me to discover Systematic Kinesiology (and you can hear the whole story here), but I am still holding onto a deep fear of over-exercising, and the accompanying burnout, that is completely locking me out of getting into any kind of healthy routine with exercising.

Even with the awareness I have, it’s a really big one for me to overcome.

And so when it comes to addressing the voice of our past, we are here to take it gently and slowly, because this is the traumatised voice within us. It’s a voice that’s been hurt, betrayed, abandoned, and it is very scared of those things happening again.

This is why it goes into full lockdown mode when we try to take those steps forward in life. Trauma freezes us in place, keeping us dangling in the momentum, but never reaching where we’re trying to get to.

But when we treat our past experiences with love and compassion, we can begin to gently let them go, realising that beating ourselves up for not being able to ‘get over them’ is never the way forwards. We all have our Achilles heel, and we’re not here to force ourselves forwards, we’re here to soften back into the flow state, with patience, love and grace.

The voice of our programming driving our reality

The final voice that holds us back is the voice of our programming.

This one is the most intricate to explore because we have so many programmes running in the background. This voice is completely unique to all of us - made up of layers upon layers of beliefs and conditioning that creates the reality of every moment of our lives.

One of my biggest motivations in my own spiritual awakening and emotional healing path has been knowing that there is nothing I need to do to ‘fix’ myself, because nothing is broken. Instead, I see us all as being buried under the weight of all of these layers, so much so that we can’t see the truth of who we really are.

This is what spiritual awakening and emotional healing is all about - the removal of all the clutter that is getting in our way, clogging up our fields, messing with our energy and blocking us from realising and acting on what we really want to do.

A huge part of this programming is encoded in our Soul Contract, and if you’ve read any of my posts on the Soul Contract before, you’ll know that there are certain energies in each of our charts that hold our greatest challenges.

An example of this is the energies I have in my chart which are all about coming into worthiness through self-expression. Yet showing myself and sharing my beliefs is one of the hardest things for me to do. The programming running through my karmic 5-5 energy in my Soul Contract holds a huge amount of fear of speaking up and expressing the truth.

For some people, speaking up is so easy, and for others it feels impossibly hard. And linked to this fear is the self-sabotage (a form of protection) that comes in and stops me from speaking up against things I find uncomfortable, which only serves to keep me limited and repressed.

The multidimensional nature of our programming

Social media is a great example of how the tug-of-war relationship I have to be myself on there.

The voice that comes through when I’m about to share something is always the same “are you sure that’s a good idea, will you be safe, what if people attack you?”

And while that may sound extreme, it’s really not, because our programming isn’t just in this lifetime, it’s also multidimensional - across past lives, parallel lives, dimensions and realities. We are also imprinted with cultural beliefs of where we’re born, the ancestral programming coming down through the generations before us, as well as the conditioning of the matrix that we live in, which is incredibly strong and restrictive.

As you can see, we have a lot to contend with.

This isn’t meant to be disencouraging. Instead, it’s part of the wonderful journey we’re on, exploring all the layers that have shaped our lives so far, allowing us to choose what we want to keep, and what we want to release.

And as we release those layers, whether it’s through Divine Healing (which is the work I do on clients but also on myself) or through another method, the more we can see the truth of our situation clearly. And with that self-awareness comes the ability to start making choices.

With great knowledge comes great power, and in this case I’d change it to this: with awareness of the driving forces that have been telling us what we are and are not capable of, comes great accountability, great empowerment and great potential for creating wonder in our lives.

So, the next time you hear a voice telling you to stop, be scared or turn away from what lights you up, seek which voice it is and lovingly lower the volume.

If you’d like support and guidance on your spiritual and emotional healing journey, you may like to book a Soul Contract Reading, book a Divine Healing session, or sign up to my newsletter to stay in touch for more similar posts.

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Carry on exploring