Your Inner Critic Is Not Helping, She’s a Nervous System Alarm Bell

Inside Nat's Notebook - Real Reflections for Real Change

The Moment I Saw Her for What She Was

It didn’t happen in a crisis.

It happened in stillness.

Everything was beginning to fall into place. I was dabbling with life again. Finding rhythms that felt nourishing.

On this day, I’d finally cleared space to rest. No calls. No clients. No tasks. Just me, the trees outside, and a flicker of something rare and golden, a sense that I was safe.

I lay on the grass, watching the clouds stretch and shift through the canopy of the trees. The light looked magical. I felt peaceful.

And then she arrived.

“This is indulgent. What are you even doing?”

“You’re wasting time. They’re out there doing more and you’re lying here watching the sky?”

“Who do you think you are? This isn’t what successful people do. Get up and get going.”

My body responded instantly.

Jaw tight. Shoulders tense, rising like armour. A lump in my throat. Stomach flipped.

Peace gone! Clouds? Forgotten.

Suddenly I wasn’t lying in the grass anymore. I was sprinting through imaginary to-do lists, mentally editing the moment into something more “productive.”

STOP.

I caught it. Just in time.

For once, I didn’t obey her.

I didn’t sprint into action.

I didn’t apologise to the air.

I didn’t spiral.

I stayed. I listened. I breathed.

And I finally heard her voice clearly.

She wasn’t my intuition.

She wasn’t my truth.

She wasn’t even really me.

She was my nervous system in protection mode.

And I realised: I’d been letting fear narrate my life.

Let’s Talk About the Inner Frenemy

She’s sharp. She’s loud. She sounds like she’s helping.

But really? She’s your nervous system mid-panic dressed up as “logic.”

I call her the Inner Frenemy because she talks like a friend, but acts like a saboteur.

You might recognise some of her voices:

Control Freak Cathy:  “Don’t relax!  You’ll drop the ball.”

Perfectionist Penny: “Just tweak it one more time. You can’t afford a mistake.”

Busy Bee Brenda: “If you stop moving, what will people think?”

Overachiever Opal: “Success isn’t supposed to feel easy. Keep pushing.”

She’s not cruel. She’s just anxious. She mimics your tone. Borrows your cadence.

But she’s not your truth.

She’s your nervous system stuck in hypervigilance, doing everything it can to keep you safe from disappointment, rejection, failure, shame and more.

And it’s exhausting.

What’s Actually Going On

When you’ve lived with burnout, chronic pressure, or unresolved stress for long enough, your body learns to protect you in advance.

That protection? Sometimes… it sounds like your Frenemy.

🔍  The brain scans for danger (real or imagined).

🔍  The body floods with cortisol.

🔍  The vagus nerve goes quiet.

🔍  Logic checks out.

🔍  The Frenemy voice checks in.

That inner critic isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a stress response in disguise.

And once you see that… everything starts to change.

There’s a whole science to this. But for now, just know this:

🧡  You’re not overreacting.

🧡  You’re not broken.

🧡  You’re not failing.

🧡  You’re responding to threat signals your body never got to clear.

You don’t have to fix anything. But you can start getting curious.

Last week, my Inner Frenemy tried it again. I was facing a deadline and feeling stuck in the creative mud.

“Deadlines don’t care about your process. Just finish it. 

Push through. Be the professional they expect.”

Old me would’ve pushed. But now?

I paused.

I smiled.

I found a patch of sky and let the clouds do their thing.

Because nervous system mastery doesn’t mean silencing the voice. It means recognising it for what she is and showing her we’re safe.

#RebelMoment: 

Next time the voice kicks off, don’t rush to fix it. Just ask:

“Is this fear… or is this truth?”

Then breathe. That’s the start of the shift.

You don’t have to keep obeying a voice that doesn’t bring you joy.

You don’t have to fight it.

Or fix it.

But you can learn to work with it.

You can understand the science behind the narrative. And you can rewrite the script.

This is what we explore, gently, it’s what I teach in every nervous system reset class, every client and group session and every breath.

And it starts here:

🧡  Stop fighting the voice.

🧡  Start listening to your body.

🧡  Because your body knows what your Frenemy forgot:

“You are safe. You are whole. You are enough!”

Curious What Your Inner Frenemy Might Be Trying to Protect You From?

Take the 2-Minute Nervous System Quiz to discover which protective pattern your body is running and what your inner critic is really trying to shield you from.

Then come back and tell me:

Which Frenemy voice lives in your head?

She doesn’t get to run the show anymore.

Stay Blessed!

Nat x

🧡Your Burnout Bestie

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Exhausted but still brilliant? You bet you are.

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