How Your Inner Saboteur Is Trained And Why It Feels So Real

Now, I am going to assume just like me, sometimes you have this cheeky little voice inside your head. The one that likes to whisper, sometimes shout, or even screech in your mind that something is hard. That you can’t do this. That you never read things correctly. That you are so dumb. Such an idiot.

Am I right?

I mean, the things it says can be a lot more intense. I am not even writing them out, because I feel like you are probably nodding along thinking, yeah girl, I know. And honestly, that voice says even worse things.

Like Mama RuPaul says, that is your inner saboteur talking

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And this inner saboteur, this voice, this annoying inner critic, has actually been trained by us. Yes girl, by us. The only way that voice learned to talk to you like that is through repetition. In a lot of ways, it is just repeating back information it has been fed over time.

And sometimes, depending on the situation, we are also feeding emotion and meaning into those moments. That is what makes the outcome feel worse. That is what creates more “evidence” for the voice to say, yep, see, you really are dumb.

Honestly, how rude.

Now, this is not a three step guide to fixing your inner saboteur. This is about the three ways you are training it, with a little bit of spice at the end to help you pivot. Because at the end of the day, your inner saboteur is a part of you. And I think learning to understand all parts of ourselves, even the not so great ones, matters.

1. Getting the reps in, because repetition is key

Like anything that becomes second nature, learning happens through repetition. Think about how we learned to speak. We were shown, we practiced, and over time it became automatic.

The thing is, who we had around us while learning mattered. Our home environment, our friends, the language we heard regularly. All of that shaped how we learned to speak to ourselves.

So naturally, if we grew up hearing people speak negatively about themselves, we learn that this is normal. As kids, we are meant to make mistakes. That is literally how learning works. But if instead of encouragement, mistakes were met with things like, why are you so dumb, how is this so hard, why do you make everything difficult, you are such an idiot, that language starts to stick.

When that kind of language comes from people we love, or people we are around often, and we take it on personally, it begins to feel true. Repetition makes phrases feel true at a brain processing level. The more you hear something about yourself, the more familiar and reliable it feels to your brain.

And eventually, that becomes the same story you hear internally.

How annoying is that?

2. The scout

So if we have been doing the reps and feeding our inner saboteur, what happens next?

Those repeated phrases get loud. And loud things grab attention. I mean, if you heard someone yell “I’m such an idiot” in public, you would probably look around too. Don’t lie.

Your brain does something similar. It stores that information. It treats it as important.

Your brain has something called the Reticular Activating System, or the RAS. Instead of thinking of it as a gatekeeper, think of it as a scout. Its job is to go out ahead of you and look for what matters. It scans your environment and your experiences and reports back on anything that feels familiar, relevant, or repeated.

You know when you are thinking about getting a new car and suddenly you see that exact model everywhere? That is your scout at work.

So when your inner saboteur has been loud, the scout pays attention. It takes note of that language and starts using it as reference material. It goes out into your day looking for moments that match. Moments that feel similar. Moments that can be added to the pile as proof.

Not because it is trying to sabotage you.
Because it is doing its job.

The more often the inner saboteur shows up, the more data the scout collects. And over time, that report starts to look convincing. It feels like this keeps happening. Like the evidence is everywhere.

That is how the inner saboteur starts to feel factual.

3. The overwhelm

I’m not sure about you, but when I am in a state and the inner saboteur is loud and winning, things can spiral fast.

For me, it looked like this. I had a flat tyre. I had to be at my friend’s place at a specific time in the city to house sit. I didn’t have enough money for new tyres. Then I lost my keys. I left half of the things I needed behind.

And all I could hear was:
Wow Shannon, you are such a loser. You’re 32. How do you not have your life together? How can you not afford $320 for tyres?

The voice just went on and on.

Once I finally got to my friend’s apartment, my body went into a complete freeze state. My mind and body were both overwhelmed.

My mind was in cognitive overload, specifically extraneous cognitive load. This is the kind of mental strain that does not come from the situation itself, but from everything extra your brain is trying to juggle at once. Unclear information, mental clutter, having to constantly translate or make sense of things, being pulled in multiple directions. All of that fills up your mental capacity with noise, leaving very little room to think clearly or respond calmly.

On top of that, I was carrying stress about money, being late, and realising I had left half of my belongings behind.

My nervous system kicked into fight first, because part of me wanted to go at myself. The inner saboteur was loving it. The repetition was high that day.

Then it flipped into freeze.

I couldn’t move from the couch. The inner saboteur was telling me that if I left that spot, I would lose everything again. That I was an idiot. That it would all happen again.

My mind and body were a hot mess.
This was an extreme moment of the inner saboteur winning

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Now you are probably wondering, how do I untrain these thoughts? How do I stop myself? Surely there has to be a quick fix, right?

Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes. The inner saboteur is reinforced through repetition, through where your attention goes, and through how quickly moments escalate when your system is overloaded. So instead of fighting the voice itself, the work is to interrupt those exact steps. We change the language that gets repeated. We redirect what our attention treats as evidence. We slow the way small moments turn into identity statements.

And yes, this is possible because of something called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is your brain’s ability to form new pathways based on what it practices most. Your brain learns through repetition, which means change happens by changing the reps. New language, new evidence, and new responses gradually weaken the old pattern and build a different relationship with yourself and the situations you are in.

So no, you do not need to silence your inner saboteur or get rid of it.

That voice exists because it has been practised. It has been repeated. It has been reinforced through attention and overwhelm.

When you change what gets repeated, what your attention treats as evidence, and how quickly moments escalate, the pattern starts to shift.

Not all at once. Not perfectly.

Just gradually.

Not because you changed who you are.
Because you changed what your brain keeps rehearsing.