You know that voice in your head that kicks in before anyone else even opens their mouth?
The one that’s already critiquing your email before you hit send, or telling you exactly how you screwed up that conversation before it’s even over?
I discovered mine was on overdrive about five years ago.
I’d just finished leading a team meeting that went perfectly fine: Good engagement, clear outcomes, and zero conflicts.
But within minutes, I was mentally rewriting every sentence I’d said, convinced I’d somehow disappointed everyone in the room.
That’s when it clicked: I was hearing echoes from twenty years earlier, from a home where criticism was the default language and “good enough” didn’t exist in the vocabulary.
If you grew up in a highly critical environment, you probably carry around a greatest hits collection of self-defeating phrases that play on repeat.
They’re so automatic you might not even notice them anymore.
But they’re there, shaping your decisions, your relationships, and your stress levels in ways that have nothing to do with your actual capabilities.
Here are six phrases I’ve caught myself and countless others repeating, long after we left those critical homes behind.
1) “I should have known better.”
This one hits after any mistake, no matter how minor or unpredictable.
Forgot to check the weather before leaving? Should have known better.
Trusted someone who let you down? Should have known better.
Made a reasonable decision that didn’t pan out? You get the idea.
The phrase assumes you’re supposed to be psychic.
It frames every negative outcome as a personal failure of judgment, even when the variables were completely outside your control.
I used to say this after every client meeting that didn’t go exactly as planned.
The assumption was that perfect preparation should lead to perfect outcomes, and anything less was my fault.
The reality? Nobody can anticipate everything—not even close—but, when you grow up in a home where mistakes get dissected and analyzed to death, you learn to do the dissecting yourself before anyone else gets the chance.
2) “I’m bothering people.”
Ever catch yourself apologizing for existing? For asking legitimate questions? For needing basic things that any reasonable person would need?
This phrase runs in the background when you’re about to send a follow-up email, ask for help, or even just join a conversation. It assumes your presence is inherently burdensome and that others are doing you a favor by tolerating you.
I once tracked how many times I said “sorry” in a single day. Thirty-seven times.
Most of them for things like walking through doorways at the same time as someone else or asking clarifying questions in meetings.
The critical home teaches you that your needs are inconvenient. That asking for anything is asking for too much.
So, you learn to minimize your footprint, to take up less space, to preemptively apologize for the crime of being human.
3) “They probably think I’m incompetent.”
Make one typo in an email, miss one detail in a presentation, take an extra day to respond to a non-urgent message, and suddenly, you’re convinced everyone has written you off as a complete amateur.
This catastrophizing happens because critical environments train you to believe that one mistake erases a hundred successes.
That people are keeping score, waiting for you to slip up, ready to confirm their worst suspicions about you.
I spent years assuming every silence meant disapproval.
If someone didn’t immediately praise something I did, I assumed they hated it; if they gave neutral feedback, I heard crushing criticism.
The exhausting truth about this phrase? Most people aren’t thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are.
They’re too busy worrying about their own typos.
4) “I should be further along by now.”
Pick any area of life: Career, relationships, fitness, finances, or personal growth?
If you’re from a critical home, you’ve probably told yourself you’re behind schedule in all of them.
This phrase compares your inside to everyone else’s outside. It ignores context, circumstances, and the fact that there’s no universal timeline for anything.
Growing up with impossibly high standards means you internalize this moving goalpost. Hit one milestone? Should have hit it sooner. Achieve something significant? Should have achieved something bigger.
I remember getting promoted and immediately thinking about how others had gotten there faster.
Just immediate deflation because the inner critic had already moved the target.
5) “I’m making this too complicated.”
Ask for clarification? You’re making it complicated.
Have emotions about something? Complicated.
Need time to process? Definitely too complicated.
This phrase is particularly insidious because it makes you doubt your own experience. It suggests that your natural responses and needs are somehow excessive or dramatic.
Critical homes often demand simplicity as a survival mechanism: Don’t feel too much, don’t need too much, and don’t ask too many questions.
Just execute and move on.
However, humans and situations are complicated.
Dismissing that complexity just makes you feel crazy for experiencing it.
6) “If I just try harder, it will work.”
This is the phrase that keeps you in bad situations, throwing good effort after bad outcomes.
The relationship that’s clearly not working? Try harder.
The job that’s burning you out? Try harder.
The friendship where you’re doing all the work? Try harder.
It assumes that effort alone determines outcomes, that you can control results through sheer force of will.
My parents had this “don’t complain, handle it” philosophy that seemed practical on the surface, but it taught me that the solution to any problem was just to bear down harder.
If something wasn’t working, I wasn’t trying hard enough.
This creates a perfect trap: Either things work out (proving you should have tried harder sooner) or they don’t (proving you still aren’t trying hard enough).
Bottom line
These phrases are programs running in the background, influencing every interaction, every decision, and every assessment of yourself and your place in the world.
The first step isn’t to stop thinking them, that’s like trying not to think about pink elephants!
Instead, the first step is to notice them, to catch yourself in the act.
Start a simple log for one week; every time you catch one of these phrases or its variants, make a quick note.
Don’t judge it, don’t try to change it, just notice because you might be surprised how often they show up.
Once you see the patterns, you can start asking different questions.
Instead of “I should have known better,” try “What can I learn from this?”
You can’t delete twenty-plus years of programming overnight, but you can start recognizing when you’re running someone else’s software.
Once you recognize it, you can start choosing whether to keep running it or finally write your own code.
