Your conscience has a direct influence on your mental wellbeing. If it’s overactive, you’re anxious. The result might be worry, insomnia, or a variety of other unwanted symptoms.
Your conscience is terrific when it urges you to apologize for a mishap and soothe a difficult relationship. It’s helpful, too, when it guides you away from a situation you should stay away from. However, when it’s overactive, it dents your self-esteem, causes unnecessary fear, and stops you making the most of opportunities to thrive.
Your conscience speaks through self-talk. It’s like a mother hen that clucks around you, shuffling you this way and that with constant critical chatter. If you pick up a fear of not being good enough in childhood, your “mother hen” reflects your low self-worth when you’re an adult until you heal.
If you had to please everyone when you were a child, your need to indulge people will rise and fuel self-talk describing how you must meet people’s needs. You might lie awake at night worrying you’ve made a poor impression on someone or another person isn’t happy with you.
The first step to easing your conscience might be to look at where your worries first arose. You know more now than you did when events that created them occurred. You can correct misapprehensions and calm your inner child’s fears with the strength of your current, adult self.
At other times, the best way to manage a streaming conscience is to stem its flow. Your “mother hen” might simply repeat critical statements on autopilot because she’s grown accustomed to them. To get rid of these statements, override them with preferable thoughts and generate better thought-habits.
For example, if the critical thought “you aren’t good enough” rises, quash it with positivity. Tell yourself you are accomplished enough, or just need to gather more knowledge. Either way, there’s no reason you can’t do something you want to do. You can take classes and study a subject to gather know-how if necessary.
Work to build self-esteem too. Spend time with supportive people and avoid those who put you down or let your critical beliefs grow. Good friends will automatically correct you when you are self-critical rather than stay quiet or agree with you.
The more often you correct your overactive conscience, the faster you’ll build preferable thought patterns. Your new modes of thought will become second nature and turn into habits, and your “mother hen” will have nothing to cluck about anymore.
