Disarming the Mind

How do you talk to yourself within the privacy of your inner world? And where does that voice come from?

Psychiatrist Mark Epstein describes the inner critic as “our own subliminal hate speech.” A voice so familiar it seems like our own, yet carrying echoes from somewhere else.

Freud called it the superego — the part of the psyche shaped by authority figures, repeating their imprint, until we learn to catch it and question it. Parents, family, culture, society: all absorbed into an inner voice that tells us how to behave, what is permitted, what is forbidden. A voice that can guide, but more often condemns.

“If you have always been criticised, from before you can remember, it becomes more or less impossible to locate yourself in the time or space before the criticism was made: to believe, in other words, that you yourself exist. The criticism is more real than you are: it seems, in fact, to have created you. I believe a lot of people walk around with this problem in their heads, and it leads to all kinds of trouble – in my case, it led to my body and mind getting divorced from each other right at the start, when I was only a few years old.”
— Rachel Cusk

Internalised criticism becomes scaffolding. Not just something placed upon you, but something you breathe in, repeat, and embody — something you become identified with. It divides felt experience from mind, leaving vigilance in charge.

For many, this is how the survival self is born. Not through one great rupture, but through ordinary repetitions: the raised eyebrow, the withheld moment of approval, the subtle but steady message that you are too much, or not enough. Over time, the scaffolding hardens and rusts. It has, imperceptibly, become the ‘someone’ you think you are.

Resilience is often imagined as a partner to this process of protection — armouring up, toughening, soldiering on. But true resilience, as Lucy Hone describes, looks very different:

“It involves all emotions – it can involve anger and tears, lying in bed one day and saying: ‘I just can’t do this.’ It certainly can involve saying at the office: ‘Can someone help me on this project? Because right now, we’ve got this going on at home and that is consuming so much of my energy that I am definitely going to need some support on this.’ And that is not being weak – it is being realistic. It also involves being able to dial down your inner critic and showing yourself sufficient compassion to let yourself get through.”
— Lucy Hone

Resilience is not toughness. It is truth-telling. It is being in direct relationship with what is — even when what is feels unbearably vulnerable, inconvenient, or unfinished. It is the opposite of criticism, which forever insists you should be otherwise. Survival is trying not to die. Resilience is being willing to keep feeling.

This is what I mean by disarming the mind. Not suppressing thought, not fighting criticism with more judgement. Simply putting the weapon down and speaking what is real.

“I can’t do this today.”
“I need help.”
“I’m afraid.”
“This is what’s happening now.”

These are not admissions of defeat. They are the language of aliveness.

And yet, relinquishing the cover of protection is never simple. The mind can talk about it, even long for it — but the body still clings. After all, that armour once kept us from falling apart, it does not dissolve just because we decide it should.

We have to live our wish to grow, practise it, somewhere wide and safe enough that the survival can begin to loosen. This is a counter-cultural skill: to be undefended in front of others, to speak what is real, to let the body reveal what it has been carrying.

One-to-one therapy can open the story, but it rarely brings us close enough to the original field: the family. Groups do. In a group, the old positions always return — sibling rivalries, parent–child dynamics, the inherited roles. An analytic group is a hall of mirrors, uncomfortable, but also the only place where some missed developmental healing can finally happen. To be met differently, to respond differently, and ultimately, to have a real encounter with belonging differently.

“The method and theory of group analysis is concerned with a dynamic understanding of the inner working of the human mind as a social, multi-personal phenomenon.”
— S.H. Foulkes

The mind is not only private, but relational. It is through others that we are wounded — and through others that we can be repaired. This is also why the personal is political. The survival self is shaped not only by family life, but by the wider field of culture, systemic oppression, and unspoken social codes. We are interwoven in more ways than the eye can ever see. And yet, our consciousness is capable of perceiving so much more. In the ontology of Maturation, we learn to outgrow the survival strategies that were once necessary, and to meet, and become responsible for, the world we are generating.

For any kind of lasting change to take root, words and insight are not enough. The fabric of the bodymind holds both the original trauma and the armour itself. Chi Kung, with its elemental rhythms, allows us to work directly with that tension. Dreamwork opens the language of the unconscious, where the critic has no power. BodyMind Maturation orients us toward presence, agency and a much deeper level of somatic and energetic listening.

I created Earth Matrix because I could not find this combination anywhere else: a space where group process, systemic awareness, somatic practice, and cutting-edge ontology meet. A field where the survival self can finally be outgrown — not in theory, but in lived experience. Not alone, but together.

Applications for the November 2025 — April 2026 cycle are now open ✦
I’ve recorded a deep dive introduction to give you a sense of the soul of the programme — you can watch it here ↓