There’s a voice in my head.
You have one too.
Most of the time, it stays in the background—commenting, interpreting, trying to make sense of things. Not always helpful, but familiar.
Recently, mine changed.
After a medication adjustment, it got louder. Not gradually—quickly. What had been background noise moved front and center.
Everything started to feel uncertain. Ordinary decisions felt heavy. Responsibilities that were manageable a week earlier suddenly felt like they were on the verge of collapse.
And the voice kept narrating:
You’re losing it.
This is the beginning of the end.
You’re not coming back from this.
Everything you’ve built is about to fall apart.
It didn’t feel like a passing thought.
It felt like a clear reading of reality.
That’s what made it so unsettling.
Here’s the strange part:
Nothing in my external life had actually changed.
Same work.
Same people.
Same commitments.
But internally, it was as if the system interpreting all of that had shifted. The same life, seen through a different lens, suddenly looked unstable and threatening.
There’s language for this.
Neuroscientists describe something called the default mode network—a system in the brain that activates when we’re thinking about ourselves. It’s involved in reflection, memory, and anticipating what might happen next.
In everyday terms, it’s the part of the mind that keeps asking:
What does this mean about me?
What’s going to happen next?
Am I okay?
That system isn’t a problem by itself.
But when it becomes dysregulated—because of stress, trauma, or in my case, a medication shift—it doesn’t just get louder.
It becomes more convincing.
It tells a story and then immediately treats that story as fact.
And because it sounds like your own voice, it’s easy to believe.
In the language I’ve been using in this space, this is another way of understanding the elephant.
We usually think of the elephant as something we don’t want to see—addiction, denial, the obvious problem sitting in the room.
But there’s another layer.
The elephant doesn’t just sit there quietly.
It speaks.
It interprets.
It predicts.
It explains everything in a way that keeps you locked inside the same patterns.
And when it’s loud enough, it doesn’t feel like distortion.
It feels like truth.
That’s what this past stretch has felt like.
Not that anything catastrophic was happening—
but that my mind was insisting that it was about to.
At times, it was intense. Not just worry, but a steady sense that something was wrong and getting worse.
If you’ve experienced that, you know how persuasive it can be.
There’s also something important to say about this.
For some of us, this isn’t a one-time experience.
If you carry trauma, attachment wounds, or a nervous system that learned early to scan for danger, these patterns don’t simply disappear. They can go quiet for long stretches, and then something shifts—and they come back online quickly.
That doesn’t mean you’re broken beyond repair.
It means your system learned patterns that are persistent.
Patterns that have to be understood, tended, and managed over time.
What’s been helping isn’t arguing with the voice.
That doesn’t go well. The voice is fast, well-rehearsed, and persuasive.
What helps, slowly, is recognizing it.
Being able to say, even briefly:
This is the voice.
This is a pattern.
This is not necessarily reality.
Not truth.
Not prophecy.
Not God.
Just the system activating again.
This isn’t a new problem.
From the beginning of the biblical story, the issue isn’t just behavior—it’s a voice.
In Genesis, the serpent doesn’t force anything. It speaks. It reframes reality. It introduces doubt:
Did God really say…?
Nothing in the environment had changed.
But the interpretation did.
And once that voice was trusted, everything shifted.
The same pattern shows up with Jesus in the wilderness.
The temptation isn’t just hunger or power. It’s a series of statements that sound almost reasonable—some even grounded in scripture:
If you are the Son of God…
Throw yourself down…
All this can be yours…
Again, the pressure comes through a voice—subtle, persuasive, and strategic.
That matters.
Because it suggests that the presence of these voices isn’t a sign that something has gone uniquely wrong.
They’ve been there from the beginning.
The question isn’t whether they show up.
It’s whether we recognize them for what they are.
And every once in a while, there’s a gap, usually when taking deep breaths or meditating.
A moment where the running commentary drops out. No prediction. No interpretation. No sense of impending collapse.
Just quiet.
Those moments don’t solve everything. But they’re clarifying.
They remind me that the voice is not the whole story.
That something in me remains steady underneath it.
And that if I’m paying attention, that may be where God is found—not in the urgency or the fear, but beneath it.
I’m not all the way through this.
But I’m far enough to say this:
If your mind has turned on you, it doesn’t necessarily mean your life is falling apart.
It may mean the elephant has gotten louder.
Louder in its predictions.
Louder in its certainty.
Louder in its ability to make fear sound like fact.
And the work isn’t to eliminate that voice completely, because that can’t be done.
It’s to learn, over time,
not to believe everything it says.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10
When your internal voice gets loud, what does it tend to say—and how quickly do you assume it’s true?
Prayer
God,
when my thoughts grow loud and convincing,
help me remember that not every voice I hear is truth.
Give me clarity, steadiness, and space.
Help me notice what is real,
and rest in what does not change.
Amen.
The Elephant Chronicles are meditations based on my upcoming book “The Lie that Kills Us: We All Have Elephants.” It explores the elephants we avoid: denial, addiction, trauma, death, and grace.
If you’d like me to let you know when it’s released later this spring, send a note to: Pastored@addictionandfaith.com
I’d be honored to keep you in the loop.
The book is now available here: The Lie That Kills Us: We All Have Elephants
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