A lot of us can be quite hard on ourselves. It feels like we have a relentless inner critic that just never lets up. It’s constantly telling us how we’re not good enough, or haven’t done enough, or telling us we failed or did something wrong.
And for some of us, we might have been told that mantras can help us quiet our inner critic. When I first heard about using mantras to heal trauma, my initial thought was… this sounds like new-agey BS. Repeating a phrase over and over? That can’t possibly undo decades of damage, right?
But then, I started using mantras. And as I applied it to my understanding of how trauma gets formed, I realized that…trauma is actually born from repetitive messages that our parents send to us. Like, if my mom only ever gives me positive attention for getting straight A’s, the message I receive is: “I only deserve love when I can prove my worth through my achievements.”
So if repeated negative messages can lead to trauma, then repeated positive mantras would be part of our reparenting process to change our self-perception.
Traumatic Messages From Our Parents
As children, we are actually born with an innate sense of self-worth and boundaries. Just think about it…when you try to feed a two year old who doesn’t feel like eating, she will turn her head away or will try to get away from you.
However, our natural sense of self-worth and boundaries can be undermined by our parents’ parenting approach, and the messages they send us. There are a variety of messages that we receive as children that impacts the way we understand ourselves. Here are five common ones:
1. Critical/Judgmental Parents
If our parents constantly criticized us as children, what we learn is that we have to be perfect in order to receive love. We start believing that we are never good enough, and link our self-worth to what we can achieve. The inner critic develops a voice that will mirror the criticisms and judgments of the parents.
This can often lead to children developing perfectionistic tendencies. You can explore this this behavioural pattern here: Asian Perfectionism: Why You Feel the Pressure to Be Perfect and Why You Feel Angry.
2. Parents Who Depend On Their Child for Emotional Care
In this dynamic, the child learns that they have to abandon their own emotional needs in order to take care of their parent. They may end up believing that their needs are too much or a burden. And they start to believe that the way to have a relationship with someone is to provide care for them, even if it means abandoning their own needs. The inner critic learns to be hyperfocused on the needs of others, and will criticize you for any perceived infraction of not fulfilling the needs of others.
The abandonment of your own emotional needs becomes a pattern that continues into adulthood. There are many layers to this within the context of Asian immigrant families, which I explore here: Why Is It So Hard to Live My Own Life When I Love My Family?
3. Verbally Abusive Parents
If our parents regularly shame us and humiliates us, we will internalize the shame. We start believing that our authentic selves are inherently shameful, and we start to distance ourselves from our true authenticity.
Sometimes, our parents will outright say these things to us (e.g. “You’re useless”). But a lot of times, these messages are not communicated so directly. It might take the form of specific tones, actions, and/or treatment that leads to the development of these ways of thinking about ourselves. In all these differently messages, what we learn is that our authentic selves will not be loved unconditionally. Our inner critic will often learn to repeat these same messages to us.
Dealing with abuse in Asian families can be challenging, due to cultural expectations for children to respect their parents (filial piety). While filial piety can be a positive cultural value, it can also be weaponized to justify and enable abuse. I write about this topic here: Guilt and Shame In Asian Families: Filial Piety Explained.
4. Emotional Neglect From Parents
Emotional neglect can be difficult to recognize. It doesn’t always involve obvious harm or a single traumatic event. Sometimes it develops through repeated experiences of not feeling emotionally understood, supported, or accepted for who we are. Over time, we learn to behave in ways that will get our parents to pay attention to us. Or we end up giving up, and start believing that nothing we do is good enough to garner love and emotional validation from others.
As a result, the child might learn that their innate needs are a barrier to love and emotional connection. Or they might internalize the belief that they are not good enough to be loved. And the inner critic may tell you that you’re not good enough, or critize you for being selfish.
I explore this pattern more deeply here: Signs You Grew Up With Emotional Neglect (Especially in Asian Immigrant Families), including how emotional neglect shapes your self-worth, emotional awareness, and relationship with yourself.
5. Parents Who Are Overly Rigid Or Routinized
Parents who are very rigid or routinized or inflexible can lead to constant correcting of the child. This is similar but slightly different from critical and judgmental parents. Parents who are inflexible and rigid may often correct their children’s behaviours. Over time, these repeated corrections can lead to children believing that the way they do things is wrong. Or believing that other people know better than them.
The inner critic may often panic if it believes that you did something wrong or didn’t follow protocol/norms.
Imagine a lifetime of these messages being sent to you. It’s no wonder some of us really struggle with self-esteem, and why some of us have an internal voice mimicking the exact things that our parents used to say to us.
For many people, this internal voice becomes the foundation of chronic self-doubt, anxiety, and overthinking. The Inner Critic constantly analyzes our choices, predicts mistakes, and tries to prevent rejection by keeping us in a state of hyper-awareness. I explore this pattern more deeply in Why You Can’t Stop Overthinking, Even When Life Feels Fine, including why your mind may continue searching for problems even when your life appears okay.
If Repeated Messages Shaped You, Repeated Messages Can Change You
The very reason these beliefs feel so “true” is because they were repeated to us our entire life. Not always with words, but also in the way we were treated. After decades of being beat down with these messages, it defines how we perceive ourselves. This then leads to unhealthy ways of relating to other people and the world at large.
But if repetition created these harmful self-perceptions, then repetition can also replace them. And that is exactly what a mantra is.
Mantras are simply new intentional messages we give ourselves. It’s not magic. In fact, it takes a long time for mantras to slowly shift the way we think about ourselves. We are, after all, trying to undo decades of damage that has been done to us.
Mantras Help Us Reparent Ourselves
At the root of the trauma messages from our parents is the belief that we are not loved unconditionally. For a lot of our parents, they never received unconditional love and acceptance, so they don’t know how to love unconditionally.
And since we were not parented with unconditional love and acceptance from our own parents, we need to be able to offer it to ourselves. This is the reparenting process, where we need to learn to counteract the judgmental and rejecting voices of our parents with a loving and accepting voice…our own voice. But it’s not easy, because we never experienced unconditional self-love, so we don’t really know how to do it either.
Mantras become a starting point in building an internal voice that is more compassionate and loving. And trust me when I say this…when you first start mantra-ing, you’re not even going to believe the mantra. Just because you start saying “My worth is not defined by my achievements,” it doesn’t mean you will magically believe it.
But through repetition, the mantra will start to have an impact. And it also requires you to take committed action to change the way to relate to the world. If you truly want to believe that your worth is not defined by your achievements, then you need to deprioritize decisions and behaviours that focuses on achievements. If you continue to prioritize perfectionism and markers of success, then no amount of mantra-ing will change the way you think about yourself.
Mantra is only the starting point. It sets the intention of how you want to perceive yourself. Your daily decisions must also align with the mantra if you want to see real internal change. For me, I write my mantra every morning. It helps me set my intention for the day, and it serves as a daily reminder of what is important to me.
This is my current mantra to set my daily intention:
Today, I choose authenticity over performance, and connection over hierarchy.
I do not need to justify my right to exist through performance, or being impressive or exceptional.
I will not reject, abandon, or humiliate myself.
I'm allowed to just be an ordinary dude in a spectacular world. So have fun! Be yourself! And be present with the people that you like.
These mantras are a reminder for you to follow through in your decisions and actions.
Exploring Your Inner Critic, Emotional Neglect, and Overthinking
Your Inner Critic did not appear randomly. It developed through repeated experiences, messages, and environments that shaped how you learned to see yourself.
Healing involves understanding where these messages came from, building a kinder relationship with yourself, and learning that your worth does not need to be earned through achievement or perfection.
If you want to explore these patterns further:
Signs You Grew Up With Emotional Neglect (Especially in Asian Immigrant Families)
Understand how missing emotional support in childhood can shape your self-worth, emotional awareness, and ability to connect with yourself.
Why You Feel Guilty For Living Your Own Life (Asian Family Dynamics Explained)
Learn how guilt and shame is internalized as a form of trauma, and how to rebuild personal agency.
Why You Can’t Stop Overthinking, Even When Life Feels Fine
Learn why your mind keeps analyzing, worrying, and trying to solve problems even when nothing is immediately wrong.
Why You’re Stuck In The Burnout Cycle
Understand the burnout cycle, and why self-care doesn’t seem to work for you.
If you recognize yourself in some of these patterns, I created a free interactive guide called Why Do I React Like This? to help you understand your emotional reactions and explore what they might be trying to protect you from.
Hi, I’m Harry, a psychotherapist in Toronto. I work with 1.5 and second generation Asian Canadians who are trying to understand patterns around anxiety, perfectionism, people-pleasing, relationships, family, and self-worth.
