If you could hear how God talks about you, you’d stop talking about yourself like that.

The voice in your head is not a neutral narrator. It says things about you that you would never accept if a friend said them about themselves, and its confidence makes it sound like realism rather than cruelty. God’s account of the same person sounds nothing like it. Only one of the two has all the information.

Catch one sentence you say to yourself this week and write it down. Read it back as though it were about someone you love, which settles the question of whether it is fair. Then say the truer version, out loud if you can, and keep doing that until it stops feeling strange.