The Voicemail You Don't Have to Return

Somewhere around midnight, most of us get a call. Not from anyone. From the version of us that reviews the day like it's evidence in a trial nobody told us we were standing.

It rarely introduces itself as an inner critic. It sounds more responsible than that — concern, diligence, just making sure. I just want to make sure you didn't upset them. Maybe we should go over what you said one more time. That's part of why "stop overthinking" is such useless advice — you're not being asked to override worry, you're being asked to stop answering something that's disguised itself as protection.

And it doesn't call from one number. Some nights it's the one replaying an exchange from six years ago like the footage might change on a second viewing. Other nights it's the one that took a one-word text — okay — and started cross-referencing it against every message that person's ever sent you, looking for the pattern that proves something's wrong. It rebrands constantly — catastrophizing, mind reading, self-doubt, should-have-could-have. The content shifts. The function doesn't.

Here's the part it doesn't want you to notice: the call rarely ends because you found the answer. It ends because you got tired. Every time you pick up — reread the text, replay the conversation, search for the missed cue — you're not resolving anything. You're teaching the caller that this works. Call again. The relief that follows isn't your brain confirming you're safe; it's your brain confirming that checking is how safety gets produced. That's not an investigation. It's a loop wearing an investigator's coat.

I've spent enough time in psychiatric emergency settings to notice something that surprised me before it made clinical sense to me: people describe something genuinely frightening, and in the very next breath, minimize it — "but it wasn't that bad," almost before I've had a chance to respond. The inner critic runs the same instinct in reverse. It takes something ordinary — a pause before a reply, a joke that didn't quite land — and treats it like the frightening thing. It borrows urgency that was built for real danger and spends it on a Tuesday.

Here's what nobody mentions about the inner critic: it doesn't actually require a response. It only requires that you pick up.

Most of us think we only have two options with a thought like this — believe it, or argue with it. But there's a third: notice it without opening negotiations. Maybe they are upset with you. That might be true. It might not be. You don't have to spend the next hour building a case either way.

A thought can arrive without becoming a conversation.

If you want something to actually do with this, it's smaller than it sounds. Name the caller, not the content — not "I said something embarrassing," but this is the catastrophizing call. Let it ring — you don't owe an immediate response to a thought any more than to an actual missed call. And notice what survives the silence: the conversation usually replays itself anyway, whether or not you engage with it, and you get through it regardless. You don't need certainty to survive the evening. You never really did.

None of that makes the critic disappear. It'll probably call again tomorrow — it has your number, unfortunately, and no respect for business hours. But you're not required to call back. A missed call doesn't mean you ignored something important. Sometimes it only means you decided your mind didn't get to spend the rest of the night on hold.

If your inner critic has been especially chatty lately, that's worth talking through with someone. I work with adults across New York State through telehealth — reach out anytime.

— Angela DeGiaimo, LCSW NY State of Mind Therapy