Know Your Inner Dictator

This is going to be a rough trip for you. If you're not ready to come face to face with parts of yourself you'd rather keep buried under polite smiles and busy schedules, I suggest you click away. I’ve even got a nice list of gentler articles you can explore further down. Go on, no shame.

Still here? Brave soul. I like you already.

So without ado let me introduce: you to your inner dictator. He's the one barking orders in your head. The voice that’s anything but kind or forgiving. The one who tells you to keep going, keep pushing, keep achieving — even when you're running on empty and your body is already screaming at you to take breaks.

I once did this online course about eating disorders. At the time, I was already knee-deep in parts work through constellations, therapy (IFS), and more books than I care to admit.
Parts work is the idea that we’re made up of lots of different inner voices or ‘parts’, each with their own opinions, fears, and desires. Think of it like the film Inside Out, but instead of just the feelings, you've also got the little personalities the Perfectionist, the Rebel, the Inner Clown, all jostling for control behind the scenes. And we all have them, sometimes hidden, sometimes plain in sight. When we get to know them instead of ignoring or fighting them, life starts to become a little more peaceful.

The teacher of the said course introduced a part I hadn’t yet recognised in myself: the inner dictator. You know the type: strict, joyless, and obsessed with performance. A proper Type A character. This teacher described it as the internalised voice of a critical parent, the kind that makes kids who don’t behave perfectly or perform constantly feel like they’re never good enough. And this voice stays with us our entire lives.

That was a lightbulb moment for me. Not because my parents were like that, or because I was treating myself with that kind of rigour. Though I tend to attract people who are like this, I’m actually quite forgiving with myself. But the important realisation was this: we all have this part, even if it only shows up in certain areas of our lives. Maybe it’s the way we insist our homes must be spotless, or that our bodies have to look perfect — there are many areas where we’re simply not so kind to ourselves.

In that course, the teacher explained something important about bingeing behaviour. She said we tend to respond to control with counter-control. This applies to both external rules, like diets, and internal ones, such as our own harsh expectations. The more we restrict ourselves, the more we rebel. You could say the more we restrict, the more our soul pushes back. As someone who struggled with bingeing during a time when I was trying to feel better inside myself, that really hit home. It still took years for the message to fully sink in, though. The worst episodes of bingeing in my life happened when I was deep into elimination diets and rigid food rules. Funny, isn’t it? The more you try to control, the more out of control you can end up feeling.

But this isn't really a story about eating disorders.

Years have passed since. And after plenty of reflection, I’ve come to see that we all have these internal parts shaping our behaviour. Patterns, tendencies — they’re baked into us through nature, upbringing, and the stories we tell ourselves about what it all means. It’s not just our parents who help build these inner voices. It’s our grandparents, our friends, the books we read, our teachers, our colleagues. Every person who crosses our path can leave a fingerprint.

And what’s wild is: we can’t control how someone else makes sense of their experiences. Not our partners, not our children, not our parents. Not even ourselves, half the time. But what we can do is start to notice. Start to listen to the narratives in our heads.

So, back to your dictator.

This inner taskmaster is the part who insists you keep helping everyone else even when you’re on the verge of collapse — out of some sense of duty. Don’t get me wrong, I care for altruism, we need altruistic people. But if you’re breaking down, maybe it’s your turn to receive a bit of that kindness for once. Just a thought.

It’s also the voice that tells you to keep being nice to people who’ve shown you no respect at all. I still struggle to get angry with people, by the way. In theory, though, I know I should. This dictator part clings to rules about life that aren’t actually universal. Like: “You mustn’t rest unless you’ve earned it.” Or: “You need to get good grades to be worthy.” Or: “Wealth equals happiness.” Or: “You must achieve your goals by age 30 or you’ve failed at life.”

These are the stories we inherit and internalise. And then, without even realising, we start to live by them, acting them out as though they’re a truth.

But here’s the thing: awareness changes everything.

You can’t always silence the dictator. He’ll still babble on in the background from dawn till dusk. But what you can do is start to notice. Listen. Question. Is what he’s saying actually true? Is it useful? Does it help you live a life that’s yours — not someone else’s?

And from there, you can begin to shift. Maybe not immediately. But little by little, you get better at ignoring the nonsense, being gentler with yourself, letting go of perfectionism, and not being endlessly patient with people who treat you poorly.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You need your inner dictator sometimes. He’s the one who’ll get you to finish that project, do your yoga after a long day, or meet a deadline when you’d rather nap for twelve hours. You don’t need to banish him. He’s not evil. He just… needs to learn a little more forgiveness with us.

When we mistake the dictator’s voice for our own, we live lives full of obligation and burnout, not alignment. So here’s the real skill: know when to listen. Use him when you need that final push. But when he starts quoting life rules you never agreed to in the first place, lovingly tell him to have a nap.

So. Over to you.

Do you know your inner dictator? What does yours sound like? Has this article sparked any “aha” moments? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Let’s keep this conversation going. The more we understand these parts of ourselves, the more we can live from a place that actually feels like us.