How To Use AI Without Losing Self Trust with Catherine Crestani

A machine can give you a polished answer in three seconds. The harder question is what happens to you when you stop sitting with your own questions long enough to hear what you actually think.

We talk with Catherine Christine, an inner authority guide, writer, and speaker whose background in speech pathology and business gives her a rare lens on AI, communication, and human decision making. She breaks down inner authority (intuition, inner wisdom, “soul knowing”) as something quieter than confidence and far more practical than hype. We explore why people get stuck in “maybe”, how outsourcing your choices can numb your self-trust, and why the head isn’t always the best place to run the show.

From there, we get specific about AI tools like ChatGPT: where they genuinely save time and where they quietly replace the thinking that makes you you. Catherine shares a jaw-dropping example of someone using AI to write texts to their spouse, plus a simple rule that protects your voice: write it yourself first, then let AI refine, then review with discernment. We also dig into the long game of digital wellbeing and conscious leadership: journaling as a way to hear yourself, time in nature to reset your nervous system, meditation and creative outlets to restore clarity, and the courage to choose what actually lights you up.

If you’ve felt articulate online but strangely distant from yourself offline, this conversation gives you language and practical steps to come back. Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with one moment that made you pause.

Transcript

The Cost Of Instant Answers

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Dear listeners, let's start today with a question that I have been sitting with lately and I haven't fully answered it. Like in a world where you can ask a machine almost anything and get a kind of confident sounding answer in three seconds, or maybe less than that also. What happens to the part of you that used to sit with a question long enough to discover what you actually heard? Because that part of it, or part of us, the patient one, the one that wrestled with our own confusion, and the one that found its own conclusions slowly and uncomfortably is being quietly retired. So the we outsource the writing, the summarizing, the deciding, the communicating, and the convenience is real. But there's a price most of us haven't named yet. Every time we hand the thinking over, we lose a little of the muscle that used to let us hear ourselves. And eventually, in a noisy world or like where we are, with helpful enough tools, we forget what our own voice even sounds, like underneath all of those borrowed ones. So hey dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Means Machine. I'm your host, Avek, and today we are going somewhere. I think a lot of people listening have been quietly wondering about, but we don't yet have language for. I'd say the slow erosion of the inner authority, inner world that keeps offering us external authority on a plate. The way the very tools are designed to amplify our voices, uh, which can, if we are not careful, replace them entirely. And we are going to talk about it with someone whose background honestly makes her one of the rare people qualified to hold both ends of this conversation. And today we have a very lovely guest. Please welcome Catherine Christine. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Thank you for having me, Avik. This is a powerful conversation. We're gonna go into places people are gonna face themselves.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Exactly, exactly. So uh I'll just pause here, just getting a call uh from my neighbor. I'll just take it. Okay, no worries. 302. Yeah, so sorry. I I just um ordered one medicine for my neighbor. So her uh her uh daughter is uh not here, so she she told him that so the daughter has come, so has sent it, yeah. Okay, yeah. Okay, so from here we'll take it, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Meeting Catherine And The Question

SPEAKER_01 2:52

So so dear listeners, um before we get deep into the discussion today, I'll quickly love to uh introduce with Katherine. So Catherine is an inner authority guide writer, speaker whose work sits at the intersection of conscious leadership and human potential. So with a background in both speech, pathology, and business, she spent her career thinking about how humans actually think, decide, communicate, which gives her a uniquely earned lens on what art stakes as AI begins doing more of all three. So she's the author of My Virtual Obsession, and her work helps people stay grounded in their own voice, their own clarity, and their own self-trust. So, Catherine, I am generally happy that you're here today after, and we have discussed a lot of times, but uh I'm really happy that you're here today again.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Thank you. And like I said, it's it's this conversation that people keep trying to avoid. And it's really interesting working in this my new space as well, seeing how people are giving up their authority to technology more and more and more.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Exactly, exactly. And

What Inner Authority Really Means

SPEAKER_01 4:10

and so I want to start with the phrase that I mean that is every every every uh very center of your work, because I think it's quietly doing more work than people realize, like inner authority. So it this is one of those terms that on the surface sounds almost self-explanatory, but the way most people interpret it, I think it's wrong. So they confuse it with the coincidence or or kind of confidence also. So with kind of assertiveness, with knowing what you want and saying it loudly, I have a feeling that what you actually mean by is something much whiter and more interior and much harder to kind of say it. So uh if you can share like what the inner authority really is, and uh what do most people fundamentally misunderstand about it?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah, so inner authority can also be called intuition, your inner wisdom, your soul knowing, all these kinds of terms and and like spiritual terms. But I like inner authority because really when you listen to that true voice inside of you, it's like a non-negotiable, this is me, and I'm showing up, and this is what I'm doing. And so often we've been conditioned to not listen to our heart, you know, not listen to that that voice inside us. We're like, you know, put down your emotions and use your head, you know, like all these kind of expressions keep coming again and again. But the voice in our head is is not the best person to run the show. And that sounds so weird, but there's been research that's come out that's showing there's more decision receptors, more decision-making receptors in our heart and our gut than there actually is in our head. So we've been conditioned to think with our head, you know, check in with our gut, you know, what are your instincts telling you, and then come back to our heart, which is completely backwards. So when we reverse that and start to listen to our heart first, we get a very different message. And that voice that comes from your heart, it doesn't have the doubt, it doesn't have the worry, it doesn't have the anxiety. It just tells you what you need in that moment. And this is where people also get stuck in making decisions because people get stuck in the maybe. And I will tell you, the maybe will suck you dry because sitting in a maybe means you're not making decisions, you're not stepping forward, you're not stepping back. It's just you're stuck in the middle. And when we get stuck in there, and then we start to look at everybody else around us for validation or look at everything else around us, or AI, or whatever it is, to give us that message that we're ignoring coming from the inside, we start to numb ourselves to ourselves, and then we almost discount our own power and we discount our own voice. And this is the beautifully segues into the topic we're talking about today because so often people are now relying more on what outside is saying than what the inside is saying. And I'm not gonna lie, it can be really scary listening to yourself, especially when it's against what everyone else is telling you. You know, and I've had to do this time and time and again, but it's never let me down. And it it's always panned out. It might take a couple months or a few years before I see the benefit of listening to myself. But, you know, when you truly trust your own judgment and trust that voice within you, that is when you can show up authentically as you and also show up and know that you've given it your all. There's no regrets because you're like, no, I I just threw myself into that decision because it felt right for me. And, you know, even if it doesn't work out, you just make another decision. You know, we're so afraid of failure. But failure is a chance for growth and expansion and learning. People don't talk about all the failures that they had. I think the my favorite fact that I learned was Thomas Edison had a thousand patents, but only one was recognized. You know, and so you know, this is where it comes back to, excuse me, where is your heart pulling you and what is that inner authority saying and and how does that show up in your life?

When Ignoring Yourself Hits The Body

SPEAKER_00 8:20

It can be. It can be. And you know, for my biggest example was after I've sold my company, um, I was still working as a speech language pathologist because we needed the income as a family, but it was a detriment to me because I didn't feel like that's where I belonged anymore. And I was going for my family, I wasn't going for me. And I actually started going numb going to work to the point that I lost feeling in my left pinky, to the point I couldn't feel half my left of my face. And I had this beautiful, sorry, yeah, it's my alarm. I had this beautiful, I had this beautiful clients, I had everything was looking great, you know, showing up beautifully in my life, but at the same time, I was going numb and I had this amazing team and I was seeing them all, and it would disappear for a few days and it would come back. And it was only when someone said to me, You need to get to the source of what's happening, otherwise the numbness is going to just keep coming. And I then I realized I'm numbing myself to go to work. That is essentially what I was doing, and it was showing up in my body. And I was working with a coach at the time and we were meditating, and he said, What is your heart telling you to do? What is that inner authority telling you to do? And this non-negotiable quit came up. It was just, you need to quit your job. Like that was it, quit. And I knew that's what I had to do, and I did. And a month later, my first day at home, like being a stay-at-home mom, my husband had to go back to work because I just couldn't work anymore in that position, all of the symptoms disappeared, every single one. So, on an outside perspective, if I went through, you know, ignoring that, I know my whole body would have gone numb. But I can't explain that to anybody else because they weren't experiencing it for themselves. And it can be really hard to turn back on that inner voice and and trust that that wisdom that comes from within you, but it knows more than you do. My favorite example that I've heard is that it's not my example, someone else told it, but I love sharing it, which is, you know, you go to leave the house for the day. And just before you leave, you have this kind of whisper inside going, I need to grab an umbrella. And instead of grabbing that umbrella, you pull out your phone, you pull up the weather app, and the weather app says, it's gonna be sunny today, no chance of rain. So you leave that umbrella at home, and then two hours later it starts raining, and you wish that you grabbed that umbrella. In that moment, you have discounted yourself for what technology has told you. Because sometimes we know more than what we realize, and we kind of have an idea of what's coming. I know me learning to, and I'll go, I'll show your audience this soon, like something called muscle testing. But I know through doing that, I will sometimes dress in like warm pants, even though it's hot. I'm like, I don't know why, but this is what you know my soul's kind of telling me to do. My inner authority is saying grab warm pants today, and then the weather has a turn and it's freezing, and I'm so grateful I'm wearing those warm pants. So we often know more than we actually realize. We almost have this ability to see a little bit into what's going to happen in our day because it's already kind of set up and it's this very weird phenomenon that we go to. But when we start to go to technology to try and justify why we're feeling what we're feeling or why we're doing what we're doing, that is when we're outsourcing our power and outsourcing our voice to something else.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So so it's really the one. I mean, it's uh too deep, I'd say. And uh so I want to lean on something that is rare, uh, but you came to this work through speech pathology, pathology, and business, and uh which means uh you spent years studying literally how humans use their voice and uh their language to make sense of themselves and their world. So uh actually that's a that's a profoundly unusual lens to bring into the conversation about AI. So if we can share like when you watch what's happening now with humans increasingly outsourcing their writing, their summarizing, their decisions, their words. What is the specific, or maybe what's your specific training letting you see the rest of us miss?

AI As Helper Or Replacement

SPEAKER_00 12:43

First of all, I want to say I'm not against using AI. I was initially, I was very resistant. I, you know, and I think we all have that idea in our head of Skynet coming, right? The Terminators conditioned us really well, you know, but at the same time, when I started using it to do things, I could see the value of it and how powerful it is and saving time and creating, you know, things. The danger is when you don't try and do things yourself. So, you know, even when we're communicating with people, there was I was talking to a relationship coach about a month ago now, and she said that she was working with a client who was literally using Chat GPT to write back SMSs to her husband. And I went, What that is concerning, you know, not asking for ideas on how to respond in the situation, actually creating the text for her to send. So she didn't even feel she had the ability to communicate that. So, you know, I worked a lot with children, but I also worked with the parents, and a lot of that my caseload was children with autism spectrum disorder. I can tell you right now that you can have a whole conversation without words. And I feel like we've forgotten that. You know, it's like we've forgotten all the nonverbal cues that we use, all those other things that we use. And the biggest thing that that we work on is connection. You know, especially the children I worked with who were lower functioning that were completely in their own world. The the first step we did was pull them in, well, not even pull them into ours. We went into their world so that they can connect again. And this is the thing, if you're not connected with a human around you, there's no you don't need to communicate, really. And the more and more people just blindly relying on AI to give them the answer, the scarier it gets. I know from using Chat GPT, it makes mistakes. Some days it has incredibly dumb days. I'm not gonna lie, I actually want to fire it. And sometimes and a colleague of mine, a friend of mine, calls it the lazy employee, right? You have to stay on top of it all the time. And I completely agree because you know, one day it'll get it so right, and then you'll put the exact same prop in the next day and it will get it so wrong. And you know, even from just using it to do my SEOs and ASEOs for my podcasts and things like that, I'm like, how did you do such a brilliant job yesterday? So when it's having a brilliant day, I will sit there and make sure it gets lots of things done. But when it's having one of those other days, I will walk away. But the point is, I'll put in what I want first, or I will write what I want first. And then I'm not losing my voice. You know, I will write an article and then I'll pop it in AI and say, Hey, can you refine this? And you know, the more you use it, the more it learns to speak like you and sound like you, and that's fine, but you still have to put your voice in it to start with. And I have a friend and she wrote this beautiful article because people were selling prompts to put into Claude or prompts to put into different things. But she said the problem with doing that is when you're uploading someone else's programming, it's not you anymore. It's not you working with the AI tool to share your voice, rather, it has been shifted. So, you know, I think it's a brilliant tool to assist you to get where it needs to go, but if you use it to replace you, that is where the problem lies.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

So I mean, definitely. And I mean it's it's uh it's definitely like something that you said is I I want to hold for a second because when when you are describing is just important and almost no no one in the AI conversation is saying it right.

Writing Is Thinking And Discernment

SPEAKER_01 16:39

So we need to we need to talk about the language of it in the result of thinking, like the cake is at the at the end of the recipe, right? And you're naming something much closer to the truth, the language of the part, like how humans actually think, the writing is the thinking, and the struggling of I mean struggling for that right word is the thinking. So when a machine does the writing for us, it doesn't just save us time, it quietly takes part of the thinking from us, often without us thinking, realizing it's gone. So that's a much bigger loss than uh most people are uh kind of accounting for. And your speech pathology background is exactly the lanes that we needed for this. So thank you so much for that. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

That's okay. And you know, it was really interesting because I used Chat GPT to do the final edit of my book, my novel. And it was it was long and painstaking because I knew what I wanted my novel to say, but I also I know it needed that refinement to the point where it would get some paragraphs so beautifully right, like edit it perfectly exactly what I needed to do, and then the rest of the chapter would be single-word responses. You know, I was like, hang on a minute. I'm writing a book here, I don't want just one-word things. Sometimes the one word was perfect because you know it's emphasizing the point on what was meant to happen. But other times I'm like, no, what happened to this character? You've you've just taken back the whole backstory. You know, no one knows who this is. All of a sudden Bob's shown up and no one knows who Bob is. I actually have a character called Bob. But it was funny. But I was just like, why is it doing this? And this is where you have to push back and you have to still tell it what you want to do. Remember, it's the lazy employee. You know, you need to tell it, this is what I want, this is what I don't want. I don't like this, this isn't working. If you just blindly just take what it's done, it might be terrible. It truly sometimes it is terrible, sometimes it's brilliant, and sometimes you're like, oh my goodness, that would have taken me five rounds of drafts to get to that, you know. But this is where you still have to carry that discernment, and discernment is knowing your truth and knowing what feels right for you. And if you discount your discernment and discount that inner authority, that is where I find people just lose themselves to it and blindly follow something that can be completely wrong.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Exactly, exactly. And I also

A Workflow That Keeps Your Voice

SPEAKER_01 19:12

want to for kind of practicality about it, because all of this can sound a little abstract until someone sits down at their laptop on a Tuesday morning, opens their AI tool, and then types like help me drop this email, or kind of summarize these notes, or what should I think about this situation? So if you can just bring it down, like for someone who uses AI tool as a part of their actual life is not going to stop, but wants to protect their inner authority and their own voice while they do. So, what does that look like in practice? Like, what's the working relationship between a human and these tools that preserves the self instead of eroding it? I feel the biggest thing is do it yourself first.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

You know, like if you want to write that email, write the email and then ask AI to polish it up, you know, or you know, write write the the notes and ask it to expand upon it. Or, you know, I I used it for a client a little while ago. They were going into their final exams and I hadn't written this letter for a while because they needed support doing that for the for their last exams of high school here in Australia. And I didn't know, I was so out of touch with that. I said, look, this is what I need from you. These are the facts. This I know that these are things that we can get, but I don't know what they're called. I don't even know where to start looking because it's like this, you know, 200-page document I have to read. I'm like, can you let me know how to word this? And because it's so quick, it created this whole letter and it's exactly what I would have written. And I was like, wow. You know, I was actually taken back there. I still reread it and double-checked it was what I wanted it to say, and then put made sure my voice was still in that. So I guess it's like a threefold process, right? You write it, you pop it in, you see what comes out, and then you keep applying your voice to it. And sometimes it'll be great. You don't have to do anything. But if you just blindly just cut and paste that and didn't check it, that is where we're kind of just going, oh yeah, it's got it right. It'll be fine. So yeah, so this is where you're still making sure that you're inside that. You're still making sure it's sharing what you wanted to share, and you're still making sure it's okay. I have to do research for articles when I write for Brains magazine. You know, I ask it, here is my things I want to say. Can you find the research to back this up? Yeah, here you go. I'm like, oh great, that would have taken me hours. And I know it would have taken me hours upon hours, if not days, because I used to do research for at university. So I understand the benefits of that and the time saved in that, but it's still keeping my voice in that at the same time. you know, you'll find my energy is threaded through that. And this is the other thing, you know, like so often there's a lot more AI voice stuff coming out and everything like that. It does not carry the same energy or resonance as you speaking, as you sharing what you need to share. And I know we've all seen those images where if you keep putting your picture into AI, it'll keep changing it and changing it and changing it until it doesn't look like you. You know, so you have to remember that that if you keep putting things in and not have that feedback or pushback on it, it will just keep changing it till it's not you.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

True. True. So

Practices That Rebuild Self Trust

SPEAKER_01 22:40

wow it's really really great. And uh I want to definitely want to ask because conscious leadership and human potential are not the theories for you. So they are a way of living day by day in a world that's becoming louder and more automated by month on month. So I want to ask you for the long game thing, right? How do you sustain this? Like how do you stay grounded in your own voice, your own clarity, your own self-trust when the world keeps pulling you towards the external answers and external uh authority.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

I'm a little bit of a rebel evic. No, I keep I do a lot of journaling. So I I'm really fond of journaling. So I write questions and look for the answers. So it was really funny at the start of the year I didn't have many clients and I was like what's going on? And I actually wrote the question to myself why don't I have any clients and I wrote back I don't want any and I was like what? Whereas if I would have put that in AI it would have told me all these strategies to try it would have told me all these things marketing things, you know, all this stuff. But the truth was I didn't want any more pressure on my life in that moment. I was finishing up my book. I was focusing on getting that out you know I was being a mum I had my podcast I had so many things happening that the idea of then throwing clients on top of that and what I do with clients my clients are really like need my attention you know so it's like all right well I can't do that on top of it. But if I had just outsourced that rather than going into that simple journal prompt and letting myself write I would have ignored that. Another thing I do is I truly do go spend time in nature. Like barefoot I will go stand on the wood outside that house or rocks and I ground and reconnect. And I know it sounds really like very woo and that sort of thing but science is now backing that up because we're electromagnetic beings we need to reset our energy especially if I've been in front of the computer all day the last thing I want to do is sit in front of the computer or a TV screen more and I'll just go outside and I'll just be outside for a little bit. Even if I go sit on my balcony and just look at the stars sometimes that is enough just to pull me back out of the world of a screen. Another thing that I tend to do is I do meditate but I don't do the whole like sit there and go and all that sort of stuff. I like have a thing and I imagine clearing my field. So I pull in like energy and I make it move around me to clear everything because that helps me discern what's still mine and what's not because when we interact with other people we have an energy exchange and sometimes that gets stuck in our field too. So even when we're interacting with AI that's still an energy exchange you know you're still putting your time and your energy into that and to pull it back out. So my son hates writing I'm not gonna lie he absolutely hates it. And I was explaining to him because he was asking me how I get answers to certain things. I said well I do it through writing I said this is why I I'd love for you to learn to write I don't care about your spelling I said you know because English spelling English is terrible I go from teaching it to kids for years right but I said if you learn to write I said you it's another way for your soul to speak to you. It's another way for you to get information out of you. And automatic journaling is such a powerful tool I can't you know say that enough. But if you're someone who doesn't like writing maybe you prefer like painting or maybe you prefer some other sort of creative outlet you know whatever it is that allows you to just get that bit of quietness and peace in yourself. You know I have clients that's gardening it might be swimming it might be running it doesn't matter as long as you can create those quiet moments for yourself where the head quiets down that is when your inner authority can come out.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Exactly that's amazing and Catherine I definitely want to ask you one concrete advice for the listeners today who are listening or maybe they'll be listening also.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Do you want makes you excited because we've forgotten that part right like we get stuck in the hustle we get stuck in this is what our life should look like we get stuck in what everyone else is telling us that we should do when really if it doesn't make you excited and doesn't light you up or it doesn't make you want to jump out of bed in the morning to share then there's something very missing in your life and you know if we don't have a dream or a goal or something we're working towards and it's okay I'm not saying if you work for nine to five there's nothing wrong with that. If that if you're working that nine to five and it's part of your dream, great, amazing but if you don't have your own dreams you end up living somebody else's. I don't know whose quote that was um it's not mine but if you don't live your own dream you live somebody else's and then it you're just taking one step closer to dying every day rather than living. So we all end up in the same place. So why not enjoy it along the way and have fun and listen to what you want to do and make it happen. You know yes it's not always practical sometimes you want to call in sick to work and and have a day at home rather than you know showing up and doing something but if that's your thoughts or feelings in the first place why are you having those thoughts or feelings in the first place you know and check back in is this what I'm meant to be doing you can always change there's nothing stopping you from making a change in your life. So go

Find Your Joy And Share Forward

SPEAKER_00 28:15

find your joy again and see how that looks in your life wow amazing and if someone wants to connect with you what'll be the great medium to connect yeah so probably the easiest place is through my website which is willowhealing.org you you'll see my email there my podcasts my books my offerings there's a free call there as well if you just want to explore and I'm also on Instagram a lot my handle is willowhealingsh and I I put a lot of posts there and sometimes it will trigger you into thinking something and that's okay too.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Amazing great so dear listeners what I'll do is I'll put all the links uh into the show notes for your easier friends and Catherine thank you so much genuinely and the combination of someone who has studied how humans actually use language and now applies that the AI moment we are living in is very rare and listeners can feel it. And I hope this conversation finds the people who have been quietly wondering if they have lost touch with themselves underneath all the tools and didn't know how to name what they were missing. So everyone who are listening right now if something has here moved you sit with it for a moment before you move on especially if you noticed yourself in any of the any of what Catherine said the fading of your own voice the default towards the quick answer the feeling of being articulate in public and a stranger to yourself in private. That noticing is sacred and we share it this share this with someone who know you know who's quietly being run by their uh tools instead of other way around and definitely they know it was for them so with this hope this is your host awake and this is mine means machine and I'd say we'll be back here soon until then send your inner authority sit with your own questions a little longer uh before you ask the machine the voice that you find on the other side of that patience is I'd say your one of your life was waiting to hear for that. So thank you so much.