I suppress my inner voice because I don’t like what I hear. My mind is a lot like my closet; packed full of boxes and souvenirs, the wreckage of my life. Skins of my former selves hanging back in the corner where I don’t have to look at them. I know it’s all there packed away. I just don’t want to open it, and I’m too afraid to just toss it all out. What would I have left if I did?
There’s another option, besides either tossing old selves away or ignoring them–looking straight at them, strip away the trappings to get to the important stuff, and try to integrate them and/or just make sense of them as part of the story-of-your-life you are carrying around with you. If you can’t look back at the old yous and accept them, how can you be sure, when you think you are becoming a better person, that you aren’t just running away from yourself to another temporary place? Sorry if that is a bit blunt but it is a feeling I have had myself sometimes.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I think you definitely need to face and accept the truth about the past before you can evolve from it.