Gareth,

I've experienced exactly what you are talking about.

The voice told me to leave a woman that I was in love with and who loved me. The voice said:

"Leave, Anna! Leave, Anna! Leave, Anna! I will prepare another for you."

I thought the voice might be God, so I didn't want to risk being disobedient.

To make a long story short, I did all I could to challenge the voice, ignore it, fight it, etc., but in the end it cost me the relationship.

For me, I've learned to spot times when I'm vulnerable to it and be on guard against it. It's almost like I can feel it firing up and getting ready to say something unhelpful, condemning, and stupid (which is what it does 100% of the time) and I deliberately interrupt it with other thoughts.

It's like sitting in a bar next to an obnoxious idiot. Every time you see him get ready to open his mouth and say something, you just start talking as loud as you can. You talk over him so you won't have to hear his idiocy, and when he pipes down, you can be quite again. (I'm able to do this internally without actually making any sounds.)

Recently, I had another experience with this voice where it told me that I was forbidden from ever building a specific model aircraft that I was excited to build. It said "You will never build the Yak-3.")

A breakthrough came when I realized that the voice wasn't God, but just something inside of me that desired to sabotage me. It was the voice of self-sabotage and self-punishment, and nothing more.

When I realized this, I was happy to have the victory and breakthrough, but also sad because I'd lost such a great woman in the process.

That same voice of self-sabotage and self-punishment has attacked you and cost you your job. I really hope you will learn to take it on and overcome it.

It can be done.

The victory started for me with prayer. I prayed in a very direct and matter of fact manner. I more or less spoke with Jesus like he was right next to me, saying that I knew that he knows everything, he knew what it was like to be a man, knew what was wrong with me, and knew how to heal me, and I prayed that he would.

After that, I felt a strange and powerful sort of tingling sensation on my forehead, that actually felt really good. (I don't generally get that when I pray.)

Nothing really happened after that for several months, and then things got even worse for a while, but in less that a year I was on the road to a major recovery.

I do not know exactly what your pathway to victory will be, but I pray you will find it.

It's not a helpful voice you're hearing, so I pray that it will be gone.