Growing up, Emily Whitmire[autotag] thought of herself as a character in a movie in tough times. That gave the UFC strawweight fighter the detachment she needed to keep going. It didn’t, however, erase the self-talk that reared itself at the most inopportune times – like in a cage fight.

Whitmire recalls finding herself in the midst of combat, following her gameplan, and all along she’d tell herself she sucked every time she made the slightest mistake. This inner-critic also spoke up when there was no apparent threat, like at the Three Angry Wives Pub in Summerlin, Nev., where Whitmire got a job within 24 hours of moving to Las Vegas to reinvent herself.

“All the tables had all their drinks, all the food went out,” said Whitmire, who faces Amanda Ribas next week at UFC on ESPN 3. “Why am I freaking out right now? Nobody knows I forgot their check back there. Walk back and get it.”

It took a while for Whitmire to link those thoughts back to her upbringing in Vancouver, Wash. A session with a sports psychologist led her to walk into a room and look at herself. She saw an angry young woman who moved out of the house when she was 15 because her home was too unstable.

“I had to start looking at who I’ve become, not what I used to be,” Whitmire said.

As easy as that sounds, Whitmire didn’t get the message until she made her way back home. It was early 2018, and she’d flown to Portland, Ore., for the memorial service of Robert Follis, her longtime coach who’d suddenly committed suicide. Whitmire had gotten a call from a family friend, who said her mother had been spotted in the area. They hadn’t spoken for years. She decided to try and find her rather than go to the memorial.

Whitmire said her mother has been homeless for years, struggling with schizophrenia and addiction to methamphetamine. Whitmire said she lived out of a backpack growing up, bouncing in and out of juvenile detention. Eventually, she found martial arts and began waiting tables.

But she never felt stable.

“I held on to so much anger for just all the decisions she made while I was growing up,” Whitmire said of her mother. “Just seeing her crawl out of that tent, it was just a big deal. I was just able to let go of it.”

Whitmire likes to think her coach helped guide her to that moment.

“All the things that Follis was trying to help me realize, I found even without him there,” she said. “He brought me there, and I still found those things, even though he wasn’t there.”

Now, Whitmire said she can look at herself for who she is right now, a young, confident, hard-working woman who’s made a life for herself. A woman who battled through a three-fight amateur losing streak but still arrived in the UFC.

Self-made, and the current owner of a two-fight winning streak.

Whitmire isn’t sure she would’ve made that connection had she not come face to face with her past. Those negative voices might still be in the driver’s seat.

“Instead of hating the way I grew up, I was like, ‘Wow, I survived that,” she said.

Now, those voices drive Whitmire as she pursues her dreams. If she saw a movie about her life now, she’d be pretty darn inspired by the lead character.

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