Unfolding Insight 5: Befriending the Voice in The Head
If you haven't yet, I'd invite you to go back and read the previous posts introducing the Voice in The Head, exploring how to tune in to it, and understanding where it’s coming from. They’ll bring you nicely up to speed for what follows below.
Here's hard a reality I learned about the voice in the head: once I was aware of it, the more I tried to ignore it. And the more I tried to ignore it, the more persistent and insistent it became.
Like some petulant child, I'd stick my fingers in my ears and scream "LALALALALALALALALA" trying to get it to fuck off. Except it wouldn't, because — well duh — it was already deep inside my skull, beyond the reach of my digits. It fairly laughed at my efforts to exclude it.
No, the way I finally started to make peace with the voice in my head was through befriending it and welcoming it in to my life.
I came to treat it as a peer rather than some persnickety prick that I couldn't get off my back.
Now that's not to say I always take the voice at face value. As we've discovered in previous editions of this email, the way the voice speaks to us can be pretty hurtful and discouraging.
But by summoning the courage to look for the message behind the words, it's possible to discover that the voice very often has some wisdom and — at the very least — some love for us. It just doesn't know how to express it very well.
Here are some of the different ways that I've found can be helpful in engaging with the voice in order to build a better relationship with it:
1) Play the impartial investigator: listen to what the voice is saying and question it. Work to identify what's untrue and true in what it's saying.
Let's say that the voice in your head is saying: "You should work harder".
You might respond: Really? According to whom? What would working harder give me? How would that bring more fulfilment to my life? What's preventing me from working harder already? What would life look like if I worked less hard?
2) Be vulnerable with it: enter into a dialogue with the voice in a way that lets it know that the way it's speaking to you is hurtful, and see how it responds.
The voice: "You're fat and you should lose some weight", the voice says on repeat. "It's really painful when you say that to me"
You: "I'd appreciate it if you were more gentle with me... it'd make it easier to live a healthier life".
3) Be empathetic towards it: without getting caught up in the specifics of the story that the voice is trying to tell, recognise the emotional charge that the voice is bringing, allow it to be, and see what might sit behind it.
The voice: "Fuck this presentation is really bad... this is gonna be such a fuck up. You really should think about pulling out..."
You: "I'm sensing that there's a lot of fear here. Where's that coming from?"
4) Bring a sense of open wonder to it: question it in a way that might get to the core of what the voice is trying to tell you beyond the hurtful language and the incessant poking and prodding.
The voice: "You really haven't amounted to much, have you?"
You: "What would life look like if I amounted to something?" "How would I know I'd achieved it?" "How would I feel different if I did?"
Whichever approach you take, the same core principle applies: it's through a welcoming of the voice's presence that we can start to diminish its negative presence in our life.
And by engaging with it from a place of vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder, we can get to the deeper — very often loving — truth that often sits behind its message.
In the meantime, if you'd like to jump in to your own exploration of how the voice in the head might be holding you back from unfolding in to life, I'd love to explore that with you, too. Get in touch to learn more about my coaching practice.
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