The Voices in My Head
Who are these voices? Why are they so loud? Why are they so assertive? Why are they so shaming?
It’s a curious thing that many of us experience very vocal, very assertive and very self-deprecating voices in our mind that just won’t leave us alone. Hope gets squashed, plans get side-lined, confidence gets buried all by various forms of “Oh come on, you’re not really worth it, you’re no good, no one will care, there’s no point…”.
So, who are these voices, and what can we do about them?
Who are those voices? They can be an echo of someone from the past that said something to us. They can be someone from the present that reinforces a certain idea. They could be us projecting our insecurities to anyone who will listen (including, and perhaps predominantly, ourselves).
Why are they so loud? They seem loud because we give them the most attention. When we divert our attention to other things, we might find ourselves too distracted to hear these voices. For instance, when we’re going to a new place and need to concentrate on street names or house numbers, it is hard to multitask this and simultaneously keep the self-deprecating voices going. However, once we give them a little of our attention, they do seem to grow louder and louder as they repeat their messages.
Why are they so assertive? Repeat something enough times and it becomes convincing, asserting a statement regardless if it’s actually true. Also consider the words that are being repeated in your mind, are they of an enquiring nature: “It might not be easy, but what can you do to make it happen?”; are they action based: “You can do this, you just need to take the first step”; or do they offer a conclusion without justifying their assertion: “You won’t amount to anything”.
Why are they shaming? Well, are they? Try taking away the tone and repetitiveness; you might find that these voices don’t sound as assertive or even shaming as before. How shaming can a high-tone, low-volume, one liner be?
Imagine for a moment, the voice came from a squirrel trying to shout at you from the ground, it’s shouting but how loud is it to you? It might attempt to repeat its message or maybe it only gives one hearty shout of “you won’t amount to anything!”, then runs off. Now you’re left with a distant memory of a squirrel talking to you. That is, if you heard it at all. And if you did hear it, how shaming would the experience really be (aside from the absurdity of a talking squirrel, that is)?
So, here’s an experiment for you – take the voices in your head, and make them ridiculous: imagine them being sung to circus music, or your favourite song overpowering them in volume, or even, as I did above, imagine a squirrel saying them.
Remember, it’s within your control what becomes of the voices in your head, so play around with how you can make them insignificant, disempower them so you can empower yourself.
