When I’m working with clients, we talk a lot about voices.  Specifically, the voices in their head.

I bring it up as something to discuss fairly early on – within the first 2-3 sessions.  It’s usually met with a variety of reactions – everything from surprise (that I know what they are thinking), to guilt (they think they must be a terrible person to be thinking such dark things and have been keeping it secret for a very long time), to horror (“Oh no, she’s going to think I’m crazy and have me locked up in a mental institution!”).

Mostly though, my raising the topic of voices is met with relief…

…Relief that someone understands what’s going on.

…Relief that they can finally talk about it.

…Relief that they aren’t the only one.

Lots of people have a voice in their head.  They think a lot and tend to have an ongoing conversation with themselves.   This is absolutely ok.  It’s known as being AD.  In one of my first ever posts on this blog (which sadly got lost when I migrated to a different blogging platform) I wrote about representational systems, which is basically defined as being the different ways in which we all interpret the world around us.  About 40% of the population are Visual (V).  About 40% are Kinaesthetic (K) – feeling people.  About 10% are Audio Tonal (AT), and a final 10% are Audio Digital (AD) – the thinkers.  Of course, that’s boxing people into categories, which I don’t really like to do , and plenty of people are a combination of two – I myself am K/AD (a feeler/thinker in equal measure).  You are born V, K or AT.  AD-ness is learned – usually as a protective measure during childhood.  Not necessarily as a result of some horrible traumatic incident, just as a way of coping with stuff.  I think my AD-ness came about as a result of being an only child.  I had no brothers or sisters to play with, so I played alone, creating stories and characters and conversations in an imaginary world inside my head, and inside the books that I constantly had my nose buried in.

The voices that my clients have quite possibly started life as a standard AD voice.  But with the onset of their issue, the voice changes.  It gets ugly.  Nasty.  Mean.  It says things to them that they would never dream of voicing out loud to someone else.  It tells them that they are fat and ugly and disgusting and greedy.  It tells them that they are useless and worthless and not good enough.  It tells them that the world would be better off without them, that they should die.  It tells them that no-one loves them – how could anyone love someone like them?.

I know this, because I had one.

Sometimes we (my clients and I) give the voice a name.  Mine was called The Virus, because it infected me the way a virus infects a computer, scrambling the internal systems and making everything shut down.  I get them to choose.  Sometimes it’s just The Voice.  Sometimes we go further and give it a silly name, like Mabel or Clifford (no offence to any Mabel’s or Clifford’s out there who may be reading this).  Giving it a name separates the voice out from themselves, so although they know the voice is something they’ve created, they can recognise that it’s not them who is doing the talking.  It’s someone else.  And that means they have a chance of getting rid of it.  It also means that I can refer to Mabel or Clifford in a session with them, when they say something that I know perfectly well isn’t them talking. “That wasn’t you, that was Mabel.  What do YOU think?”

The voice that I had is mostly gone.  It does occasionally pop up from time to time, particularly when I’m feeling stressed or tired or run down.  I guess it goes hand in hand a bit with the depression that also reappears during such times.

So why am I telling you all of this?

Well, today I had a bit of a realisation.  I’d had a lovely morning with my girls.  My cousin came to visit with her two children, one of whom I was meeting for the first time.  We all laughed and played and chatted and cuddled and ate lunch and then said our goodbyes.  After she had gone, my girls went into meltdown mode.  Overtired and/or overexcited perhaps – I’m not sure.  And I lost my temper with them.  I shouted.  I got upset.  They shouted.  They got upset.

And then it hit me.  The voice in my head was back in that moment.  Saying things to me about what a terrible mother I am for losing my temper and not staying patient and understanding that they are still only little and had reached their limits on excitement for the day.  All that ugliness and venom swirling around in my head until I couldn’t hold it in any more and I let it spill out and I suddenly recognised that I was talking to them the way the voice in my head was talking to me.  Mean.  Nasty.  Saying things that I would never normally dream of saying to another person because it would hurt them terribly.  Me, saying those things to my own daughters.

I felt terrible (and still do actually, which is partly why I’m writing this in the hope of sorting out my thoughts into something a bit less messy, so I can take action to ensure that it never happens again).

I was reminded of this:

In the end we pulled on our coats and boots and went out into town to run some errands and get some fresh air.  Then, when we returned home we each had a bit of quiet time (I may have had a little 10 minute snooze while they did some colouring in – unheard of for me, which just goes to show how tired I must be I guess), and then we put on some music and danced.  I said sorry to each of my girls in turn, apologising for the way I’d spoken to them, the things I’d said and the way I’d said them.  We had cuddles and ended the night as friends.

As per our evening routine, I read them a bedtime story.  They chose a book called “I Love You Little Monster”, and said they chose it because they were sorry for making me cross and because they loved me and because I love them.  It’s one of my favourite books, because it says all the things that I cannot seem to put into words for them, and I’m going to share it with you here now:

“One evening, long after my sleep time, Big softly crept to my bed and stretched out long fingers to ruffle my hair – “I love you, my darling,” Big said.  Now, Big must have thought I was sleeping, and I didn’t open an eye.  Instead I just let the words float through my mind, like balloons floating up through the sky.  “I love you, my Small,” Big continued, “But there’s so much to do in the day, that it’s hard to sit down and to make enough time to say all the things I should say.  And it’s funny, but now that you’re sleeping and everything is quiet and calm the words seem to be much more easy to speak.” And Big laid a soft hand on my arm.  “You’re everything I always dreamed of.  You’ve got so much beauty inside – the way that you smile, that you laugh, that you dance – makes my heart want to sing out with pride.   You live as though life’s one huge present, unwrapping a bit every day.  That’s just how we all should be living, my love, and look at you showing the way!  And sometimes I know when I scold you, you feel that I’m being unfair.  But please understand that it’s just out of love,” and Big swept back a strand of my hair.  “There are things in this life that can hurt you, they come to us all – that I know.  But they all give us chances to learn, darling Small, and they all give us chances to grow.  So when you get knocked down, my sweetheart, look up at the sky without fear, for sometimes we need to be flat on our backs, before starlight begins to appear.  And please, above all else remember, keep love in your heart, little one.  Reach out to the world like a beautiful flower stretches out to the warmth of the sun.  It’s the only sure way to be happy, the only sure way to be free.  Believe in yourself and believe in your dreams and you’ll be what you dream you can be.”  With that, Big lay down on my pillow and planted a kiss on my head.  “My beautiful, wonderful, glorious child – you light up my world,” Big then said.  With that, Big crept out of my bedroom, turning round for one last little peep.  I hugged my small pillow and smiled a big smile, and then slowly I drifted to sleep.”

I hope that I’ve done enough to counteract the horrible-ness of earlier.  I hope that my girls are ok.  I spend a huge amount of time doing my best to bring them up positively – to love themselves, to feel confident in who they are and what choices they make, to understand that happiness comes from inside.

Perhaps I still have a bit of work to do on myself with that respect, so that today’s scenario doesn’t ever happen again.  The voice re-appearing, even if only temporarily, is proof of that.  We are all a work in progress.  None of us are ever ‘complete’.  I’ve learnt a lot from today.

I hope that this post has been useful for you in some way (and if you think someone else might benefit from reading it please feel free to share it on Facebook).  I’d love to know your thoughts on voices, and if you want to share your personal experiences you can either leave a comment below or email me at chloe@openmindhypnotherapy.co.uk.

Thanks for reading.

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