Another thing that we discovered in talking to the selves in each other was the sense of their absolute reality. The Inner Child, the Inner Critic, the Responsible Parent—each of these was no longer just a part or subpersonality in our minds. They gradually emerged on the canvas of our psyches as real, live people, and the more that we explored, the more amazed we became. What started out as a coexploration between us became, ultimately, the method that we have called Voice Dialogue.
You have learned about the fact that we are made up of different selves. You are beginning to get some feel for how these selves develop and how important it is to learn about their ways of operating in your life. Early in our own relationship with each other we needed to find a way to explore ourselves and to help each other in this exploration. It was out of this need to more deeply understand ourselves and to deepen our own relationship that we began to talk to the different selves in each other. We took turns “facilitating” each other. (Facilitating means talking to the other person’s selves.) In those early days, we spent hundreds of hours discovering the amazingly widespread and rich family of selves that lived inside of each of us.
When it was Sidra’s turn to be subject, Hal would first spend some time talking with her to see what kinds of issues she wanted to deal with. Once there was a sense of what self or selves needed to be dealt with, he would ask her to change her physical position, to actually move to the place where that self or voice was sitting. Hal then would begin a dialogue with this particular voice. Having a dialogue with a voice means that Hal would begin to talk to a particular voice in Sidra and that voice would talk back to Hal. From this in-depth conversation the voice received the opportunity to express its feelings and ideas in great detail. These dialogues might last only five or ten minutes, or they might go on for one or two hours.
When it was Hal’s turn to be subject, the procedure would be reversed. Sidra would be the facilitator and she would ask Hal to move over to the place where a specific self (like the Pusher) would sit. She would then carry on a conversation with that particular voice. After this dialogue ended, Hal would move back to his original chair. From this position, it would be possible to view and experience the different selves that had emerged in the facilitation process.
In the course of these dialogues, no attempt is made to change the view or feelings of the different parts or selves. If two selves have different viewpoints, no attempt is made to have them talk to each other or become friends with one another. In this way, both the subject and the facilitator have an opportunity to learn how to live with the many paradoxes of life.
After each of these sessions was over, we found that we were able to become much more separated from and objective about the different selves in us. We learned to honor all of them. The idea was not to try to get rid of parts that we did not like, something we had both tried to do for years. The idea was to embrace all of them and learn to use all of them with a new kind of awareness. That is how we developed the idea of the Aware Ego. The Aware Ego is the part of us that is always changing as it becomes more aware of and experiences the different selves and then gradually learns how to use them in life with real choice.
We learned too that the more we tried to make a part go away, the stronger it became. We discovered that there were many people who recognized the Inner Critic, for example, and who were always trying to make it go away because they hated it so much. The more they would try to rid themselves of the Critic, the stronger it would grow inside. The trick, we learned, was to let the parts speak, to understand who they were and how they developed, and to learn how to use them properly in life.
Another thing that we discovered in working with each other was how real these selves were. As we have said, they behave as though they are real people, each with its own hopes, feelings, and ambitions. Most of them have a real sense of how we should live our lives. What was different about our experience with each other from our prior experience was this sense of their absolute reality. The Inner Child, the Inner Critic, the Responsible Parent—each of these was no longer just a part or subpersonality. They were real, live people to us, and the more we explored, the more amazed we became. What started out as coexploration between us became ultimately the method that we have called Voice Dialogue. We have described this method in considerable detail in our book Embracing Our Selves, and we refer the interested reader to this book for a full discussion of the method and the theory.
The reason that we bring this to your attention now is that in this book on the Inner Critic we will be using Voice Dialogue to show you conversations that we have had with the Inner Critic. You will have a chance to read about how the Critic feels and sounds and the kinds of things that it is saying constantly inside the minds of people. The more that you hear and read about the voice of the Inner Critic, the easier it will be to hear your own Critic and to begin the ever-important process of separating from it.
Keep in mind, then, the basic procedure of Voice Dialogue from which these conversations come. The “subject” is the one whose inner selves are speaking. The “facilitator” is guiding the dialogue. The facilitator asks the subject to physically move to the place where the Inner Critic (or other self) is sitting. The facilitator then begins to talk to the Critic, and a dialogue ensues between Critic and facilitator. We will be citing portions of these dialogues throughout the rest of this book.
VOICE DIALOGUE AS A WAY TO WORK WITH THE INNER CRITIC
As you can see, Voice Dialogue is an excellent way of getting to know your Inner Critic directly by talking to it. In addition to this, we believe that Voice Dialogue is an extremely effective method for exploring and eventually coming to grips with the Inner Critic. As with any approach to personal growth, Voice Dialogue is not necessarily appropriate for everyone and must be seen in the context of all the psychospiritual work that you do. Voice Dialogue is a way of working that can be integrated into any growth-enhancing or therapeutic system. It is not designed to replace anything but rather to add a richness to whatever it is that you are now doing.