Dogwood Tree wrote:
'How did you start to visualize multiple parts beyond whichever part you're experiencing in a given moment? How were you able to start talking objectively about that internal experience? I tend to shut down as soon as he asks me to identify which "part" has voiced a thought or emotion.'
Initially I began to identify and separate thoughts, positive and negative. Perspectives related to or reiterated to myself for most of my life. Inner critics, internalized voices from the past. Noticed that none of the inner critics appeared to be my own valid voice. They sounded specifically like the voices of others as I listened, taunts or rebukes that had been yelled or quietly inferred, but nonetheless there, as I became aware of their existence.
Some were childhood tormentors and bullies, others were teachers, nuns, authority figures, one was a parent, another was a sibling and one the voice of a child. I began to differentiate between them, by the phrases they used. For example the voice that told me I was a 'bad' child was a parent (it sounded like
her with the same cadence and intonation) I had subconsciously internalized it and carried it around with me.
It colored each thing I accomplished, when I made the dean's list, the
her thought said that I could have somehow done better. When I was caught in the rain, everyone ran for cover and a childlike thought came; it's fun, it's pretty, instead of denying the thought as immature I stayed in the rain and verified that the child voice/thought was correct.
I woke up late, and thought of myself as 'bad' for being lazy, I was forty-five at the time. I held onto that thought as it seemed to have directed my life, it lay just below the surface, and thought, when have I ever been bad? I'd spent my life doing good things, and very little else. I am a
good daughter, sister, wife, employee. Logically it made no real sense that I could perceive of myself in such a way.
Each time one of these thoughts occurred; lazy, dumb, pathetic, bad. I would become depressed, dusted with self-pity. Didn't want to hear these things anymore, and the best way to avoid thinking in that way was to do nothing. That's when I began therapy. I had been motivated by something, when what was behind the motivation fell away, exposed for it's pure falsity, I began to rethink and question everything.
This all began when my therapist said that not everything we tell ourselves is true. I countered every thought I had about myself to understand if it held value. If I thought of myself as lazy that day, I recounted a list of things to prove that it was untrue. In listening to my thoughts, I realized that some of the inner critics were illogical, even incorrect in many of their responses, I countered with real evidential proof, not hearsay. Eventually, the harshest inner critic softened its stance, it began to help rather than hinder me, something its actually supposed to do.
Its a work in progress so far, it took a great deal to question everything, it was tiring and it was painful because it meant I had to revisit situations, occurrences that I had walled away. Yet in the clarity I experienced what could be called an epiphany, and with that realization came an understanding of myself and the motivation of others. The inner critics are somewhat subdued, logicked away and the inner thoughts have become helpful and not so self-destructive.
