The destructive inner voice

I am sure that hearing voices in our heads is not only a sign of mental illness.  I feel we all hear voices of some kind at some time, it is just that the messages and purpose of these voice can be constructive or destructive.

Imagine if, as a child, you were left alone a lot with no one to turn to, or if the things you thought, the sense you tried to make of things around you and externalised in comments or thoughts to caregivers was invalidated, disputed, turned upside down?  How is that going to impact the dialogue you come to have inside yourself? The interface between the you inside that feels things instinctively and the introjected voice composed of messages telling you that you got it wrong, did not understand, are mixed up, confused or should be ashamed of yourself?

This is a window into my own mind at the moment.  Its also a constant theme that comes up and is pointed out by my therapist, time and again.  I have a felt urge to say or do something.  I do that felt thing and then there comes the critical backlash from a voice inside my head saying I should not have said or done that and as I look deeper I see that is actually someone else’s voice.

I am coming to realise, that often, that voice lies or is trying to protect real me against hurt, abandonment or fear.  I carry a deep fear that if I am truthful to what I believe and say or do in some way I will be cast out from connection.  I am sure that this fear comes from somewhere.  It comes from something that happened for me in the past with significant people in my life.   And this fear has kept me dampened down for a lot of my life.  It’s almost as if in truly living I face death, a death of safety, of an assurance that I can remain connected and a fear that I will literally not survive this being cast out.  So what has happened in earlier years, before this pattern and these fears become more fully conscious is that I have abandoned myself and then felt deeply, unconsciously angry inside.

Around the time my marriage ended and I ended up in complete isolation in a small coastal town several hours from my place of birth (where I had not lived for over 19 years) , I began to turn inward.  I would spend all day in my pyjamas some days and I would read and write, and read and write and write and read.  I had not one friend close.  I had one person I knew in the AA fellowship who would call me from time to time and sometimes I would hear from my mother.  My ex husband was also calling from time to time, even after he had left me which really fucked with my head at the time.  I would get major anxiety attacks (well these started with alarming regularity around the time we began to break up, a process that took over 3 years!)

Around this time I had major dreams.  I was journaling and exploring my past.  I had aborted an attempt at therapy just a year or so before.  I was sharing with my therapist this week that around this time I wrote a piece of writing which I entitled Destruction 11:11.  For some reason around this time when ever I looked a the clock that time would appear.  I then heard that at critical times of spiritual awakening, people would begin to see those numbers 11:11 constantly.  Was this a weird sign of some kind of synchronicity or of something deeper going on?  Was it a sign I was becoming schizoid?  Who knows?  I guess it all depends on who is doing the interpreting.

In Destruction 11:11 I had a full on encounter with an inner voice that was literally out to kill me.  I have heard many people in recovery talk of the force within them what wants them dead, that lives in side their head, running themselves and other people down.

A few years before while living in Cambridge, UK I came across a book by Robert Firestone which was called something like Dealing with Destructive Thought Processes.  He recognised that a major symptom of suffering trauma, abandonment or lack of nurture in childhood was the development of destructive thought processes that literally blocked a person from healing and seeking connection with themselves and others.    Other writers such a Pete Waker have also drawn our attention to a powerful force present in those with Complex PTSD and significant abandonment of the Inner and Outer Critic.

In his book The Inner World of Trauma psychotherapist, Donald Kalsched sought to come to grips with why so many of his traumatised clients would hit a critical point in therapy where the therapy got undone or hit a road block, just when the possibility of opening up a connection with the therapist was about to occur.  The conclusions he came to are similar to what Robert Firestone discovered in his work with couples seeking to establish deep intimacy and failing.  Just at the point of being shown love all the fears of those who had in the past been traumatised would rise up, along with an inner protector who tried to keep the person safe from further harm.

The voices that people would hear at such times were critical and doubting.  Things such as “This person is just out to hurt you, they can’t be trusted.”, “If you trust again you will just be hurt like last time.”  At times the inner protector would say it was the only one to be able to offer that person connection and safety.  At times the inner protector may even recommend suicide to the person as a way out.

Writing this just now a quote I heard somewhere came to me

Where there is another, there is fear

I would argue that the fear we feel in the face of another may depend very much on how trustworthy have been our relationships in the past.  Have we been able to be free to be ourselves with others?  Have we been trusted? Have we been shown empathy and understanding?  Or have we been told we don’t know, are confused in some way or have got it wrong? Have we been abused or hurt?  Have we, in the face of this abuse or hurt been told it didn’t hurt?

If so it is going to be very difficult for us to overcome the negative voices of self sabotage and self doubt that begin to take residence in our head.

For me, writing Destruction 11:11 I now see was a critical turning point for me.  In time I was able to make a relationship with that inner destructive thought process.  By beginning to recognise it and hear what it was saying I was beginning to drive a wedge between it and me.  By being able to talk about what is said to me and getting a reality check from others, I was able to begin to dis-identify from the voice.  In time other loving voices started to emerge from deep within me.  One was like a loving mother Goddess voice that told me I was embraced and loved.  I believe it was the voice of my higher self, the observer witness self who wanted me to be free.  I will never forget the day this voice said to me.

Deborah, you will in time emerge from the dark night victorious. 

I still had a very long way to go in my healing process.  I was to meet someone who would embody the critical voice within me.  But over time I have been able to see the part I played in attracting someone like this, someone whose own wounds and fears in a strange way reflected my own.  In time the relationship fell apart and I was launched into a very, very, very deep pain and healing.  But now I see the part the inner voice played in keeping me locked up inside and I can recognise it in others.  I can be smart enough to see when it tries to take over and protect me but keep me in prison and I can take steps to take a different action, one no longer dictated by voices of fear and defensiveness, but one dictated by voices of love and openness.