Steve Andreas - Help with Negative Self–talk Volume I

When I have hundreds of people in a room, and I ask, "Who among you has good self–esteem?" hands go up — not many, but some hands go up. And then I ask them, "Do you have an inner critic? Do you have a voice inside your head that criticizes you and says rotten things to you, and puts you down, and says mean and horrible things to you?" And every single one says, "Yes."

And I say to them, "If you have a voice that says rotten things to you, how can you have good self–esteem?" And the interesting reply — it's always a bit different — but the common bottom line is they don't listen to it. And when I ask them, "How do you not listen to it?" that's when I learn all sorts of different strategies.

One person said, "Well, I picture it as on a volume control knob, and I just turn the volume down.

Somebody else said, "I picture it as a barking dog, tied to a tree, and I just keep walking."

Somebody else says, "You know, I have another voice on my shoulder that says good things to me."

But the interesting thing is that every single person has that inner critic, that critical voice. It's just a question of whether they listen to it or not. (21, p. 17)

Earlier you experimented with changing the location, direction, and distance of a troublesome voice to make it much more comfortable to listen to. When you make these kinds of changes what you are actually doing is changing your relationship to the voice. This is something that you can do voluntarily any time you want, in order to have a more resourceful response to it, giving you some control over your experience. Since a change in location or direction is a pure process change, you can use it with any voice, or any sentence, phrase, or other set of words or sounds that a voice might say.

What you have been experimenting with are changes in aspects of a voice that are usually unconscious, but can become conscious if you ask the right kind of question. Once these choices are conscious, you can experiment with making changes in them. When you find a change that you are pleased with, you can then allow that change to become unconscious and automatic again, freeing your attention for other things. You are taking the first small, yet significant, steps toward having more choice about how you think about and respond to events in your life.

Earlier when you tried placing a negative voice in your stomach or your heart, you probably felt worse. That feeling was a clear signal that some part of you objected to that change, and that it wasn't a useful thing to do. Some call this "intuition"; others call it "listening to your wiser self," or some other such phrase. Whatever you call it, please pay attention to it and respect it. If you tried to ignore it or override it, that would be a mistake — and sometimes it would be a big mistake. You can try any experiment briefly for the purpose of learning, but when you make a change that feels worse, it is very important to respect that, and change the voice back to what it was like before the experiment, and try something else.

You may also find that one of the changes that you made was not permanent, and that a voice spontaneously moves back to its original location, direction, or volume. This is often a signal that the change you made was not as useful as you might have consciously thought.

At other times, you may find that a voice changes spontaneously, without your intention. As you were experimenting, some unconscious aspect of you discovered a useful change that you hadn't thought of or intended. Always respect this kind of spontaneous change as a signal that some other aspects of your functioning are wiser than your conscious one.

As you try these experiments — and the others in the chapters that follow — you may occasionally find that a voice entirely disappears, or you find a way to deliberately make it disappear — for instance, by moving the voice so far away into the distance that you can't hear it at all.

Sometimes when a voice disappears that is an indication that a voice has reorganized in some way so that it no longer needs to talk to you. Perhaps it has completely integrated into who you are in a useful way. When this happens, you will not only feel relief from what it has been saying, you will likely also feel an added wholeness, a feeling of being more than you were before.

This experience of a troublesome voice disappearing — along with a greater feeling of wholeness — happens frequently in a process called "Aligning Perceptual Positions" developed by my wife Connirae Andreas. This process uses location to sort out our different perceptions and organize them, resulting in personal integration and clarification. An article about this process can be found on my web site at: http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/comaligning.html. A complete demonstration of this process is included in the DVD Training: "Core Transformation — the full 3–day workshop" available from RealPeoplePress.com.

However, at other times the disappearance of a voice may not be so useful. Despite its unpleasantness, often a voice has some very important information or protective function. If you lost the voice you would also lose that information or protection; you would lose a part of yourself, and possibly something that was very valuable. The voice may have been overcome, or smothered, or hidden, but not integrated, and it will likely emerge again later to cause trouble again.

In order to avoid this, I always like to bring the voice back in and find a location and direction that makes it possible to comfortably hear what it is saying. That way you can talk with it, and find out if the voice might still have some important message for you. If it does, you can continue to modify it in some way, using some of the other methods in this book. If the voice calmly tells you that it has nothing more to say to you, then you can safely allow it to disappear again. The overall goal of this book is to teach you how to transform a troublesome voice into something much more useful and supportive, not to eliminate it.

You have experimented with how to change a troublesome voice in order to make it less impactful. That same information can be used in reverse to make a positive voice more impactful. For instance, you may have an inner knowing that says something like, "Whatever happens, I am a worthwhile person," or "I know I am capable and resourceful." If this voice is far away and quiet, and doesn't sound very convincing to you, try moving it closer and making it louder. You could try putting that voice into your heart, your chest, or your belly, and find out if that produces a stronger feeling of truth and conviction. Or you can try any other change that you find increases the impact of that voice.

However, you need to be very careful when you do this, so please be very cautious, and extra sensitive to any concerns or objections. There can be some very significant problems with the words that you use, and I want you to know how to avoid these problems before you do much with adding or changing the words that you say to yourself.

For instance, if you have a supportive voice that is in opposition to a troublesome one, making the supportive one stronger can escalate the conflict, and that often causes problems. If a troublesome voice says "You're stupid," and you add a voice that says, "I'm smart," those voices are in direct opposition.

However, if you add a voice that says, "I can learn how to be smart," that voice is not in opposition, because a stupid person can learn to be smart. In fact the implication of "I can learn to be smart," is that the person is not already smart, which is in agreement with the voice that says, "I'm stupid," so there is no conflict.

Small changes in wording like this can be very important to avoid creating conflict. There are some very important criteria for the words that a resourceful voice says to make sure that it really works well to support you. When you learn what those are, you can make changes that won't "backfire" or cause problems that could be worse than the one you wanted to solve.

Another possibility is to first transform a troublesome voice, and then strengthen a supportive one. Avoiding conflict not only makes change much more comfortable, it makes it much easier to do, and much more lasting and useful.

In later chapters we will return to using the information in this chapter positively. I will discuss many other ways to change what a voice says in great detail in later chapters, particularly chapter 10, "Asking Questions." But first I want to explore several other simple ways to change nonverbal aspects of a voice, and its emotional impact on you. The first of these is to change the tempo or tonality.

Think of a simple sentence like, "I need to get going," and hear it in your mind in an ordinary, everyday tempo… .

Now say the exact same sentence internally in a very fast tempo… .

Finally, say it in a very slow tempo, even slower than if you were about to nod off to sleep… .

Did you notice any difference in your response to that sentence in the different tempos? …

Most people will feel only a little motivated by the first, much more motivated by the second, and completely un motivated by the last. Since the words spoken are exactly the same, this difference is solely a result of the change in tempo. But since most people only notice the words that they speak to themselves, this effect of tempo is usually completely unconscious.

In the real world, a fast tempo is usually paired with urgent situations in which we need to tense up and do something quickly, while slow tempos are typically associated with relaxation, rest, and leisure activities. Since we use our memories of those real–world events to construct our internal world, a fast tempo usually elicits tension and motivation, while a slow tempo elicits relaxation and repose. But if you had a parent who motivated you with dire threats in a slow voice, you might be very motivated by a slow tonality. Changing the tempo of an internal voice is another way to gain some control over the impact of what you say to yourself.

Recently I saw an older woman whose dearly loved husband had died two years ago, and she had been depressed ever since. I used our grief resolution process (4) with her, but it was only partly successful. A little exploration revealed that she had an internal voice that was depressing her. In a low, slow voice, it said things like, "It doesn't matter; things aren't worthwhile; they don't have any meaning anymore, because you're just going to die anyway." Try saying those words to yourself in a slow tempo, over and over again, and notice how they affect you… .

Now send that voice off into the distance, and "shake off" any depressed feelings by wiggling your body a bit and then remind yourself of something that you enjoy a lot… .

When I asked this woman to speed up the tempo of this voice, she immediately started chuckling, and said, "It became a hip–hop rapper voice." Changing the tempo resulted in changing the tonality, and the words became somewhat ridiculous, lifting her depression.

Nick Kemp is a provocative therapist and hypnotherapist in England who has explored the use of voice tempo changes with his clients in great detail. He has originated and developed a detailed and dependable process for using tempo with anxiety and other intense and fast–paced uncomfortable states that is very widely useful. It is one of the methods that Nick includes in what he terms "The Provocative Change Works" set of tools.