When you're dealing with change, you can get quite upset. It triggers all kinds of processes and unconscious reactions, depending on how you have developed over the years. However, you can make those reactions a lot more conscious and even influence them if you know where they come from. Voice Dialogue is a useful tool for doing that.
You may know it: that little voice inside your head which tells you it's never good enough. Or that other voice that says that you really shouldn't disappoint other people. We all have our own set of voices that we carry with us every day. This may sound a bit strange, but you can think of it as a bus full of people who all have their own view of things. They travel with you every day, where one person has more influence than the other.
Although you may think that you are the one who makes all the choices and who's living your life, all those fellow passengers have an influence on this, perhaps even without you being aware of it. Our personality is actually a collection of subpersons. Your perfectionist wants you to do everything perfectly, while the pleaser makes everyone feel good. And they can sometimes even take over the steering wheel.
On the other hand, you may have hidden some sub-characters deep in the luggage compartment. These are the ones that can strongly attract you or strongly irritate you in another person. Both a sign that you probably neglected them.
Protection
The main function of all those subpersons is to protect you. Whether and how you develop them depends on what you experience throughout your life. As a child, you may have learned that your mother got upset when you cried, so you preferred not to. A good breeding ground for a pleaser. Or maybe you got the most attention when you worked hard, so you developed a strong pusher.
All of those subpersons help prevent your vulnerable core from getting hurt. They intervene when their main tasks seem to be threatened: ensuring harmony (the pleaser), completing tasks (the pusher) or striving for perfection (the perfectionist). They are also the first ones to show up when something changes in your life. They consider that to be dangerous.
Voice Dialogue
The American psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone developed a way to deal with all those different subpersons: Voice Dialogue. By talking to your main sub-persons, but also to those you have rejected you learn how they protect you, but also how they keep you from changing.
In order to grow as a person it is important to learn how to control all those subpersons. You must first get to know them, in order to be able to give them a less or more prominent place in your life. For this, your so-called conscious ego must take over the steering wheel again. That way it becomes a lot easier to determine your own route, instead of being guided by things like fear or anxiety.
Common subpersons
The perfectionist
Raises the bar very high and strives for (unreachable) perfection.
The autonomous one
Is independent, sets limits and can say no.
The pusher
Likes speed and success, but hates relaxing.
The pleaser
Knows what others need and gives it to them.
The inner critic
Constantly tells you what you are doing wrong.
The rationalist
Loves to analyze and tirelessly asks questions.
Do you want to learn which subpersons keep you from changing as an introvert? Feel free to contact me so we can look at this together.
