28 Apr The Voice in Your Head Is Out of Line

Call it the taskmaster. Or the alarm sounder. Or the pusher. Many of my clients have some version of this voice in their head, running on its own power, haranguing them constantly about everything that must be addressed NOW!

This voice demands that you stop everything and take care of the emergency it has assessed immediately. Or disaster will descend. No pleasure can be had, nothing else can be engaged in for any other reason, until the emergency has been avoided.

And just to be clear, the emergency can never actually be fully avoided. If you tackle it to the best of your ability, it will morph into new threats that must also be immediately addressed.

If you don’t like the pressure and tension that this never-satisfied voice creates within your being, too bad, from its point of view. That’s the cost of your survival.

Sound familiar? Do you have your own similarly pernicious voice? Is it remarkably difficult to quiet or elude?

Here’s something that can easily and quickly change that voice, and your power to work with it more harmoniously.

Except in actual life or death emergencies, the state of being created by that voice is not the state of being that can actually best address the situation.

Let me say that again, in a different way. You can’t solve the so-called emergency situation while experiencing a state of emergency. The anxiety generated by this voice distorts your perception and makes you more prone to mess things up, rather than less.

And, it doesn’t know this about itself.

But you do.

And you can use this knowledge to dialogue with this voice in a new, effective way. It’s effective because it doesn’t fight with or feed the voice. Instead, it creates a mutually cooperative alliance.

Here’s an example. Say the voice is telling you that your financial situation is dire, and that you’re going to lose everything if you don’t fix it asap.

Once you’re aware that the alarm has sounded, you can respond like this:

“Thanks for notifying me that this is a priority. In order to successfully address it, I need to cultivate a state of calm, relaxed presence. The first chance I have to do that is [fill in blank]. I’ve marked it down.

Thanks again, and remember: If you keep shouting at me between now and then, it’s actually going to make this harder. It may even make it impossible.

Now I know you’re just doing your job, and you may forget this. So each time you may shout again, going forward, I’ll gently remind you that we’ve got a plan in place. The key is that I’ll remind you, and ask you to quiet down accordingly. Got it?”

Of course you may not always need to articulate this inner dialogue so fully every time the alarm sounds. Eventually it can be processed without a distinct stream of thoughts at all, as a kind of boundary asserting state of reassurance.

For the first dozen times or so, however, you may want to spell it all out until it completely “takes.”

What allows this approach to work is that the alarm voice actually knows, deep down, that it’s not the boss of everything. When met with a kind, clear and firm response, it listens. At least temporarily. It stands by to see if you’re for real and will actually cultivate the optimal state to address the situation.

If you do, the voice updates, and more and more registers you as a trustable ally.

So if you do your part, the voice will usually do its part.

If you’re not already operating in this way, give it a shot.

And please let me know how it goes for you.