In honor of our beloved peeps and to raise awareness, I’m featuring an interview with Tian Dayton, Ph.D., who is the author of many, many books about healing, forgiveness, and Adult Children (listed below) and an Adult Child specialist.  We spoke this Saturday.  I was delighted to discover that she’s also from Minnesota!

But wait…!

First, please make your VOICE heard by completing this 2-minute survey about Being an ACoA:

ACoA Survey (2 minutes!)

Thank you!

Watch GWNI Interview: “Guess How to Have Fun!” with Tian Dayton, Ph.D. from amy eden on Vimeo.

http://www.tiandayton.com

Enjoy!

Early Bird discound ends in just 5 days (Feb 18th)!  

Have you read about our self-improvement workshop, yet?  Click here for all the details!

Watch: GWNI Interview! ‘Guess How To Ask for Things’ with Jef Gazley, LMFT (Part 1 of 2) from amy eden on Vimeo.

This topic intersects with personal limits — when you ask for something you need (whether you’re asking for something you want, or don’t want, you’re ultimately asking for a need to be met) you are also setting a limit; you’re saying, “When the television is that loud, it’s too loud for me.” And when that limit is crossed, you are going to speak up.

We know our limits, whether we feel empowered to act on them or not. The information is in us. It really is! We feel our personal limits in our bodies — our gut, forearms and chest. When we speak up–and speak up consistently–we’ll be taken seriously. Consistency is key; if you only ask for the television to be turned down every other time, it’ll seem like it’s just your bad mood on certain days (not the TV volume). The wheel must squeak every time.

(I have to note that the people we allow into our lives before we’re healed and recovered enough are typically those that aren’t spending time thinking about our needs and will tend to be the types that require a clear, concise and consistent message to Get It. That said, there’s no easy way around asking for a need to be met – whether it’s met or not isn’t your problem and it’s not something you control. But you are in control of how you act/react when the need is met, or not.)

Note: This was my first attempt at recording a split-screen Skype video. My screen is frozen pretty much throughout the interview, but…Jef is animated and the audio worked!

Jef Gazley, LMFT, has practiced psychotherapy for thirty years, specializing in ADD, Love Addiction, Hypnotherapy, Relationship Management, Dysfunctional Families, Co-Dependency, Professional Coaching, and Trauma Issues. He is a trained counselor in EMDR, NET, TFT, and Applied Kinesiology. Jef received his B.A. in Psychology, History, and Teaching from the University of Washington, and his Masters in Counseling from the University of Oregon. Jef is State Certified in General Counseling, Marriage/Family, and Chemical Dependency. He is dedicated to guiding individuals to achieving a life long commitment to mental health and relationship mastery. His private practice is in Scottsdale, Arizona.

He operates the following:

Ask The Internet Therapist

Energy Psychology Therapy

Hypnosis Mp3s

DID YOU WATCH PART 2? ‘Guess How Brain Therapies Work’ with Jef Gazley, LMFT in which we talk about therapy alternatives for deep-seated trauma.

Enjoy the video!

Watch: GWNI Interview! ‘Guess How Brain Therapies Work’ with Jef Gazley, LMFT (Part 2 of 2) from amy eden on Vimeo.

(This was my first attempt at recording a split-screen Skype video. My screen is frozen pretty much throughout the interview, but…Jef is animated and the audio worked!)

If you’re curious what it might be like to take part in hypnosis – listen to this. This WILL NOT hypnotize you my dear control freaks, but it may actually relax you out of your fairly constant fight-or-flight mode. It’s way cheaper than a massage:

Sample Hypnosis Audio

Jef Gazley, LMFT, has practiced psychotherapy for thirty years, specializing in ADD, Love Addiction, Hypnotherapy, Relationship Management, Dysfunctional Families, Co-Dependency, Professional Coaching, and Trauma Issues. He is a trained counselor in EMDR, NET, TFT, and Applied Kinesiology. Jef received his B.A. in Psychology, History, and Teaching from the University of Washington, and his Masters in Counseling from the University of Oregon. Jef is State Certified in General Counseling, Marriage/Family, and Chemical Dependency. He is dedicated to guiding individuals to achieving a life long commitment to mental health and relationship mastery. His private practice is in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Jef runs the following:

Ask The Internet Therapist

Energy Psychology Therapy

Hypnosis Mp3s

DID YOU WATCH PART 1? ‘Guess How To Ask for Things’ with Jef Gazley, LMFT in which we talk about our sense of shame about making requests in order to get our needs met.

‘Guess How to End Conversations’ by Amy Eden for GWNI with Tim G. from amy eden on Vimeo.

(c) 2012 guesswhatnormalis.com

You can read about some practical tips in this post I wrote about strategies for ending conversations and visits.

In the collection Dreamtigers, by Jorge Manuel Borges there exists this beautiful sentiment about goodbyes (the poem is much longer, and titled “Delia Elena San Marco”).

For if souls do not die, it is right that we should not make much of saying goodbye.

To say goodbye to each other is to deny separation.  It is like saying, “Today we play at separating, but we will see each other tomorrow.”  Man invented farwells because he somehow knows he is immortal, even though he may seem gratuitous and ephemeral.

–Jorge Luis Borges

Bye (for now).

Here’s how it goes down:  A thought comes – “Mmm, oh, it would be nice to eat a cookie. A warm, chocolate-chip cookie.” Simple.  Unless you put a “simple” thought like that through the mind of an adult-child! Drum roll, boom-boom – enter doubting, unsure, cocked for battle adult-child Brain: But…should I eat it?

What if I then start to buy one every day…?

Do actually deserve a treat?

I’m running late today and now I want to spend five more minutes to buy a treat I don’t even deserve? Who do I think I am? And since I don’t truly know how to estimate how long things actually take – it’ll probably take an hour to buy the cookie…

A bit exhausting. A bit silly. And totally unnecessary (with practice).

We tend to wonder, “What’s the right course of action?” during times when life puts opportunity and choices in our path. (Actually, it’s more accurate to say when we intersect with opportunity, because I don’t believe it’s Life’s job to dole out our opportunities; it’s for us to make opportunities happen, to push the air that surrounds us with our movement and energy, and thereby create the ripest environment in which opportunity can grow.)  Something happens–a job opportunity at your friend’s company, a surprise love interest through a mutual friend, or–especially–an inner, personal realization about what you truly want–and while your gut/heart/mind are clear on what you want, you don’t listen.

We don’t know how to listen to our gut properly. Instead of mucking about in the soul, heart or gut, we hike up into our minds and think it away.  We think the opportunity into a twisted shape, an oblivion.

Enter:  Should.

The word should shows up in my own vocabulary in many more ways that as itself, as should. There’s what if, there’s what will they think, they’ll say things, But if I do this…etc. It’s not our fault. We then ask, “What ‘should’ I do?” as we try to figure out an interaction or response, it’s not surprising that we distance ourselves; we were trained from a very young age to receive our answers from our parents and not from inside ourselves. For us it was safest for us to behave in the accepted way in order to get our basic child needs met. So we don’t have much practice (if any) with identifying our gut instincts and following them. That, and, when we take opportunities change is inevitably involved, and we tend to be change-adverse because it activates so many unresolved traumas. We become confused about the source of our anxiety during change – whether it’s from the current situation or is past trauma transposed upon the present.

The Should Press.

When I put a decision through The Should Press (think Dr. Seuss and the wacky, twisted machines that press-on and remove stars from the bellies of Sneeches)–in doing so, I stamp “should” all over the idea and thereby alienate myself from not just the opportunity but also from being in touch with what, for me, is real.

The shoulding happens lightning-fast, right?  Pretty much the minute we have a desire, we stamp it with shoulds.

It once took me two years to decide to apply to earn a Masters Degree in creative writing. And it once took a year for me to break-up with someone I shouldn’t have been in a relationship with. While I don’t regret the time it took to go for the degree and I truly treasure memories from the relationship, I wasn’t acting on what I really wanted at the time. The Should Press stamped many paralyzing thoughts onto my wants –  A creative writing degree won’t make me a writer, What if I’m actually avoiding writing somehow by going to school, What if only a totally crappy college accepts me, What if I miscalculate my budget and truly can’t afford it, What if self-sabotage and turn in my applications late? What if I’m a fool to think that I can write well?  Such thoughts contributed to a two-year delay in going for it. With the relationship I didn’t truly desire, it was true psych-ops at work in my mind:  I willingly made out with him, I can’t just turn around and say, “Oh, never-mind,” I can’t deal with the awkwardness of hurting someone I work with every day, I got myself into this mess – I should see it through, I’m just being silly and afraid of love, and, oh, the over-the-top sign of a twisted self-doubter, What if my gut is wrong and I don’t know what I really want?

What are your shoulds?  What are you stories of action-delay?

If you honor your gut and listen to what you really want while also being a kind and loving self-parent to yourself, own your crap (take responsibility) — you can’t go wrong.  Really!  It’s a fool-proof system.

Buy the cookie. Enjoy it. If the next day and the next you also buy one, or that you’re dragging people along and buying more and more, then it’s time for your inner, kind and loving self-parent to pipe up and say, “I think you may want to cool it a bit on the cookies so that you don’t wind up feeling like an over-sugared slave to cookies…” Or, “Are you avoiding feeling something…?”  Trust that you will take care of yourself, listen to yourself, and stick-up for yourself – we CAN learn to act from a place of self-trust. Another example:  Once you learn techniques for how to end conversations (without guilt!) when you’re done with the conversations, you’ll no longer dread falling into conversation with people.

What is your gut telling you that you actually want?  Go for it -

…no matter what anyone might say.

…no matter what anyone might secretly think.

…no matter what anyone might do.

It’s your life. ‘They’ don’t live it. Only you do.

When you give yourself permission to honor your gut and listen to and honor what your actually want/feel/think, you will experience a send of lightness and freedom that is beautiful, if infrequent till now. The other nice surprise to it, when we act on our truth, we suddenly find that we don’t give a damn about the shoulds anymore – we don’t have to manage them because they evaporate.

The answers are inside.

Be kind to yourself.
-ae

Yes, and of course. With all the chaos around us as children, caution and being slow-to-trust makes complete and utter, not-your-fault, 100% sense.

In his book Homecoming, John Bradshaw wrote the following, which I suspect will resonate with you as much as it resonates with me (thanks Kenny!):

“One final note. One way adult children avoid their legitimate suffering is by staying in their heads. This involves obsessing about things, analyzing, discussing, reading, and spending lots of energy in trying to figure things out. There is a story about a room with two doors. Each door has a sign on it. One says HEAVEN; the other says LECTURE ON HEAVEN. All the co-dependent adult children are lined up in front of the door that says LECTURE ON HEAVEN! Adult children have a great need to figure things out because their parents were unpredictable adult children themselves. Sometimes they parented you as adults; sometimes they parented you as wounded and selfish children. Sometimes they were in their addictions, sometimes not. What resulted was confusion and unpredictability. Someone once said that growing up in a dysfunctional family is like “getting to a movie in the middle and never understanding the plot.” Someone else described it as “growing up in a concentration camp.” This unpredictability caused your continual need to figure things out. And until you heal the past, you will continue to try to figure it out. Staying in one’s head is also an ego defense. By obsessing on things, one does not have to feel. To feel anything is to tap in to the immense reservoir of frozen feelings that are bound by your wounded child’s toxic shame.” – John Bradshaw

The antidote?  Spontaneity. Taking action — any action, small actions. For one, write in a journal every day.  Write down your thoughts before you fully think them so that you don’t hesitate yourself out of writing them down.

When you’re wondering if you’re caught in self-sabotage, it might be worth asking yourself if the situation is actually over-thinking at work. Stopping before you even get started; you’re watching your mind’s slide show of What If scenarios, and it paralyses your inner motor.  Over-thinking and getting stuck in one’s mind can also manifest as commitment issues — commitment means action, and action is unusually threatening for people working to become adults in adulthood.

Here is Bradshaw’s book on GoogleBooks.

Or you can buy Bradshaw’s book Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child on Amazon.com.

Be kind to yourself.

Last post, I wrote about how another person’s self-control makes them seem more trustworthy to us (based on the results of a recent study). And vice-versa:  they also found that when others’ self-control was erratic, people had trouble trusting them. It’s all here in this post.

As with all things, self-control is to be practiced in moderation and isn’t all-good or all-bad. Remember, black and white thinking and all-or-nothing thinking is easy but problematic; the gray area, imperfect moderation is where it’s at.

There’s no question, it’s a serious challenge for adult-children to practice healthy self-control.  Our idea of self-control is going full-throttle–in the “all” direction as much as in the “nothing” direction:  ”I’m going to the gym EVERY DAY,” or, “I’m never going to eat chocolate again, EVER,” or, “That person crossed me, and she’s OUT of my life FOREVER,” and so on.

Can you see how that kind of thinking leads to self-sabotage?  If you’re worried about self-sabotage, whether in yourself or others (and I hope you’re focused on you - sweet, important, you), ask yourself this:  What was my expectation in this situation?  Was my expectation actually realistic?  If you had signed yourself up for a 5K race but didn’t have the full number of months to increase your mileage and endurance, then you’re setting yourself up for problems.  So unless you don’t mind walking the last mile, which is of course A-OK, then you might want to wait till the next 5K race so that you have time to train.  (When evaluating whether your expectations are realistic, be sure to consult a couple other people because, well, your version of “realistic” might not be aligned with those of mortal humans.)  Do a reality-check with a couple friends, friends who know your tendencies.

A Recipe for Self-sabotage

Set an unrealistic goal

Don’t prepare and don’t break-down tasks into small bits

Don’t step back, reassess, and readjust at any point

Brutally judge yourself in the end

Directions:  Mix, repeat, and serve to those you care about most.

Betcha can’t wait to mix up a fresh batch of Self-Sabotage with that recipe!  What’s more, people who have self-sabotage issues tend to share it with others as well:  they put unrealistic expectations on those around them, then criticize and judge those people for not meeting up to their envisioned ideas. I wrote about self-sabotage in this post if you’re looking for tips for breaking-free from self-sabotage (by the way, I don’t believe that self-sabotage really exists!)

Understanding your relationship to control is one step towards disengaging from self-sabotage.

How do we move towards practicing healthy self-control?  First things first:  if we are to come to peace with ourselves and the big bad issue that is CONTROL, first we need to reconcile our beliefs about what we can control and what we cannot, what we’re responsible for and what isn’t our responsibility.  First, we need to know, believe, and accept deeply a few immutable, irrevokable truths.

3 Immutable Truths about Control

• I cannot control the thoughts, actions nor reactions of others.  I am not responsible for the thoughts, actions or reactions of others.

• I’m not able to control, influence or willfully-mind-control things like TIME, rain, wind, fog, car accidents, lighting strikes, the distance between two places and the time it takes to travel between them, nor the length of previews before movies start when I’m running late.

• I’m wholly responsible for MY thoughts, reactions, and actions.  Even if I would like to believe that someone else’s reaction, words, or behavior “made me” do something–that shifting of responsibility doesn’t exempt me from the authority over my mouths, tongue and voice.

You might laugh, right?  And you might agree, Of course I can’t control others.  But, if we give thought to the deep, inner beliefs that drive our actions, our reactions to others, our fears (abandonment, criticism, being crazy), and our magical thinking — it’s possible to see that because we were raised as if we were an extension of another person, we do think we’re responsible for things we’re not.

Accepting the above fundamental truths isn’t as simple as just appreciating how logical they sound! Why? Because we were wired from a young age to believe the opposite. Because addicts don’t take responsibility for their realities, they emotionally manipulate their children to accept a warped reality (I’m not saying that they consciously do it–but, they DO do it nevertheless). None of that is our fault. And, we can (and are!) re-wiring our brains. Yes, yes, and absolutely. Once we have these truths straight, practicing living by them is next. Once we embody the truths, we can have a shot at good, healthy self-control that engenders trust in ourselves and others. With the added bonus of lessening self-hate!

Another View of Self-Control

If you’re not yet a reader of the blog HEAL and GROW for ACoAs, you should give it a lookie here. Donna recently wrote about self-control, too, but from a completely different standpoint.  Her 3-Part series on self-control is an important read. It’s important because she explains the roots of problematic self-control and different types of self-control, and how those play out for adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families.

SELF-CONTROL (S-C) can be defined as gathering one’s willpower to accomplishthings that are generally regarded as desirable, including long-term goals, & is highly valued by society.
It is internal mastery over our own actions – by monitoring our thoughts, regulating our emotions, setting goals & making responsible choices.  This gives us the ability to moderate competing urges, desires & activities. Self-control implies the ability to govern oneself – to make choices & decisions that benefit ourselves, & then others. To do this we need to honor who we are – our needs, tastes, abilities & experience.

• S-C is not an inborn character trait that would automatically allow us to govern our thoughts, emotions & behavior.  It is a skill that has to be learned & built up – by the process of ‘stalling, distracting and resisting’ negative urges. Healthy families help their children to grow this skill as part of their over-all training.  In adults – developing S-C is motivated by a conflict-free desire to stop doing harmful things to ourselves or others. Practice & perseverance are required, but it gets easier with repetition.

(c) “Types of Self Control Part 1,” Donna M. Torbico, 11/15/11, from her blog HEAL and GROW for ACoAs

Be kind to yourself.

If you’ve lived with or cared about addicts of any kind, you may be familiar with that sensation that hits your gut — a mild queasy feeling — when their actions don’t match their words. It’s not that they can’t justify their actions (they always can), it’s that, well, something’s not quite right. They say they’re out of money till payday (but they can’t resist buying jeans on Sale). They say they’re done with sex on the first date (but then, oops). They say they’re worried about their weight and their cholesterol (but then they order the fried chicken and ice cream for dessert).

You know this in your gut, of course; but now science has the data to back up what our guts have been saying all along:  something’s not quite right…I feel anxious, unsteady, unsafe, unsure, and this damn person can’t see how her words conflict with her actions…and what it’s doing to all of us!

Now we have proof!  (It’s nice to have the facts in black and white because if you were raised in chaos, you’re unlikely to trust your silly intuition, right?)  A new study showing that when people displayed self-control, others trusted them more was published in May of this year.  The study was written and conducted by Francesca Righetti and Catrin Finkenauer and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  And Psychology Today magazine online also covered the study, here (in everyday English).  What’s impressive about the study is how clearly the results indicated that the trust/mistrust works vice-versa, too:  displays of self-control built up trust; displays of a lack of self-control eroded trust.

The researchers don’t have an interest in addiction that I’m aware of but boy, oh boy, do the results of the study have meaning for people touched by addiction!  The “lack of self-control” factor aligns with so many of the manifestations of addiction:  namely, compulsivity. It speaks to the whole authority figure issues characteristic as well (I posted about that here)  – if our original authority figures had wobbly self-control, it was natural for us not to trust them.  Because our foundational authority figures had self-control issues, we experienced shades of abandonment when their addiction ‘parented’ us instead of them — they left and the addiction took the reigns.  It’s a natural reaction, then, that when we experience inconsistency in our mates, and when we experience others’ lack of self-control, that our original, most primary abandonment issues get triggered!

As parents — both in re-parenting ourselves as well as in parenting our own children — this information is crucial to push into the brain of each and every little cell in our bodies, to truly digest it. We become more trustworthy parents when we’re true to our word.  If we do what we say we’re going to do, we can model trustworthiness and also the chaos-free, consistent environments that are the hallmark of a nurturing home environment.  Nurturing home environments allow everyone to thrive.

A word of caution:  since we tend to have unrealistic ideas of what’s normal and what’s realistic, we tend to think and say that we’re going to do things that only supernatural gods and goddesses are capable of; so, before you commit yourself to do what you say and say what you’ll do — first please tend to learning what you’re capable of and your tendencies for unrealistic expectations.  Then you’ll be set up to be able to successfully deliver on your word.  (The alternative is a self-sabotage Catch-22…like an unrealistic diet nobody can stick to.)

Another word of caution:  since people who grew up in chaotic childhood homes tend to continue to live by rigid rules (even if your rigid rules differ from those of your original family), it might be easy to come away from this information thinking, “I’m going to be true to my word always, every time, forever.”  It’s just not that black-and-white; rather, the idea is to move in the direction of adjusting your expectations to a realistic, achievable level, and then — simply do your best.  When you don’t deliver on your word, then say so — acknowledge it.  Don’t defend it, own it — like a grown-up.

An addict, at some point in his or her relationship with their addiction, whatever it may be (sex, porn, food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, work, and the Internet are all documented addictions) will trade his self-control to the addiction for the escape that he’s afforded.  From that point on, till recovery, the substance controls the show.  So you can be sure that once addiction sets in, self-control went out the window a long time ago.  You can see why addicts have to turn up the charm, manipulation, and shaming of others — they don’t want to believe they’re no longer in charge.

Enough about them.

Why am I sharing these findings about self-control and trust?   It provides us with the data to boost our confidence and to fuel our conviction — conviction perhaps missing from the words we’ve played in our minds or have said over and over and over again but just missing the mark.

Knowing that lapses of self-control erode trust, we can address the issue constructively.  Here are some sample scripts:

“I’m uncomfortable with how you sometimes spend money. You say that you’re in debt, but you are purchasing non-essential items. This makes it hard to trust your ability to control your spending.” (You could weave an “I” statement in there as well:  I feel duped when you say you can’t share in the cost of groceries then you buy an iPhone).  It’s important to specify that what’s hard to trust is the person’s ability to control their spending rather than their whole person — that’ll put any addict in the defense zone.

“Several times you’ve reassured me that you like making love, but yet you’ve rejected several of my advances this month, which makes it hard for me to trust that your words and actions are in sync.” (An “I” statement might be:  I feel rejected when you roll over or say you’re too tired for sex).

“You’re saying that you’re two years “sober,” but you’re getting high almost every day. I don’t feel like I can trust your definition of sober.”  (I feel frustrated when you say you’re sober but you’re high).

Now, the healing and growth that needs to take place is for you, within you.  So while it’s useful to have constructed scripts to use for difficult conversations (and do have those difficult conversations, those crucial confrontations), we owe it to our healing and joy-cultivation to spend as little time as possible on them, and 99% on, well, our own damn business.  So we should turn the microscope on ourselves, too.  It’s only fair.  We’re not — perfect. Surely your self-control isn’t foolproof?

Would you trust you?

Be kind to yourself.

P.S.:  Here’s the article abstract of the self-control and trust study, offered by the American Psychological Association:

“The present research tested the hypothesis that perception of others’ self-control is an indicator of their trustworthiness. The authors investigated whether, in interactions between strangers as well as in established relationships, people detect another person’s self-control, and whether this perception of self-control, in turn, affects trust. Results of 4 experiments supported these hypotheses. The first 2 experiments revealed that participants detected another person’s trait of self-control. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that participants also detected the temporary depletion of another person’s self-control. Confirming the authors’ predictions, perceived trait and state self-control, in turn, influenced people’s judgment of the other person’s trustworthiness. In line with previous research, these findings support the positive value of self-control for relationships and highlight the role of perceived self-control for the development of a fundamental relationship factor: trust. “

Cheri starts out by talking about the conditioning we go through as children, absorbing the ‘rules’ about what’s OK and not OK in our family, in the neighborhood, at school, and so on.  She shows how we’re in a fairly constant state of self-checking about what’s allowed and not allowed in any given situation.  For example, when you came to this blog a tiny, but immediate conversation took place in your mind about whether or not it was “OK” to be visiting a self-help blog and what that “means” about you and could you “justify” it. Right? Those verification-type conversations occur constantly and are super-quick — but also super-powerful.  They influence, and even dictate, our behaviors.

Now, that’s not really a new concept to any of us — the idea that we’re uncertain what’s allowed (normal) in any given situation.  However, what Cheri offers that was completely new to me, was the idea of that voice in our head having a persona.  She refers to it as The Voice (and there’s a cartoon character associated with it).  We’re all going through our days grappling with The Voice.  The Voice influences how we order our coffee and form an opinion about how the barista treats us, how the bus driver greets us (or doesn’t), etc.  And on, and on, throughout the day.  But – here’s what blew my mind and gave me a huge AH HA moment:  The Voice isn’t just one persona.  No.  There are actually several personas embodied by The Voice in our heads (our conditioned minds).  Depending on the situation, a particular persona, or sub-personality, is invoked.  Whoa.

What are, for me, The Voice’s sub-personalities?  Let’s see.  There’s the optimist, the daughter, the step-daughter, the sister, mother, loyalist, reader, writer, art lover, animal lover, philosopher, recover-er, crusader, the motherless daughter, the adult child of addicts, spiritual person, the drill Sargent, black-and-white thinker, fault-finder, abandoned child, Buddhist, the divorcee, single mom, the blogger, and…many more to discover. Some have complimentary voices, but most don’t.

When I wake up in the morning, several sub-personalities speak at once through The Voice.

“What did you dream…let’s recall your dreams and feel magical,” says the Spiritual Person.

“You must post to your blog today!  And finish editing Fenella’s chapter!  And shower!  And be on time!”  says the Drill Sargent.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re not going to get fired if you’re late.  Be present. Breathe.”  says the recover-er and Buddhist.

But, you and I both know that probably ALL the voices take their turn yelping or whispering at me — particularly in the morning.  I get up when, finally, I need to escape the cacophony or because a sweet, kind voice resonates with me.

There’s a fun exercise at the end of the second chapter, which I’ll excerpt here because it’s useful and fascinating. And easy.

As a parent, as I do this exercise, I am keeping in mind that I have a lot of influence on the voices that my son stockpiles, and for helping him navigate the difference between societal expectations and his own, developing ones and for using his own litmus test for authenticity.

I’d love to hear what variety of personas you come up with!  (Feel free to post in Comments.)

EXERCISE

Imagine going through an average day.  “Who” wakes up in the morning?  (Who picks out your sleepwear?)  Who decides what to do first?  Is someone in charge of the morning rituals?  Who fixes breakfast?  (Sometimes it might be the “health food fascist,” sometimes the “junk food junkie.”)  Who decides what to wear?  Is there someone who plans your day?  A list-maker?  A rehearser?  Who goes to work (take a little time and consider that this might be a whole crew of subpersonalities, depending on circumstances)?  Who plans your evening?  Do you have a daydreamer, a fantasizer, a romantic, a veg-out-in-front-of-the-TV-with-beer-and-pizza?  Who else?

Exercise (c) 2007 Cheri Huber Making a Change for Good, A Guide to Compassionate Self-Discipline

Cheri’s website (and a listing of her 18 other books!) is right here.

What is remarkably valuable about this tool for naming the various sub-personalities is that, once identified, you can recognize who is talking for you, and dilute its power.  It puts a distance between you and the power of your conditioning.  Within that space, that distance you’ve created, you can do a lot of good work.  “Oh, ah-ha. That sounds like my inner Drill Sargent. I think I’ll ignore her and listen to my own, inner authentic voice.”  That’s healing and self-parenting work in action.

Be kind to yourself.