Name That Voice

“Tell me, what does that inner voice look like?”

That was the question to my client the other day when she started talking about the ‘inner voices’ that tell her she can’t do something or keep her doing things the way she’s always done them.

Professor Steve Peters describes it as a chimp.  My Mum used to say she could see the ‘devil’ on my shoulder (normally when I was doing something I knew I shouldn’t).  But whatever you call it, it’s that inner voice(s) we hear when the brain is in conflict and which we normally don’t think of as a character.  It often becomes more vocal either to tell us when we can’t do something (“don’t whatever you do stand up and give that presentation”) or to help us justify doing something we really want to do (eating that slab of bread & butter / chocolate bar / [insert your own vice here]).  It’s completely normal, but sometimes these voices keep us stuck in old thinking patterns or behaviours, when in fact what we want to do is move forward, or react differently to something.

The thing is, we are often not even aware of them.  And in order to change something we need first of all to be aware of it, and then we can work with it.

This is what my client was talking about; wanting to change her response to a situation.  She wanted to be able to make the choice to do something differently, but when you’re in the moment, how on earth can you do that?

Dr Shalsee Vigeant talked about making positive choices in her blog “The Conundrum of Choice” on March 29.  And yes, it can be hard.

So what can we do?

Let me try and illustrate:

I had a meeting recently that I was nervously excited about.  It was an important meeting and I wanted it to go well (who doesn’t) and I was getting a bit nervous because I hadn’t been involved in a meeting like this particular one for a while.  As the date of the meeting approached I knew that my “head” was starting to get in the way.  It was a feeling that had started in the pit of my stomach and slowly but surely had developed over the days into a great fluttering feeling.  When I thought about the meeting I could feel my breathing get shallower and then noticed the accompanying thoughts “what if I say something stupid, what if I don’t know, what if they ask me a difficult question, what if they don’t like me, I can’t do this…” etc.  All deeply unhelpful.

During the normal course of a day when I felt the thoughts trying to get a hold, I’d get up and do something else to take my mind off it.  Despite my efforts, one night, as I was going to sleep the negative, fretting thoughts just wouldn’t go away.  I knew I needed to try something different.

It was good timing that I had a peer supervision session the following evening and when it was my turn to talk I mentioned my feelings about this upcoming meeting and asked my colleagues what tips they might have for said meeting.  They had some fantastic suggestions, one of which was along the same lines as the exercise I did with my client;

“Who do you want to take with you into the meeting?  Work out who it is that you want to sit round the table with you and then leave all the unhelpful players at home”. 

Bingo.

Sounds so simple right?

Well, yes and no.  You first need to work out who you’re dealing with.  I sat down and had a good hard think about what these inner voices I was hearing were saying and then consciously decided to pick out and group the helpful ones and the not so helpful ones.  The not so helpful ones I decided to park at home.  The helpful ones, who I thought of as my advocates, I took with me to the meeting. 

And what about my client, how did this work for her?

She had three characters in her particular scenario:

• A cheer leader – not shouty per se but a bit loud.  This character had been a lifelong friend and was there as a protector, which is a good thing, but in this particular scenario, was overshadowing the other options available by constantly lobbying for things to stay the same.

• An older, wiser lady.  My client noted that this character needed to speak up a bit.  The old lady really knew her stuff and was a bit more ‘big picture’ in her outlook than the cheer leader.  And she was also more collaborative which is what my client really wanted.

Ok, great.  We’ve identified there is a choice that needs to be made, and that’s all well and good, but as I mentioned before, how, when you’re in the moment, can you make the conscious choice to do that thing differently?  That can be a challenge.  The chimp takes over as an automatic response, or in my clients’ case the cheer leader because that’s how we have been doing it for ages, and combined with that she was in the protector role.  But just because it’s what we’ve done for ages, and it’s worked and it’s kept us safe…it doesn’t mean it has to always be this way.  Metaphorically speaking, to quote Alfred Korzybski, “The map is not the territory”. 

You do have a choice.  It just takes a bit of practice.

This is where a third character came in: 

• A brightly coloured, bold image who looked more like a referee.  It was an image my client could bring to mind quietening the voice of the cheer leader and allowing the wise old lady to be heard more.

Now, to some of you, this may all sound a bit out there and strange, possibly a bit uncomfortable.  Why would I say that?  Because that’s exactly how I felt when learning about this exercise, but having quietened the voices in my own head that were holding me back from embracing it I can now properly appreciate it.

I have used variations of this with a number of clients now and it is enormously powerful.  My coaching approach is not to make people do something they don’t want to and if an exercise or tool is not appropriate, either for the individual or the issue at hand then it doesn’t get used.  One size does not fit all and it’s not for everyone, but every time I have used it we (the client and I) have ended up laughing and joking about this inner voice and the character[s] it has morphed into. 

I’m going to sign off now but I’d like to invite you to think about the chatter in your own head when you’re wanting to change something but find you can’t.  And I would also invite you to have a look at The Chimp Paradox if you haven’t heard of it already – there’s a TEDx video that gives you an overview.  It’s pretty powerful stuff.

In case you are wondering - all coaching conversations are confidential, and the high level details provided here have the consent of my client to be shared in this format.

Main image credit: Ray Harrington on Unsplash