Voices in Your Head:

What is Inner Talk?

Am I crazy? I hear voices in my head! No I don't, yes you do...stop it already! Okay. Inner dialog at a certain level is normal. Everyone thinks thoughts and sometimes has a contrary thought that questions the first one. This is not multiple personality disorder, this is just your own mind checking and questioning reality in your thought life. In fact data analysis casts doubt on how common multiple personality disorders really are. Before the first very famous case was published, this condition was extremely rare, almost unheard of. Once the story was published and doctors started implanting the idea into their patients while searching for it; it became wide spread. We won't get into that, if you feel you have it you should seek professional help. Back to the rest of us. "Normal" people do have inner thoughts and sometimes dialog with themselves to continually check their reality, review their opinions, and program themselves.

Most self talk is justification for our beliefs and preprogrammed generalizations, especially about ourselves. We want, and sometimes must, think our beliefs are true so we continually look for what we see as proof that we are right; even when we are totally wrong. This is especially true about what we think of ourselves. One often repeats criticisms they accepted as a child. For example, one drops a glass and inside thinks, "I am always so clumsy!" Repeating these thoughts makes them happen more often. Your sub-conscious or what I like to call your "semi-automatic conscious" takes some of these suggestions and comments seriously, then in an attempt to be correct, makes them happen. One of the most important steps towards changing your life, is to change you by becoming aware of and changing destructive inner dialogs.

Changing Inner Dialog: Changing You

The first tip in using the power of your inner dialog, is to become aware of your habitual comments. What have you been saying to yourself? How have you been programming your inner person? Keeping a journal would be useful but very dangerous to your relationships if it fell into the wrong hands. For now, just begin becoming aware of some of your destructive thoughts and replace them immediately with multiple, (I suggest seven or more) opposite thoughts or repetitions of an opposite thought to begin your deprogramming. (I will get into the science of why seven in other explorations. An oversimplified summary is: the brain likes to remember things in chunks of three, four, or seven}. For example; You do something stupid and your inner talk begins with: "I am so stupid!" Not good. Immediately replace this thought with: "No, I am a genius!" Repeat it or similar thoughts several times. If you do this enough times, when you do something stupid, you may have a positive thought rather than a destructive one. Of course, your replacement thought must be believable to you. If you don't believe you should replace "stupid" with "genius"; use a more acceptable word for yourself like; "clever" or a phrase like; "I'm clever, what I did wasn't, but it taught me to do better next time." The point is, start becoming aware of your destructive self talk and replace these thoughts with more productive thoughts until these good thoughts dominate your inner dialog.